Listen in as our hosts finally answer the questions: Will Don't Encourage Us ever review the Columbus Day/Expeditionary Force novel series by Craig Alanson? And what the what is going on with the Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie, and the explosive Barbenheimer phenomenon? Then join the Hunt and go rogue with our hosts as they disassemble Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1, discussing the impossible action, plot, and characters of this sevenquel.
Listen in as our hosts finally answer the questions: Will Don't Encourage Us ever review the Columbus Day/Expeditionary Force novel series by Craig Alanson? And what the what is going on with the Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie, and the explosive Barbenheimer phenomenon?
Then join the Hunt and go rogue with our hosts as they disassemble Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1, discussing the impossible action, plot, and characters of this sevenquel.
------------------------Impossible Spoilers (if you choose to accept them)--------------------------------------
Explore space with an a**hole A.I. in the excellent Expeditionary Force novel series by Craig Alanson
Groove to some tunes selected by the podcast on their Spotify Playlists for past episodes: Ep. 4, Ep. 11, and Ep. 14
Reach the pod at DontEncourage@gmail.com
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threads
[00:00:00] Welcome to Don't Encourage Us. The show where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits. I'm your host, Harlan Sanders, and I'm here with my Co host, Big Jim Slade. Hey, Jim, how you doing today?
great. Excited for another, Don't Encourage Us podcast,
Excellent,
me too. So today we're going to talk about Mission Impossible 7, Rogue Ghost to Call, Part 1 of 12. Did you get a chance to watch that?
I did get a chance to watch it on the big screen.
have for once, right? We, uh, we actually drug ourselves out to the theater for this one. Ha ha
I had a notebook with me, which was, was pretty funny, trying to write in the dark. I've got, uh, nighttime scribbles.
On my pad here.
Well, that's how people know you're important. God, he's
writing. He must be really...
What's he doing? Is he the director? I was taking notes on the acting.
Ha He wants to show up to his Scientology interview prepared.
Yeah, [00:01:00] I also got it notarized so they know that I really went.
Smart, smart. You're going to skip a couple of levels right there.
Yeah, I don't want to go to the, uh, dungeon prison.
Yeah, it's a, it's 1, 000 off if you bring a ticket stub, I think.
What? You mean, uh, weekly dues?
All right. So, uh, before we talk about mission impossible, uh, I got a couple of questions for you. How are you doing on Columbus day? You got through that one yet there?
Columbus Day is on a permanent hold right now on my, uh, my Audible account, and I think the, uh, the library book was, uh, automatically sent back to the library.
So it seems like maybe we're not going to get to that one. I actually just finished. And the, Let's see, I've gotten through seven of the novels and the 7. 5 audio drama with Zachary Quinto doing the voice. So I really love this stuff. The audio drama is a little bit overproduced, so I'm not going to recommend that one.
I think probably skip that one if you [00:02:00] want a recommendation, but I'm just curious, what's the holdup? Because I love that stuff. What made you check out early?
I started with the book, and then I thought, oh, maybe I'll switch over to the audio. It was just something that I just really .. Couldn't get into I really thought I would because I do like that sort of Genre like I love chrysalis. I thought that was amazing.
I'd like spy books typically but with this one, I just couldn't do it. Maybe it was the voice acting It was a little too much because I'm typically audiobooks that are nonfiction and reading fiction and So who knows? Stay tuned. I might pick that one up again
Yeah, everybody hold your breath. Were you listening to it at normal speed or did you do your normal 1. 75 trick or
2.
my 1. 75. That might have
Ah, there it is. So it's probably annoying to hear someone acting at 1. 75. And it's probably fine to listen to someone read at faster speeds. So I'm betting that's the difference. So if you're [00:03:00] someone who Is going to listen to things at normal human speed, then maybe this is a good book series and if you're someone who's going to plow through it as if it's like you're being paid by the page,, uh, then, then maybe not a good recommendation.
Is that fair to say?
Maybe we could keep this for every podcast along with Dead Heat. So we've got this, we've got Dead Heat, and we've got the, uh, Hi Mom. So, so far we've got, we've got three really good ones. Yeah. Please don't cancel us. If your Spotify account goes down, and you can't upload any new episodes, you know why.
Yeah, alien spirits are coming for you. All right. So I did want to mention as well that I put a lot of info in the show notes. I've finally gotten the hang of that. I think I put a lot of links in there, including playlists. Sometimes I make a playlist for some of the music we talk about, and I put that [00:04:00] in Spotify and label it.
So anyway, my usual question for you, anything interesting come across your desk this week?
Yeah, I wasn't really watching much this week in terms of TV or... Or anything. How about you?
I also got to Barbie and I saw a hilarious tweet. Uh, somebody tweeted, do I need to watch Barbies before I go see Oppenheimer in order to follow it?
That's really funny.
I like that. Yeah, that was good. so yeah, Barbie was a really interesting film and we could probably do a whole series of episodes on the choices they made for this movie. it seemed like an odd mix of trying very hard to take something that is , pretty one dimensional and give it some depth in a way that's fun and interesting, it's like they're trying to get ahead of the criticism of Barbie is being sort of anti, , feminism, right?
Because Barbie represents a kind of an old school. Set of values for women. And so they tried [00:05:00] super hard to lean into the opposite of that and make Barbie like a feminist icon. But they also, and this is the final piece, I think of the pie, not offend anybody.
But then a lot of the plot of this film is making fun of how Mattel is run by so many men who have no, like they're like, Will Ferrell basically plays the head of Mattel , and he plays it. Typical Will Ferrell style, like a five year old in an adult's body. So they, they were fine with making fun of Mattel and making Mattel look like a pretty questionable organization.
Uh, so I guess that that's not typical for execs, right? So somebody said, take your hand off of this and let the creatives do their work some of the time, at least. But yeah, it's a very odd film. I went with someone who dragged me there and fell asleep, and I noticed there were three times during the movie that I laughed out loud and I was the only one in the theater who laughed
Huh. We'll [00:06:00] to dissect that a little bit.
