Or, if it isn’t, it will be soon

The first newsletter in three months is a doozy. We’ve got a great script notes deal for the first four people who grab it. We have the announcement of a major SHOWDOWN. We have a breakdown of a sexy new horror film. I dissect a ton of new trailers, including one that shocked me with how good it makes the movie look. In another trailer, I pose the question: is a young horror auteur’s career already over? Did the Emperor ever have clothes? I then take on another short story sale, this one that nabbed an A-list actor, with a nifty little concept.

It is always a great day when there’s a new Scriptshadow Newsletter. If you’d like to be included in future newsletters, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and ask nicely. :)

Genre: Drama
Premise: Four of the richest people in the world, all of whom work in the tech sector, meet up for a weekend getaway, while the tech tools they’ve created incinerate the world.
About: Succession creator Jesse Armstrong wanted to make a movie about the tech bro world, specifically the “lack of self-awareness” prevalent with most tech billionaires. Word on the street is that he wrote and directed the film all within a six months period. The movie is now available to stream on HBO Max.
Writer: Jesse Armstrong
Details: 110 minutes

This was one of the movies I was looking forward to the most this year. Jesse Armstrong, of Succession fame, getting his first big shot at a feature, staying squarely inside of his wheelhouse by tackling another bunch of richy-riches. Felt like a home run.

We’ll get into whether it lived up to the hype in a second but first, I have to mention the strange Rotten Tomatoes scores for this film. As of today, it has an 80% critic score and a 25% audience score.

This is the oddest scoring pair I’ve seen on the reviewing aggregate site. Whenever there’s this much disparity between critics and audiences, it’s ALWAYS for some political reason. Yet, while politics are mentioned in the movie, it is blatantly apolitical. Which makes the low audience score even harder to reconcile.

Maybe this will make sense once we delve into the plot.

Mountainhead follows four tech bros: Randall (Steve Carell, aka Jeff Bezos), Jeff (Ramy Youseff, aka Mark Zuckerberg), Venis (newcomer Corey Michael Smith, aka Elon Musk), and Souper (Jason Swartzman).

Although the movie doesn’t do the greatest job explaining how these four know each other, they’re apparently best friends who come together every year to celebrate how many billions of dollars they have. This year, they’re meeting at Souper’s new mansion up in the mountains.

We know exactly how much money each of them has thanks to one of the most forced scenes that’s ever been written. In it, the group goes to the top of a mountain, takes off their jackets so they’re bare-chested and, in some sort of ritual, Souper writes their net worth on each of their chests. Venis has the most money. Randall is second. Jeff is third. And poor Souper isn’t even in the billion dollar club. He only has 600 million.

The crux of the plot is that Venis has just released new AI software that allows people to make realistic videos of whatever they want. Everybody starts making videos of charged subject matter and, because these videos are indistinguishable from reality, others believe they’re real, charging up the opposition, who then start attacking these people in real life.

But the real story emerges later in the script when Randall, who has just learned his cancer has returned, starts manipulating the group so that all of their resources can be put towards digitizing the human brain as soon as possible, allowing humans to upload their consciousness to a computer. Randall has been assured by Venis that, if Venis has the help of everyone here, he could digitize the human brain within five years.

The only problem is that Jeff doesn’t want to help Venis in this area. Keep in mind, nobody knows that Randall is terminal. That’s a secret. So, when Randall learns that Jeff isn’t on board, he soft-launches the idea of killing Jeff to the other two. At first, they don’t love it but Randall is convincing and soon, they plan the murder for that night. Unfortunately, none of these guys has the capacity or know-how to murder someone, which results in all sorts of attempted-murder hijinks.

Okay, so here’s the thing.

I have complicated feelings about this movie, lol.

At first, I hated it. But then it grew on me. And while I’m not convinced that it ever made its way into “good” territory, it definitely stayed within “interesting” territory throughout. It’s not like any other movie you’ve seen and, whether you liked Mountainhead or not, there’s value to that.

The main problem with the movie is the forced camaraderie.

Matt Damon notoriously called this out after Good Will Hunting. He said that the worst thing in movies was characters pretending to be friends despite it being clear that the actors had never spent a day with each other in their entire lives.

