Last summer, the movie business had been all but pronounced dead. Conventional wisdom said that audiences, locked out of theaters by the Covid pandemic (remember that?), were now permanently captured by streamers. Then Top Gun: Maverick roared into wide release to the tune of $1.5 billion, and by the end of the year, Paramount had reversed course, proclaiming that the studio would only produce films intended for theatrical release.
The rest of 2022 and 2023 have turned out to be fairly average years, box-office-wise. Numbers are down from 2019, which was a banner year thanks to Avengers: Endgame, but nothing like the catastrophe of 2021. Then, there were the twin failures of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which lost Marvel/Disney $120 million, and the $200-million bath Warner Bros. took on The Flash, which may end up being the biggest box office flop of all time.
Then, on May 2nd, the Writers Guild of America went on strike against the studios, and last week, the Screen Actors Guild joined them on the picket lines. Now, the doom and gloom is back in Tinseltown. The problem that the last few months has exposed is this: The alleged break-even point for a film like The Flash is $600 million. (I say “alleged” because “Hollywood accounting” is synonymous with “lying.”) This is not a business model; it’s a gambling addiction. And none of it is the fault of the writers who are paid a pittance by the flailing gamblers, or the actors, most of whom don’t earn the $27,000 a year necessary to qualify for SAG’s health insurance.
Enter Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Director Christopher McQuarrie and the returning Impossible Mission Force had their budget and schedule blown by Covid delays, but promised a big on-screen payoff. They delivered on that promise.
The film’s dense, fast-moving cold open harkens back to the franchise’s roots as a Cold War-era spy series. The Sevastopol, a Russian nuclear submarine testing out a new AI-powered stealth system, is discovered and fired upon by an American sub. When they return fire, the American sub is revealed to be a WarGames-style computer mirage, and their own torpedo turns against them. Meanwhile, back in Washington, CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny, returning) is briefing DNI Denlinger (Cary Elwes) on the Entity, a cyberweapon that achieved sentience and escaped into the wilds of the internet after sinking the Sevastopol. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, running) is dispatched to retrieve a key that may be the key to controlling the rogue AI. But Hunt and IMF ops Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames, sitting) have other ideas. Burned by six films’ worth of betrayal and disavowal at the hands of their bosses, they decide that no one can be trusted with the Entity’s power, and vow to destroy it.
MI represents both the good and the bad of Hollywood in 2023. It is a $295-million film in a 25-year-old franchise built around an aging movie star and an intellectual property whose origin few remember. But unlike butt-ugly CGI fests like The Flash and Quantumania, all that money is on the screen. Yes, there’s CGI in MI, but that’s really Tom Cruise jumping a motorcycle off a cliff in the Alps. When the climax pays tribute to The General, they really drive a locomotive off a real bridge, just like Buster Keaton. Yes, it’s too long (geez, this is only part one?), but the story is clear and the editing brisk. Unlike too many big-budget gambles, I never felt bored and ripped off. Plus, Tom Cruise fighting an AI in the middle of a strike triggered by a threat to replace actors and writers with AI is just too perfect. I’m rooting for Cruise.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
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