Well, you know, that's more about me probably than the film, but I thought there was some great stuff in it. Once you realize that they're intentionally being weird, it's kind of funny to see how they ran with that. But I think a lot of the audience was just. Sort of confused or just trying to take it in and the humor just, I don't know.
I'm sure they enjoyed it, but it, it didn't trigger a laugh. Maybe they were still processing or it was very odd.
So, no Oppenheimer for you.
Oh no, not yet. Not yet. , I hear it's very long. So I'm working up the patience.
I know very little about Oppenheimer and I've been staying away from any documentaries or any YouTube videos or anything on purpose until I see the movie.
Well, it's supposed to be interesting and good, but based on what I heard about Barbie, I'm not sure the word of mouth lines up. You know, you never know when exactly the marketing teams got on social media and started directing the narrative, [00:07:00] I think they got lucky with this whole Barbenheimer thing, but then I expect that they jumped on board and started pushing it.
Anyway, the word on Barbie is it's light and fun and funny and it's actually not, it's quite an odd movie. In my opinion, if this had been done with a lower budget, the Barbie movie, then it would be a cult classic, probably would have flopped with, less expensive actors and sets and things like that.
But it would have been a, like a rocky horror picture show. For 40 years because it's, it's a very quirky, very odd movie. The script is strange. The structure of it is odd. Rhea Perlman is in there playing a very odd character. There's a lot of gloss and sheen that makes it easy to miss that they're really coloring outside of the lines with this one.
I think as it is, it's definitely a phenomenon. I'm worried that Oppenheimer is going to be slower and more boring than the marketing narrative would suggest. I'm going to wait and see a little bit before I get trapped in a theater for [00:08:00] three and a half hours or whatever it is
I feel like that's the type of movie you could just watch at home and really not miss much, but that could just be me.
in four sittings.
Yeah, yeah, four sittings for sure. Like, um, like the ghost house.
Well, we could do it your way. Maybe that's why you like to watch things at home. Do you watch it at double speed? You're gonna watch Oppenheimer at double speed.
a triple speed. With my finger on the fast forward button, like you would watch, Too Hot to Handle.
You mean jump, freeze frame, jump, freeze frame,
jump, freeze rate, mute.
we're... Where each character says maybe three things. You're like, yeah, yeah, I got it. I know what they're going to say for the next 15 minutes. Just fast forward to the end of the episode. Okay. Everything worked out the way we thought it would next. Oh wait, plot twist.
Yeah. Oh, that's great. So you're a likening Oppenheimer to too hot to handle
I might be, I got to [00:09:00] watch it first.
same genre. I guess he was pretty, pretty hot to handle at one point. Apparently no spoilers on that one. All right. So should we head into our mission impossible for today?
Let's, let's do it. I
All right. So a little background on this one directed by Christopher McQuarrie. He did Mission Impossible 5, 6, and 8, as well as Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise. I assume Tom has him on retainer. This stars Tom Cruise, Haley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Isa Morales, , Pom Klementieff, , , and some others and the rest.
There's so many things to talk about with this one. I thought the, the pacing of this one was really well done. I didn't feel like there was any boring bits
with the movie, like That opening scene really hooked me on that submarine.
It was just so well done.
Oh, yeah. I think that was added later. They weren't originally gonna [00:10:00] have the submarine. I think there was like a production issue around that. They added that into the story. Actually, I thought the story was a little hard to follow, maybe because they kept the action going. There wasn't a lot of time to really understand.
All the details.
Yeah, I think they may have done that on purpose. The idea of dead reckoning is what a navigation term where you're navigating based on where you've been.
Hmm.
I think they were trying to keep you, , off balance the entire time. Just like the characters seem to be. Especially... The Tom Cruise character.
That's what I kind of took from it.
Okay. So the audience's reaction to the film is supposed to mirror the character's reaction to what's
happening.
So always a little off balance, always a little unsure what's going on, how exactly to react.
Yeah. Yeah.
exactly. Which I mean, it makes sense since this is part one of two, right? They didn't want to give away the entire [00:11:00] mystery behind the entity,
So you referenced the entity. I think the premise of this one could be stated thusly, Ethan Hunt is back and he's up against an AI that went rogue and has a human avatar and oh, oh no, Ethan's gone rogue again too.
All right. So, do you want to give me a short summary of the plot here for the people who have yet to see Rogue Ghost to Call?
There's a rogue AI on the loose. It starts off, um, you think that someone's in control of it, specifically the Russians and their submarine, but you find out quickly that they're not in control, and the whole world is after it because it means that this AI can Basically do anything. How they described it can infiltrate any financial system worldwide.
It can cause havoc, , controlled by whoever, owns the AI. There's only one way to destroy it. You have to destroy the code. And the IMF is brought in to [00:12:00] find two keys that actually can open up the AI and reveal its, its source code. So they can destroy it.
There was so much going on in this one, it's hard to give a really concise summary without giving away the entire, movie from beginning to end.
and there's a lot they don't reveal. Like, for example, even in just the bit you said, how did the AI get on the submarine? Because we find out at the end, spoiler alert, it was created by the American government and somehow snuck onto the submarine before it went rogue. And then it triggered the crew to destroy themselves, to trick them into that.
And for some reason, there were two halves of a key that floated to the surface with Russian. , Navy sub officers,
Mm
and we don't know who retrieved them, but apparently no one [00:13:00] knows where the submarine is. So somebody knows they got both halves of the key, but left the submarine there maybe, or maybe not.
Then they somehow, brought the key out and got one of them to Tom Cruz's former MI six girlfriend. Ilsa, which is what drags Tom into this more or less. sorry, Ethan. And then the other half was where again, do you remember who had the other half of the key? Was it the human avatar? Gabriel, did he have the other half?
think at one point, Gabriel had the other half, but didn't Ilsa steal the key originally or kept it from Gabriel somehow?
I think nobody knows that's the thing, like, I think that the two halves of the key were recovered by unknown people or unknown forces for unknown reasons. And then they went into play and now everybody wants them, it feels like a [00:14:00] trick.