That’s why Good Will Hunting felt so genuine. All the actors in it really were friends. At the same time this was going on, Swingers came out. That movie also had a bunch of real-life friends in it. And you could see that on screen. The chemistry was genuine throughout.

When you watch Mountainhead, you’re very aware of what Matt Damon is talking about. These guys just showed up on set and had to act like they’d known each other their whole lives. So when the lack of chemistry bumped up against the writing, that inauthenticity became apparent.

Which is why I believe the movie grew on me. This was all shot on one set, this house. That means they shot it linearly. And you can feel that. Once we get to that second half of the movie, the chemistry got better, the timing got better, the line-reading got better. That’s because the actors had been hanging out for 15-20 days.

This brings us to the murder plot and that’s when the script almost salvaged itself. I know that portion of the movie was working because when Randall, Venis, and Souper sneak into Jeff’s bedroom to smother him with a pillow, I was insanely anxious. I was so nervous that Jeff was going to wake up and say, “What the fuck are you guys doing??” If the viewer is that anxious, your script is working.

From there, Armstrong makes a bold choice (spoilers). Normally, in a movie like this, they’d kill Jeff. And then they would have to figure out how to explain it away afterwards. But Armstrong doesn’t go in that direction. He makes all three of these tech bros the Pink Panther. They’re bumbling morons who have never had to do anything physical or real in their lives. They exist only on their computers. So they don’t know how to kill someone.

Which felt genuine to me. I know that Armstrong is being satirical here. But it actually makes sense that these people would be clueless about how to murder someone. There’s this sequence where they have Jeff locked in the sauna and they’re so clueless about how to kill him that they come up with this idea to pour gasoline in the room and then light it on fire.

But once they get the gasoline, they don’t know how to get it in there. So they pour it on the floor, then get a squeegee, and start pushing the gasoline in with the squeegee. It’s so ridiculous but it’s also kind of hilarious.

I think back to American Beauty and how it was critical for Sam Mendes to get two weeks of rehearsal time with the actors. Remember, he came from a stage background so practice was a huge part of his process. Kevin Spacey repeatedly mentions the importance of that rehearsal time as it allowed them to really figure out the characters.

That’s what Mountainhead needed. I would go so far as to say that if Armstrong had two weeks with these actors ahead of time, this is a vastly better movie. Cause you can see it on the screen as the actors get more comfortable with each other. In that end scene where they’re all at the table, after having forced Jeff into a deal that gave Venis a major part of his company, the timing and chemistry with all the little side remarks between everyone, was worlds apart from where they were in that awful mountain top scene.

I started this review thinking I was going to give this a “wasn’t for me.” But it’s too interesting of a failure for me to do that. I value movies that are different, that are not like other movies out there. And although Mountainhead has its faults, I still think it’s worth checking out.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Armstrong is not a believer in meeting people in real life for research. He says he’s too anxious to meet people in the real world. He likes to do his research the old-fashioned way, through reading. He read a ton of stuff about real life tech bros and used little bits and pieces of them to fill in his characters.

The writers scored 2 million dollars for the sale of their Sci-Fi Story

Last week, I reviewed the 2-million dollar short story sale, “Drift,” by Ben Queen and Jason Shuman. The story follows a hostage trade between humans and aliens. Ben e-mailed me the next day and asked if I could take the review down as he was afraid it might affect the very precarious process of getting the movie made. I said sure and Ben was nice enough to offer an interview. So, here is the interview with him and his writing partner, Jason! Maybe we can finally get some insight into how to sell one of these short stories for ourselves!

Scriptshadow: Congratulations on selling your short story! A lot of screenwriters out there are desperate for information on how to sell a short story of their own. So I’d like to go through this in detail. How and when did you find representation?

Ben Queen: Years ago I wrote a black comedy script called One Track Mind as a writing sample which got me a manager and agent. I was at ICM back then I’ve been repped by other agencies over the years but more recently I’ve been at Verve – everyone there has been terrific.