And you feel the entire time, like the characters do, that they're being somehow manipulated by this force, , the AI's manipulating. Everybody, that was one of the most fascinating parts of the movie that the AI can figure out all the different possible, , variations on your behavior and then come up with a solution that, that gives it an upper hand, like counting cards,
Yeah. It's like the ultimate chess master.
So I would expect part two to reveal a bunch of twists, like what we saw in part one is not actually what was happening. So a summary of anything other than what's seen on the screen is probably premature.
Yeah. That's a good way to put it. , another scene that I really liked is what the US government was doing to
Right. Mm
the AI because the AI could rewrite reality. Since it infiltrated the intelligence [00:15:00] community and it was that part where they were talking, um, Kittredge and the rest of the CIA or the, the intelligence officers were saying that the AI had infiltrated.
their systems, but hadn't done anything. So it was able to infiltrate everything, hadn't done anything. So in order to combat that, they were transcribing the U. S. intelligence database, which I found really, really interesting.
Yeah, that was really cool.
like how, how long would that take, right? The way they, they made it seen is that there was just an airplane hanger with typists just typing away. Did they have 10, 000 of these airplane hangers or a million of them? Because how much information would be in the, uh, U. S. intelligence archives?
well, you would think the information would be generated faster than they could type it up. So it's a, it's a losing battle.
Exactly.
Yeah,
And
how were they, how are they prioritizing that? Um, and other [00:16:00] part of that scene was when Ethan sneaks into the meeting
and he, he lets that, that green powder explode, but it only works for, I guess, four seconds. Cause they have their nose plugs. And then they can just pull them out and talk normally. Did you
notice that?
it's a kind of a talcum powder style. It blows itself up your nose, knocks you out, and then it just settles very quickly on the ground.
I also love that they use that low tech. To tell him about the mission, the little tape recorder
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I didn't even notice that.
that self destructs, I guess is an homage to the original, you know, but
Well, and also would fit with the threat of an AI.
that's true. Yeah. I hadn't
thought about that. They go analog,
Yeah. Now that you mentioned it, it is interesting that the AI was just exploring systems, but making sure that everyone knew that it was there, almost like it [00:17:00] was trying to use that to trigger them to do something.
So I don't know, maybe the whole point of this is to recruit Ethan. To complete a mission for the AI, because it knew this is the only way to get the impossible mission force involved and to make sure Ethan was involved, recruited or made sure Elsa got the key and that Gabriel from Ethan's past was there as well.
So that would keep Ethan engaged. Uh, maybe there's some impossible mission that the AI needs completed for part two.
you know, that's a really likely scenario. If you think about it, that would be a, that would be an amazing twist all of this, right. He's being manipulated the entire time they kind of alluded to that. When Ethan was on the train when he was fighting Gabriel, and he could have killed, he almost killed him, but that's really what the AI would have wanted, right, for Ethan to kill Gabriel,[00:18:00]
and he couldn't do it, you know, or else he would give the AI what it wanted,
And other than manipulating Gabriel somehow, , we don't know how Gabriel communicates with the entity. But other than the things Gabriel did, did the AI do anything on, I guess it killed that Russian sub crew. I was trying to say, if it did anything bad, I guess it manipulated that crew into killing themselves. Uh, and we don't know why exactly it did that. And then, other, and then it's manipulated Gabriels, presumably, into doing horrible things. But other than that, it doesn't really seem to have any motivation. Like any clear motivation.
And are we assuming that it's completely rogue and on its own? I mean, that's what they're telling us. But is it just simply being controlled by somebody already,
Right.
know? Cause they really make it seem as if it's doing its own thing. No one really knows what it's doing or why, [00:19:00] but that's only what they've told you.
It's not really what could be happening, right? There could be someone controlling it and using it for their own gain. And the way that you can destroy it may not really be the way to destroy it
Now that, that seems. Like an obvious misdirect, you know, some magic key that unlocks the source code and the source code is on a Russian submarine, even though it was created by the American government, why would the source code? Be transferred with the AI onto a Russian submarine. And why would there be a physical key
that the Russian officers have
But isn't the AI just in the network? For our listeners that know a little bit more about servers and AI and machine learning, maybe they could drop a note in the comments and let us know why that's possible. Or not possible at all. Like, uh, that a [00:20:00] source code would just live independently from the rest of the AI itself?
The original source code is just there?
It's, it's not operating from the sub, the AI isn't right. The source code is saved on the subs computer servers, I guess, or that special, I think initially when we saw it on the sub, it had some special housing,
so I don't know why the Russians would take that on board. You know, it's, it's very confusing and they didn't bother to explain it.
And I think they got away with that a lot because they had so much action. And I think people just kind of got sucked into. What was happening. There was a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of explanation early on. Like there were a lot of people just providing exposition
like tons of it and it was coming really fast.
So it was, it was kind of ridiculous. It was like two movies worth of exposition just crammed into the first like 20 [00:21:00] minutes of the film. So I think a lot of people just assumed it made sense, even though they weren't fully following it. But there are in reality a ton of gaps.
So I assume it'll all come together in the second film, whenever that comes out.
Speaking of motivation, what was Gabriel's motivation?
They almost made it seem as if he was motivated by revenge or getting what he thought he deserved in the first place. He was in the first movie, I'm assuming.
No, they added that.
That's where I got a little bit confused. I thought that that was a scene from him. Mm hmm. From another one of the movies. Um, they never really talked about that. What his motivation was. I just assumed that the AI had promised him power, or money, or
Yeah. So what, 20 something years ago, uh, 30 years ago, somewhere in there when Ethan Hunt was young, Gabriel murdered some woman that he cared about at the time. And. I guess he was framed for her murder, Ethan Hunt [00:22:00] was, and that was what led him to accept the offer of the IMF. And then, presumably, Gabriel disappeared because Ethan, I guess, thought he was dead, right?