Jason Shuman: I had been at CAA for over 12 years. Both my agents left the agency during the strike. So, I decided to see what else was out there agent-wise. Ben was already at Verve when we decided to team up for Cola Wars and was advocating for them as an agency. I trusted him and I’m so glad I did. Over this first year and a half with Verve, they have been nothing short of amazing.

Editor’s note: “Cola Wars” is another project that Queen and Shuman sold before Drift, which will be directed by Judd Apatow.

Scriptshadow: Before you wrote this short story, what were you hearing as writers (from reps, from producers you may have pitched) about short stories? Were you hearing “Write them?” Were you hearing nothing? What’s the feeling out there in Hollywood about short stories right now?

JS: I think short stories are having a real moment for sure. And I get it. Writing the full screenplay on spec can feel so final, like “this is the movie.” And a pitch can sometimes not be enough. These short stories are a great way to allow producers, executives, and filmmakers a detailed insight into what the film’s potential can truly be. And with the short story in hand, the collaboration process between the director and writer can hopefully be a lot easier.

BQ: We heard from one studio executive that they’re being submitted a lot of short stories right now. I know they’ve been a good way to get original ideas set up for the last few years. A lot of these have the feeling of mini-novels, or flashy movie treatments rather than slice-of-life short stories – less literary and more propulsive, you know?

Scriptshadow: When you decided to write a short story, why did you choose this one? Was it because your agents said people want high concept sci-fi right now? Or did you just go with your gut?

BQ: This was an idea I’d wanted to do for a long time. I first came up with it a few years ago and started doing research, talking to people in the world of the story. I have literally hundreds of pages of notes on this idea. When Jason and I started working together, he gravitated to the idea and we started working it out together. Last year we sat down with our agents at Verve and ran through some features we wanted to do. They pointed at this one (Drift) and told us that was something to focus on.

Scriptshadow: Have you written short stories before?

BQ: We’ve never tried this before!

JS: First time.

Scriptshadow: Have you received any advice from industry people about how to write a short story that sells? For example, has a producer said to you, “The key to writing a saleable short story is…”

BQ: I don’t know if there’s one key but it certainly helps to have a good idea and a character you can get behind. It really helps to feel like you know the world better than anyone. And it’s not a shortcut – short stories can take just as much time to write as a screenplay. So I’d say be prepared to put in a lot of time and effort to get it right. Scott Glassgold, one of our producers, and a true expert with these short stories, had a lot of great input throughout the writing process. But among all the advice he gave the most important was to stick the landing.

Scriptshadow: In general, if someone does want to write a short story, what would you suggest they write about?

BQ: I’d say it probably just needs to be a great idea for a movie. If you’re looking to write a piece of fiction for publication, that’s different obviously. But then make sure you really execute it as best you can.

JS: As with anything having to do with writing, it should always come from the heart. This being said, it does feel like the short story format plays best in certain genres like thriller, horror, sci-fi, or a combination thereof. But I bet a comedy could work if someone wanted to try it.

Scriptshadow: Can you take me through the process of how Drift sold? Was this months of planning? Or did it happen quickly? What went on between typing “The End,” to becoming the biggest bidding war sale of the year?

JS: It actually happened pretty fast. The final draft of the story (after months of re-writing of course) was sent into our reps on a Tuesday night. On Wednesday, it was sent out to a select group of directors. By Thursday, a number of those directors wanted to be a part of it. It was then sent into various studios, each with different director attachments. By Friday evening it had sold to Skydance.

Scriptshadow: Another thing people always ask me regarding short stories is word count. How long should the short story be? Is this something you thought about or no? Any advice on short story length?

BQ: I don’t know! I didn’t even check the word count on Drift. However many it took to write it and no more. If I had to guess I’d say it was about ten thousand words – which is a lot.

Scriptshadow: What is the biggest adjustment between writing a screenplay and a short story in your opinion?

BQ: For this type of story we broke it the same way structurally, mapped it out like we would a script. At the end of the day there was less dialogue and we intentionally held back a lot of the secondary character development to help streamline the read.

Scriptshadow: Now that you’ve sold the story, what’s the next leg look like? Do you write three drafts and then try to get the studio to greenlight it? What’s the plan look like going forward?

JS: Our plan is to put our heart and soul into the screenplay as soon as possible. This type of big-scale science fiction story is a real dream for us to write. And we want to convey everything that’s in the short story and more into a script everyone can be excited about.

Scriptshadow: Any final advice to screenwriters who are trying to sell a script or a short story. What would you tell them?

BQ: If you have an idea you care deeply about, think about the best way to communicate that feeling to others. Now decide what the best delivery system is: a short story? A screenplay? A short film? So much of this business is believing in something and trying to get others to see it the way you see it. So just always be thinking about your audience and how to connect. Rinse, repeat. :)

JS: Write what you are passionate about. It will come across on the page.

Today’s script asks, “What if Marriage Story actually had a plot?”

Genre: Drama
Premise: A rising movie star and her struggling playwright husband meet with a pretentious director and a manipulative intimacy coordinator to rehearse a sex scene. Over one chaotic day, power struggles, petty jealousies, and explosive accusations threaten their marriage–and the careers of everyone involved.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List. Sam Rubinek is a young writer who was staffed on the show, Riverdale. The Canadian-born Rubinek was a graduate of the Warner Bros Television Writers Workshop.
Writer: Sam Rubinek
Details: 101 pages

Eiza González for Carson?

I’m still reeling from just how bad of a screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie has let himself become. Something switched in him when he became a director. It was like he didn’t think the screenplay mattered anymore (something he’s indirectly alluded to several times on X). Final Reckoning is the inevitable conclusion of that attitude. What a disastrous screenplay.

ANYWAY!

In order to get away from the stink of that film, it’s time to read about something the exact opposite – intimacy coordinators!

There’s been some spirited chatter about how ridiculous this position is in Hollywood. But I’m on the other side of the argument. I’m shocked that, for 50+ years, filmed sex scenes were the wild west. You would briefly chat about what to do in them then, once the cameras started rolling, anything that happened happened! That’s INSANE to me. So it made total sense to create this job.

But that doesn’t preclude the position from being made fun of. Writing a script about the job is actually quite smart. There are new things that pop up in society every so often and you get a brief window where a few lucky writers are able to chronicle them before they become old hat. It’s one of the few times you get to write something fresh, something that hasn’t been done before.

Let’s see how today’s writer dealt with it.

Fresh off becoming a movie star, Carson (a female btw) is filming her latest movie, a sort of artsy project with an up-and-coming pretentious director named Marcello. For one of the flashbacks in the movie, which details a former relationship, Carson was able to get her husband, playwright and sometimes actor, Jay, to play the role of the man in the romantic flashback.

In said flashback, the characters have sex, and this has necessitated a run-through of the sex scene, which will be guided by an intimacy coordinator named Perla. Perla seems to be the only one who wants to do this, for secret reasons that will be revealed later.

Marcello would rather be shooting scenes from the film, which is already in production. And both Carson and Jay see this as kind of ridiculous. They are married and therefore don’t believe they need an intimacy coordinator. But everyone is so scared and sensitive these days that there’s no way around it.

The story takes place over just a few hours, virtually real-time, as we begin to see that everyone has something going on. Carson, uncomfortable with her quick rise to fame, relies on booze and drugs to get by. Jay, feeling like the weak link in the relationship, is desperate to finalize Carson being in a play he’s written, which she hasn’t yet told him that she’s not going to do.

Marcello gets a call from his agent at the beginning of the day discussing rumblings of an old short film he made that’s been dug up and posted on the internet. The film could be construed as anti-semitic, which is causing the trades to come digging for a story.

And then we have intimacy coordinator Perla, who we learn is a bit of a stalker, campaigning hard to get this job so she could be in the presence of the beautiful and amazing Carson, someone she very well may be in love with. Perla goes hard at Carson’s marriage, using any chance she gets to emasculate Jay as the two prep for the sex scene.

Over the course of the next few hours, all of their lives will fall apart in some significant way. The goal will be to retain enough of themselves to fight again tomorrow.

There’s this sandwich place down the street from me called “All About The Bread.” With today’s script, we might as well call it, “All About The Dialogue.” There’s a lot of dialogue here, and most of it is quite good.