So it's not like he's been a well known terrorist for 25 years or 30 years or whatever it is. Gabriel just disappeared. And then the AI found him somewhere and sent him out here to do horrible things and get revenge on Ethan, even though I don't think Ethan. Doesn't he say like, I, to get what I deserve.
So I dunno, I'm, I'm wondering if maybe somehow this flashback that they added this retcon is tied to the creation of the AI, maybe somehow Ethan was involved at the beginning. And so was Gabriel, otherwise they just have a random connection that really has nothing to do with the current story,
If what Gabriel's just getting is [00:23:00] money, or revenge, it's a pretty simplistic motivation. He's just a typical villain. There isn't anything greater than that. I almost wonder if they're going to flesh out his backstory a little bit. Or does he have someone that he really cares about who this A.
I. , can help in some way?
Yeah. Interesting.
Like maybe they're deathly ill somewhere and the A. I. has a cure for whatever it is.
Yeah. But that's so random, right? Like anything in the second film that changes the way you think about the first film needs to have, there need to have been seeds planted, right? It needs to make sense. So Gabriel was presented as his motivation is he's sadistic. Right. But there were hints that he had ties to Ethan long, long ago.
So if that pays off, and it's related to the AI, then okay, great. Like somehow Ethan robbed him or that woman that Gabriel killed that Ethan cared about Ethan and [00:24:00] his woman, maybe they, they robbed Gabriel of something he felt he deserved. And the AI somehow is tied to this or gave him a chance to earn it back.
And that would. Kind of makes sense. But if Gabriel's trying to save his sick child or, you know, heal himself from a disease or something like that. And the A. I. Is promising that that's so random, like there was nothing suggested along those lines. It just seems strange that we have an A. I. The entity and Gabriel, neither of whom's motivation really is explained in this film.
They're just sort of doing bad things. And we don't really know why or to what end, and you're just supposed to be fine with that,
Unless it's all explained in part two.
which comes out what, like a year from now? I mean,
Do you think Gabriel was part of the IMF?
when? And, and how would you, I mean, there's nothing in this film that suggested that, right? You would think that that would have come out.
[00:25:00] and what was he doing when he killed Ethan Hunt's girlfriend or wife or
I don't know.
They were hanging out in, um,
in the, yeah, in the tunnels underneath. Yeah. They were just, they were all in the sewers doing their, like, club.
Isn't it amazing how these scripts are written and these movies are made and there are so many questions. How do they decide which questions are okay to just leave open like that and which ones that they really need to explain, or else it's not going to make any sense to the audience. I always wonder that because with a movie like this, it's so complex
and there's so many gaps. How it gets through so many people who are just like, wait a minute. Oh yeah, this is totally fine. That makes no sense, but let's just move on. We'll distract the audience in the next scene.
Let's continue.
Yeah. Exactly. You write a script that explains everything adequately and leaves the audience [00:26:00] engaged because they can follow the story and you realize, well, this version of the film is four hours long. So you replace important parts of the plot with a train going really fast. Or someone discovering a nuclear bomb and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's good. That'll get us to the next scene.
What was going on there, by the way? The nuclear bomb scene. Was it just an entertaining scene to kind of pass the time and let Simon Pegg be Simon Pegg?
It does seem like there are a couple of cast members that, uh, we can leave nameless who don't really have a major part. In the story, but they're trying to include them so they work
them in where they can. It seems like, yeah, they were trying to make the point that the AI knows you, it knows everybody and it can predict things. Other than that, I, I think it was just something for, for some of the characters to do and to make that airport sequence more complicated and interesting,
did the AI feel as if part of the IMF team was [00:27:00] bored and he had to keep them busy? So he's like, wait a minute. I can do this, uh, cylindrical nuclear bomb puzzle. That'll keep him busy. Just for fun.
Yeah. Well, you know, I was going to bring this up later, but maybe the AI, the entity thought, you know, a couple of members of this team are getting a little old and action movies are a little bit hard for them. So I'm going to give them some stuff to do that involves sitting the whole time, or maybe just, you know, walking a little bit and then spending some numbers so they can feel important and I'll blow Tom out a window or whatever, off a cliff or something.
So we'll call it AI Bingo.
Yeah, exactly. For the semi retired. Yeah. Maybe the entity is good, but he's certainly nice.
Imagine he doesn't want, the entity doesn't want anything. It's just messing around with everyone.
It just wanted another,
Just wanted to see if he could do it.
Just wanted its own movie. It's just been filming the whole time.[00:28:00] That's great. All right. So I'm going to try to tell the story from the perspective of Paris. And then Paris is Pom Klementieff's character. So basically, um, I think it goes something like this, right? She's a thug who's for hire and who really clearly enjoys hurting other people,
right?
With a heart of
Yeah, exactly, right.
That's what we discover at the end Tootsie Pop. Yeah, so, so she's a thug who enjoys hurting people and is fairly sadistic and happy to follow someone who, that's all they do, is hurt people in service of a mysterious techno god, right? She goes on her missions, does whatever, chases people around the city, uh, shoots people, everything is just, you know, chaos.
Then she finally traps. Ethan Hunt in an alley with some other thug. Somehow, [00:29:00] Ethan defeats both of them, and instead of smacking her in the head with a metal rod, Ethan bangs the wall over her head and runs away. And from that, She realizes her entire life up to this point has been a mistake and she should switch sides.
So she starts thinking about it and then in exactly the right moment, as predicted by the AI, she switches sides. And I'm guessing in the next movie, she's going to be a member of the IMF.
it sure seemed like it
She got stabbed, but then like, oh, there's a pulse.
oh
yeah, she's,
fine. she's fine. Right. Right. So next episode, I guess next film, grace and Paris are probably going to be on their own IMF team. I would assume, right?
I mean, yeah, but what about the, uh, the psychological background test that she would have to, to go through to be [00:30:00] accepted onto the team? Right. Uh, what were you doing for the past, uh, I don't know, five, 10 years? Oh, I was a villain, like a
super villain, like kicking pop puppies, killing ants with a magnifying glass.