It’s nice timing because I’ve been running into some dialogue issues with some of the scripts I’ve been consulting on. Today’s script reminded me of one of the keys to getting dialogue right.

You have to be good at establishing WHO YOUR CHARACTERS ARE.

If you don’t, they become this vague amalgamation of a bunch of half-formed ideas. The problem with this is that you’re then unsure how to write the character’s dialogue. Cause if a character is a million different things, then they’re actually nothing.

It’s way easier to find a character’s voice if you create a one-sentence directive for yourself.

For example, if I designate my character “the sweet naive neighbor who sees the best in everybody,” then I know his dialogue will be soft and understanding. Maybe annoyingly polite. He might use phrases like, “Shucks,” and say things like, “It’s so pleasant to see you on this fine morning.”

When you hear the screenwriting advice of, “A reader should be able to tell which character is speaking without looking at their name,” this is how you achieve that.

Perla is a great example of this. She’s introduced as someone with a “soft-spoken, crunchy-granola hippy vibe.” Therefore, when characters apologize to her about something, it’s easy to figure out how she’ll respond. She will not respond with, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” Which is generic. Instead, the actual dialogue from the script is, “It’s all love.”

Note how that’s something only a hippy-type would say.

Another thing that really makes the dialogue pop in this script is power dynamics. I talk about this in my dialogue book in more detail if anyone’s interested. Power dynamics bring all sorts of fire to your characters’ interactions.

In this case, the power dynamics play a huge role. Carson is “above” Jay on the power ladder not just because she’s a movie star, but because she’s a real actor and he’s more of a part-time actor. This means that, during the intimacy sequence, she’s subtly calling the shots and Jay has to go with it.

For example, there’s a sequence where they run through the dialogue in the scene and Perla tells them that they can ask for a “repeat” if the other person’s line read isn’t convincing. Jay says his next line and Carson says, “repeat.” Jay repeats it and Carson says, “repeat.” He says it again and she says, “repeat.” Repeat, repeat repeat.

Why is this relevant? Because the secret sauce to good dialogue is conflict. Unequal power in a scene is conflict, especially when the characters take advantage of that power.

Actually, this is the type of thing you only see in more advanced writing. So, if you’re using power dynamics to charge your dialogue, you’re in a good place in your screenwriting career. Cause most writers don’t know how to do it. Or, if they *do* do it, it’s by accident.

Speaking of advanced writing, I loved how all the characters had their own thing going on. Most writers would’ve stopped figuring out their characters at Jay and Carson. They wouldn’t have put much, if any, effort into Marcello and Perla. But, by doing so, it really kicks this screenplay up a notch. Marcello’s real-time cancelling is a killer subplot if there ever was one. And Perla’s secret obsession with Carson unravels in delicious fashion.

If there’s a weakness to the script, it’s that it’s a play. And Rubinek hasn’t done enough to adapt it for the screen. It’s not visually dynamic in any way. It is not a “show don’t tell” experience. And so, on screen, it risks feeling static. But I found the script itself to be compelling. I was really into these characters and their ultimate fates.

Would recommend it without hesitation.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Here’s how to properly use guiding parentheticals in dialogue.

JAY
I promised myself I’d finish that rewrite of the second act. Oscar gave me some notes–

CARSON
(teasing)
Oh, Oscar has some notes for you. I didn’t realize Oscar the Great and Powerful had notes on your play.

JAY (unserious)
Shut up.

Note how the parenthetical words are critical to understanding the tone of the responses. If they were not used, the reader would not only have interpreted the meaning incorrectly, but interpreted the exact opposite of what was meant. That’s the only time you need parentheticals in regards to the line’s meaning – when, if you didn’t use them, the line would be read completely wrong by the reader.

Genre: Action
Premise: Ethan Hunt’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to destroy an evil AI that wants to blow up the world. He’ll do anything, including going to the bottom of the ocean, and soaring to the highest point in the sky, to achieve his goal.
About: The last Mission Impossible movie was supposed to be Part One in a Two-Part Mission Impossible franchise finale. But the movie did so poorly that Paramount regrouped and repurposed today’s film as more of a standalone finale. The movie took in 77 million dollars over four days, losing out to the live action Lilo & Stitch film, which broke records with a 180 million dollar take. But at 68 million dollars for the regular 3-day weekend, Mission Impossible 14 secured its highest ever opening weekend take! Who says theatrical movies are dead!!??
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie
Details: 3 hours long!