And now, sure. Join the team. You're fine. You're trustworthy. Because how did you get on the team? You betrayed some other guy who you were so loyal to?
But that, that weirdly fits this retcon, this whole like everyone on the IMF, they're all criminals, right? Isn't that what we found out?
They're all criminals, but are they criminals who can be somehow rehabilitated?
Well, if you're going to bring logic into it, yeah. We saw nothing about her, except she didn't even have dialogue. Very often, all we really saw was her just enjoying like running people over and like basically chasing people down. She just seems to really like chaos and breaking the law. But I guess that makes for a good Mission Impossible Force member. [00:31:00] And they wonder why they go rogue, which they do every
Who knew? Who knew? They even named a movie after it.
Which one was it? Red Rogue or Road Protocol or Ghost Protocol Rogue?
It's literally every one, grossed, grossed protocol. Yeah, it's, it's all of them, every single one. So yeah, that was, that was weird.
I thought maybe it was just me,
It was
not just you, I was shocked when she showed up in the end and she's, uh, she's good now. She's just part of the team, let's, a real team player. No one's afraid of her since she has a massive katana blade that she's so happy to pull out of its sheath. She's
fine.
She's
fine.
Yeah. Welcome aboard.
Kids, you know, I was wild back then.
That's right. Crazy youth. All right. What else should we cover? Anything that stood out to you?
I really love the way these movies that are able to [00:32:00] blend action with moments of dialogue. I know you said there was pretty dialogue heavy in the beginning, a lot of
exposition.
sure.
There are certain action movies that are just so much action nonstop, like, uh, Extraction and Extraction 2 with, Chris Hemsworth.
It's nonstop action where you don't get that break. I really enjoyed that about this movie and the, how they weaved in the, the technology.
Mm. Mm
And didn't go overboard with it, you know, and to really good comedic effect, like that yellow fiat scene,
Mm hmm.
Yeah, they nailed the tone. They nailed the pacing. Weirdly. Uh, they crammed in the exposition. Probably most people did not walk out of there going, damn, that was a lot of exposition. Like I legit thought about going back and trying to like write some of it down.
Because unless you're an expert actor. Delivering that sounds terrible. And since I have no acting ability at all, I think you [00:33:00] could hear how bad it could have sounded to try to cram that into a scene, but they had really good actors who were able to like spit it out,
They really did. The Kittredge character struck me as one of those actors. He has such an odd cadence when he speaks. So he sounds like a villain sometimes , he really throws you off. Like, what is this guy's motivation? Is he just pure evil? Is he just working for the government? Is he just doing something on his own?
Has he gone rogue? Just, he gives you that sense, no matter what he's saying, that he could be anything,
Yeah. Now he was such a great choice in the original.
Carrie always was great as well,
Also very good. He delivered a lot of that exposition I was talking about and he did a great job playing a character who initially seemed a little incompetent, but then was more sinister,
right? Right, how he was always out of the loop.[00:34:00]
I think his acting has actually gotten better. He was in that saw movie and I remember critics really were, were really, uh, criticizing him about
That he was overacting a lot and that it just didn't work. I thought he was, he was great. And this, they were all great. Was there an actor here that you thought really didn't live up to the standard?
Um, the only person who stood out to me a little bit was the, uh, was American military officer who was chasing Ethan Hunt. There were two of them, I think, left from the squad. One was the, uh, commander and the other one was sort of the language expert or whatever his job was. Uh, and I think the actor who played the commander, he's not a bad actor at all, but given the Of the other actors in the film.
I felt like it was a little bit of a stretch. I wouldn't be surprised if the new mission impossible team that we meet in part two, if there is one, not only includes the two ladies that we were talking about, but also [00:35:00] includes these two military guys, it wouldn't fit the pattern because they didn't commit a crime, but it does make for an even four and they do have a variety of skills.
It would be interesting. You know, since they now know about this and they're, they're in the mix.
What was your favorite scene
Yeah, non action. Wow. So I've got about four minutes to choose from here.
pretty much?
Well, so the, um, the like European techno dance club, I thought moments of that worked really well. I thought it drug on a little bit, or it got a little bit silly with like, Aha. And here's another person and another twist.
And all the predictions, the sort of religious attitude that Gabriel brings, like, I thought some of that was a little heavy, but once it got going, I thought it was pretty interesting. It was a good, you know, you have to kind of follow the. Potato as it bounces around and try to think about how it can, how it's going to play out based on new information as everything changes.
So I enjoyed that scene. [00:36:00] Uh, it did devolve into action, I guess, or launch into action, but I thought it was pretty good. What about you?
I really enjoyed that scene. I thought Gabriel was really good as the villain. He was so calm
and really didn't push the envelope, you know, some of these villains, they need to have a statement piece for their character, the Bond villain, the Mission Impossible villains, but with him, he was really calm, extremely calculated that he did a great job, making you feel his how sinister he was.
sinister, what did you think of Ethan Hunt's attitude towards people because they really tried to sell the idea that Ethan Hunt's greatest weakness is friends, the people he cares about. And they brought back Rebecca Ferguson from what, like two or three other movies.
She was his love interest, if I recall, they reunite in this movie, then [00:37:00] they have a moment where they embrace looking out over the city at night and then he immediately replaces her with grace. Like she dies and he just moves on. He's already on to the next person.
there wasn't a lot of mourning. It seemed odd. Yeah.
it doesn't seem like he really cares about people as much as he wants to be seen as somebody who cares about people.
And he tries so hard to do that, but doesn't really get attached,
I feel like he wants to, but he can't because what they're doing is so dangerous. And at any moment that person could die.
I understand that. So then how is that his greatest weakness?
that's a good point.
I
mean, the AI should know that, right? Like you can kill literally everyone he's ever met and he's still just going to keep going because he doesn't really care that much anyway.
It's a little convoluted, that part of his personality, or how they're portraying him. Because he does say it, right?
Right.
I'm the one person who's [00:38:00] not going to let you down, or whatever it is.
At the end of the day, like you said, his loyalty really is to the mission
Right. Which he gives himself because he goes rogue every single time. So his loyalty is really just to himself,
That's all he does. He doesn't really work for anyone. This whole idea that the entity knows that if it goes after his friends, it'll defeat him.
That just seems really hollow and fake.
If it's intentional, it would seem like the AI is trying to help him realize that or
It just, it was really strange to me. Ethan Hunt clearly uses women and people. And if they survive, it's really based on their own skill, not that he didn't make an effort to save people, but he's not going to stop. It's not going to break him. He's not going to change the plan. He's just going to keep going.
And if you survive, great,
yeah, there's not introspective Ethan for too long in that movie.
[00:39:00] at all. And he doesn't like he spends time with people in between missions, right?
He doesn't like hang out with Benji. Yeah, right. So it really seemed like the movie kept trying to say that Ethan Hunt cares about people. He cares about humanity as a whole and the individual people in his life. But all of his behavior in this film, just alone, suggests that he does not.
He just basically thinks of everybody as objects and it serves his ego to see himself as a savior of humanity. And this AI in many ways then is His counterpart. They're very similar characters in a lot of ways. The only difference being we don't really, I mean, there's obviously a ton of very specific differences between AI and a human being, but aside from that, that minor point, uh, the only really main difference that I can think of is we don't know the AI's motivation, but it could be that it thinks it's saving humanity.
And it's willing to sacrifice people to do that, [00:40:00] which in my mind is exactly the same as Ethan Hunt, like they're identical characters in terms of their goals and their purpose, and even their methods to some extent, although the AI has by nature, it has to have different methods. So I don't know, maybe that's why the AI needs Ethan because he has different methods and it believes that they will see eye to eye.
That's, that's interesting. That would be quite a twist, huh?
Well, I think it would be weird for
a reveal.
Yeah, I think it would be weird for the franchise to admit that Ethan Hunt has no attachments and that he really just saves individuals because it serves his plan and he saves humanity because it serves his ego, his sense of himself that he's trying to preserve.
So I don't know, maybe, but it definitely fits in the movies.
Would you say there's a lot of parallels then with James Bond?
Are there [00:41:00] between Mission Impossible and James Bond? No, I don't see any. Arthur
There we go.
This type
about that.
is killing the world, by piece.
No, of course there are a ton, but what was in your mind when you asked that question?
It's a completely different franchise and I know the um, this whole idea of Ethan Hunt. Being someone who's out for himself, but in James Bond, they don't always hammer in that point about him caring about the world. He just cares about one woman, you know,
that seems to be that the big thing and here they're trying to make him universally loved or that he loves humanity or people in general.
Okay. So sort of like they're playing off of what was established for secret agents by James Bond movies, and they're trying to modernize a little bit. So by not making it about getting laid,
I don't know in terms of the history of Mission Impossible, how much it was influenced directly by James Bond, obviously there's, [00:42:00] there are parallels there, but I wonder if there were aspects of the James Bond character that he wanted to place within the Ethan Hunt character, but give
Mm. Mm hmm. Yeah, I think it started off trying to be something different from James Bond. If you watch that first film, it's quite different. Uh, and then I think it gradually shifted. Like, the first movie was more heist film. Then James Bond, it had James Bond elements to it for sure. Like no debate, but I really think they wanted to go for something a little bit more cerebral. And then the second, third, fourth films all just have drifted gradually more and more into standard super secret agent stuff.
They're from the same era, correct? The original Mission Impossible series was from the 60s I believe, and
James Bond was maybe, yeah, [00:43:00] and James Bond started, In the early 50s, was it? No, 1962, I think, was Sean Connery as the first James Bond. But they were based on novels, so I don't know if those novels are from, let's say, the 40s, I would
think.
yeah. Good point. Yeah. Well, they probably were post world war two, right? So.
Late 40s
Agent,
Yeah.
it was a, more of a Cold War conceit.
1953 was casino Royale the first novel to come out. So yeah post world war two night early 1950s It's a perfect world for James Bond To pop up so much to do so much to see,
uh, and then, you know, continuing on until today and mission impossible. I believe originally launched.
Was that in the 90s? What? Like 90
You mean, but the series is from the 60s.
Oh,
a Mission [00:44:00] Impossible series, yeah.
The answer is 1966, so mid sixties. Um, it's not exactly James Bond for tv 'cause I think it was a little bit more like there's an organization. I don't know. What do you think? Was that James Bond for TV? Or not
That's what I'm wondering. Or is it just elements of James Bond that they wanted to adapt into more family friendly, maybe, type of
T TV compatible.
Yeah.
type of format.
Well, you had a larger point. What was that? Do you remember?
Just this idea that maybe Ethan Hunt is a more humanized version of James Bond. And now that they're, this is a more, you know, obviously modern age of inclusivity and diversity, maybe they're just trying to build those social constructs into Ethan more than ever. So they need to keep kind of hammering home the fact that he's all about [00:45:00] protecting everybody else, when in fact the root of the character is more James Bond
Yeah,
to admit.
yeah, that would make sense, right? That would explain why his behavior is inconsistent with what they say so much because they're trying to modernize them a little bit, but they've got all this baggage and there's formulas that are expected. So his behavior is more consistent with somebody who's almost a little bit of a sociopath, uh, in that he just set a goal for himself, which is be humanity's savior.
And then everything else is just an object toward that goal. Right.
Which would explain his smashing the pipe over that, the villain's head, instead of completely neutralizing her at that point, for her to come back and then eventually become part of the IMF.
Oh, you mean they wanted to portray him as, uh, kinder, more forgiving, more human, more caring, so putting the mission at jeopardy because it's [00:46:00] wrong to smash a person over the head when they're defenseless and you can get away,
Yep.
even though they're contributing to the, uh, death of the woman you're supposed to love.
There's that. But we'll throw an action scene in there and you'll forget all about it.
The only reason I'd like to stick with my original idea is because it creates a really nice parallel with the AI for part two and it helps potentially explain complicated motivations for the AI and that they are similar characters.
And so the AI's motivation is a reflection of, uh, Ethan Hunt's. And because they are essentially reflections of each other, maybe that explains Ethan's involvement in the creation of the AI and Gabriel's early on or something like that. Maybe the AI was patterned after or created by the woman who was killed by Gabriel.
It would be weird if Gabriel knew that. And still worked for it. But anyway, it would start to tie some of these loose ends [00:47:00] up.
I think this movie is going to give us more questions than answers at the end. There's going to be a lot of, of loose ends here that we're going to, we're going to explore next year in an upcoming podcast. So stay tuned.
Yeah. Or our AI avatars will do it for us.
Running joke number four or five,
Uh, if you say funny running joke, it might, might be
or
we don't have any
count.
Oh, a couple of things about the stunts quickly.
The, um, the stunt where Ethan takes off off that ramp with his motorcycle, he practiced that for about a year. straight to be able to do that. And on shooting day, he had to do it eight times. Which I found absolutely insane.
Wow. To be clear, he drove his motorcycle off a ramp and then let go of the motorcycle and then parachuted, right? That's the stunt.
Correct, yeah.
And then he had to aim the [00:48:00] parachute, so he went in the side of a moving train.
Oh yeah, there was that too. That was a
That's, that's the hard part. That's the hard part.
And the, and the moving train scenes. They were all done practically. So I think that train was going 60 miles an hour while they're up there fighting.
Which is absolutely crazy.
That is crazy. What do they do? They like strap their feet. To the surface of the,
You know, when they were doing the behind the scenes, they never really showed too much detail, but there was a lot of cutting in between the director and like the stunt coordinator talking about this scene. So I don't know if they strapped him down or they had magnets in their, in their boots or something that were keeping them stuck.
Cause
I didn't see anything,
Wow. Yeah, they actually, this is one of the few films that shot during COVID. Tom kept the production up and there's a famous recording of him yelling at everybody about COVID precautions. Uh, you can Google that if you're interested. Mm,
can't really blame the guy at that time. [00:49:00] Imagine the pressure you'd be under to complete a 300 million movie on time and on budget.
mm-hmm. ,
I'm
right?
sure he wasn't sleeping very much and having to do all the stunts himself because why wouldn't you?
Excellent. Anything else on your, uh, your list, any other notes you took in the theater? Any scribbles that we need to
My, my scribbles. No, I think that's it for this one. It was a great, I think it was a great action film. Probably one of the best I've seen, to be honest.
Wow, man, you are on board.
The
How on board
worked.
the AI got to me too. It's making me do this podcast and give it a good review because or else we're all held hostage.
well. Should we take this time to announce your engagement to Tom Cruise?
Um, that's for the next episode.
We
always
We'll see. All right. So, speaking of running bits, uh, let's talk about what you would do with [00:50:00] this intellectual property other than make sequels until Tom Cruise dies. What else would you do with this IP if it landed in your lap?
I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to restart the television series. There's so much material now
but the expectations are so high though, right? Like, I mean, it'd be so expensive. Amazon would have to do it. They're the only ones who throw that kind of money out. Right. Hmm. Hmm.
Maybe it would be cost prohibitive, but in an ideal world, if you had, you know, an unlimited budget, it would be a great time to do a series, because this type of setup lends itself for so many different storylines that can go anywhere.
It's like a Star Trek type of series.
Mm hmm.
There's a new adventure every episode,
Right. And there's a ton of actors who are good actors who are not, you know, so expensive that you could bring them in to lend some credibility to a series. Uh, it's tricky though, because the standards are so high now, [00:51:00] all the stunts that Tom Cruise does. Like, I think if you did a TV show, the first question would be, Ooh, what are the stunts going to be like?
Well, not like the movies, you know?
right? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I think that the original series, the one from the 60s, was more heist, the caper, the espionage, et cetera. And then when he revived it in 96, it became a stunt piece.
Well, the first Mission Impossible film was bit more intellectual and the stunts are something that you could do on television, mostly. And then John Woo got ahold of it and that was the end of that.
Could you do a series like this and not necessarily have to make it, have a stunt, you know, an epic stunt in every single one of the episodes for it to be called Mission Impossible?
Would you be able to adapt it to be more about espionage and more of the intellectual side of spycraft?
Yeah, but is [00:52:00] it impossible at that point?
But um,
Well, no, I mean, without the stunts, it's just mission complicated.
So do you think it's just an unadaptable
series
doing as long as they're doing the movies, I think it's gonna be hard to do a TV show that runs concurrently. I think once Tom stops doing the films, I don't think they'll be able to pass the baton easily. And so a TV show would make more sense, especially because. You know, in a hundred years when he retires, the technology will be a special effects, right.
We'll be in place to make it look like. crazy awesome things are happening all the time. It's not that there's not a way to do it, but the demands on the writing are so high to keep an audience engaged. And you have to establish really quickly that the tone is different. It's not action, dialogue, action, dialogue, action, dialogue, [00:53:00] action, right?
It's dialogue, dialogue, tense, card game. Action sneaking around complicated mental game of chess and then halfway through the season action. And then back to lots of dialogue and acting and then final episode action again, right? That's what they'd have to do, I think. I mean, you could have punching and kicking, so you could get some sort of actor who has a lot of fighting skills.
And then do a lot of really interesting stuff with that, that's probably more affordable, but you can't be like blowing up the space shuttle every week, you know,
Could this be a mini series? Like the ones that have become so popular on Netflix, like an eight episode or an 11 episode season
with one storyline?
but does that tarnish the brand in Tom Cruise's mind?
I mean, I'm saying this would be made in the year 2080 or
something. That's when we [00:54:00] start this,
Yeah.
When he's, he's doing his last film,
and uh, and he's about to pass the baton.
So 2880.
Yeah, 2880. After he goes through the cryogenic freeze.
And the 45th Tom Cruise clone has finally been shot into space. Yeah. No, I, at some point in the future, you could definitely do a TV series and it could probably be long running. You could do novels, you could do stuff like that, but right now, even trying to do a film spinoff is tricky because Tom Cruise has such control over so many of these things.
He is the franchise, essentially, at this point.
And they, they tried to introduce Jeremy Renner at one point and he just kind of got sidelined and now he's vanished. Tom is the center of the action and he, I guess he likes it that way, you know? So I don't think, uh, I don't think you can do a TV series just yet. Maybe a cartoon or something like that.
That could be interesting, I guess.
How about a musical?
Yes, definitely. [00:55:00] An entire series of musicals, music, impossible.
Uh, well, the only thing that came to me was you could do an app. So if you had an app that used location services, like it knew where the user was and it had information input. For local landmarks and museums and things like that. And then sends each person on an impossible mission to gather information.
Uh, I think you could have a lot of fun with that. You know, I think you could program that and just start with like New York or major cities. And if you're, if you happen to be there, there's an , impossible mission that will pop up. and it requires you to decode some things and go places you wouldn't normally go and you would make them complicated enough that they would be almost impossible to complete.
Like people would have trouble figuring them out. So there'd be a lot of internet traffic around trying to figure out, well, you know, I went to the library and I found this particular thing. And then I went and did this [00:56:00] other thing and I found this mark on the street sign and went to this. And event space that had this, this next little piece of Mark and I figured out that they're related and if you put them together, they point to something on a map of New York, right?
I think that'd be kind of fun, especially if you can engage people and they couldn't solve it easily, and then you could branch out to other cities. It's not like you have to go there. You can just go on Google maps and craft a mission or multiple missions, impossible missions for different cities and different places.
I think that'd be fun.
It'll be a lot of fun. Yeah. So you could have like a Pokemon go
Basically. And your phone knows when you're in the right place. And so it unlocks the next clue. And the app can make it look like your phone reveals. What is it a What do they call it? Enhanced
reality? What
augmented
augmented reality, right? Can use a are a little bit.
I don't know, maybe the apps too expensive at this point, but I'm sure it's not that hard. And the really challenging part is to make it [00:57:00] clever, right? Make people dig for knowledge, search museums for obscure pieces of information and then just creatively connect things, connect dots.
So they lead to interesting ideas.
It'll be a lot of fun to do something like that. I think for the creators and you could tie in things like Spotify.
So you could have a soundtrack playing as you're
Oh, yeah. Cool. Like when you go into a certain place, the music changes. Oh, that'd be really fun
Yeah. You could
probably tie
in.
could do that. Yeah.
You could tie in a lot of things, right? You could even tie in archives, like from say the national archives. In terms of old
photos or historic landmarks, I mean, you could really, sky's the limit with something like this.
Right. And then you could just use your phone to take a picture within the app when you find the symbol on the uh, Renaissance armor piece that you were supposed to find in the way back in the museum and you, you know, you get that photo and then it matches it and saves it as a clue or as part of a larger reveal.
And again, they [00:58:00] don't have to be easy or even solvable. You can make them incredibly frustrating and difficult because it's called mission impossible. You know, you can make them like a six month affair or a year and not give people clues so that they're always searching online for somebody who might've figured out something they haven't figured out. And maybe you run into other people who are on the same mission. And at the end, you, you know, get the decoder key and it tells you to drink your Ovaltine
That's it.
and Ovaltine is back. That's right. They paid a hundred million dollars to be at the end of this impossible mission.
The most elaborate game of all time ends with Ovaltine or Tang. Or
both.
baby. No, it's Bud Light at the end. We're rebranding.
This
And then the, And then the, controversy ensues because it's an all ages game.
Oh, yeah, right.
Then
Don't,
cancelled.
screwed again. Yeah. Wah, wah.[00:59:00] Down to number 10.
Again. And then, um, Molson becomes the number one beer again.
They get beat by
Molson.
was the AI's, uh, plan all along.
That's hilarious. Oh my god. Or maybe the end of every Mission Impossible in every city is a movie theater. And you just, you accidentally bought tickets to the next movie while you're
Automatically, as you walk past it, two tickets are now available in your Apple Wallet
Oh, that's how they get you. Oh, I love it. And then they can put up that little graphic for the entities. I just on, on your phone,
that you can't get rid of unless you unlock something else
Do you sit and watch, sit and watch the movie, you just have to sit and watch the movie, and at the end, there's, there's like a QR code. You have to point your phone, get your phone back.
Oh, good stuff. All right. So [01:00:00] yeah, that's all I could think of because it's on a similar scale. It has a lot of the elements and I don't think it'll make users jump off a bridge. To complete the impossible mission or hang from the ceiling or anything like that. Although it should,
unless the AI goes rogue.
All right. So on that note, thank you to the listeners. Thank you to the people who made this project that we reviewed because we enjoyed it, right? This was a fun one.
We did. We did
That's a good movie. Yep. You can hit us up on don't encourage at gmail. com. I put a lot of stuff in the show notes. So feel free to check that out.
We've got Instagram. We got YouTube now. Uh, and are there any questions we want for the audience? I can think of a couple, anything come to mind.
be great to hear from the audience what they'd do with this IP.
Oh yeah. That's a great one because you could really do anything. You just have to be clever. You have to do it well. So there's a lot of potential here. I I'm also curious what people [01:01:00] think about the entity's motivations and if it has a connection to Tom or sorry, Ethan, uh, what that connection would be, like why we got that flashback and how that's all going to tie in, um, who got the key out of the ocean and if this whole source code thing is a misdirect. And if so, why? So just a few questions there.
And another one. If you were going to do a spin off,
What would that spin off be? And how would you do it? What format?
Good questions. All right. So, uh, I think that does it for today. We'll be back next time with who knows what do we know we're going to do next time.
I think it'll be Dead Heat.
Okay.
that one.
So everybody go watch dead heat. We mean it this time. We're definitely going to do that next
time.
sure.
All right. Thanks again.
Take care, [01:02:00] everyone.