I want to start off by acknowledging how amazing Tom Cruise is. The dude is literally risking his life for our entertainment. That is not an exaggeration. He does these insane stunts that all bear the risk of death just so that we can sit in an air-conditioned theater and enjoy ourselves for 8 hours. I mean 3 hours.

I’ve seen a couple of interviews with him recently where he talks about making movies and it’s incredible that, at his age, with how many movies he’s made, that he still has the same drive that he had at 23 years old.

It’s almost in-explainable. Scientists should study him. Cause that doesn’t happen with anybody in any career. There’s always a natural downtick in their drive. Praise the Thetan gods, I suppose.

Tom Cruise is the last movie star not by accident. It is because he outworks everybody that he’s had this continued success. And let that be the big lesson from this movie. If you want to succeed as a screenwriter, outwork everybody. You do that and you will find success, I promise you.

I am going to give you a highly simplified summary of Mission Impossible 18 simply because I don’t have the mental capacity to track all the nuances of the plot, of which there are thousands.

A singular AI is taking over the world, getting access to the nuclear arsenals of all the nuclear countries one at a time. The only way to stop this is to get the AI’s original source code, which will be used to turn off the entire internet. This source code is at the bottom of the sea in a crashed submarine.

Ethan Hunt convinces the president of the United States to give him an aircraft carrier so he can go get this source code. He preps his newest team to be there when he arrives back up topside. Except he doesn’t know where that’s going to be yet so they’ll have to stand by.

He goes down, gets the source code, comes up in Antarctica where his team miraculously finds him. But then we head to some cave space where both the government and Lame Villain are waiting for him to take his code. Lame Villain triple crosses everyone in order to get the code and make an escape. Ethan then chases him on a biplane. He defeats Lame Villain, turns off the world, purging it of the AI, then reboots everything back up again. The End.

Before I go medieval on the atrocious screenwriting in this movie, let me say what I liked about it. I liked that they brought back the CIA desk operative from the original Mission Impossible. That’s still the best Mission Impossible movie. That moment of Cruise breaking into the white room is iconic. This was the guy who designed that room. For his failure, he got sent to Antarctica for 30 years.

It ended up being shockingly heartwarming. He met his wife out there. And he gives Ethan Hunt the knife (that Hunt dropped at the last second) back, which brought out the Carson goosebumps. Then this guy gets to join the team! How cool is that! And don’t you love the irony? That Ethan Hunt “ruined” this guy’s career and now they’re teaming up together. That’s actually smart screenwriting.

But that’s the end of any love I had for this movie. The rest of it is an utter mess. It’s sloppy. It’s poorly written. It’s overwritten. Pretty much everything I warned writers about in the Friday article came true in this screenplay.

Dude, you could’ve cut out the entire first hour and lost nothing. Lost absolutely nothing. There is ZERO reason for a 3 hour Mission Impossible movie. Zero. This is Screenwriting 101. Don’t start your story earlier than you have to. McQuarrie starts his movie literally an hour before he needs to. We don’t get the crux of the goal until an hour into the film. That’s inexcusable.

And the plotting?

Well, in each of the last four Mission Impossible movies, I lost track of the plot. So, when I went into this one, I said to myself, “I am going to focus so hard and listen so intently to every plot point that I never lose track of what’s happening in this movie.”

That lasted about 30 minutes.

I don’t want this review to turn into an attack on Christopher McQuarrie but the dude has settled into some really poor writing habits, the most problematic of which is his obsession with turning McMuffins into black holes of confusion.

You see, McQuarrie doesn’t just give you a McMuffin. He’ll give you half a McMuffin. They must go find the other half of the McMuffin somewhere else. Then, we hear about a new McMuffin, which the two-halves of the first McMuffin will open. But before we can get this McMuffin, we must first go off and get a code. Where is this code? This code is at the bottom of the sea, in a submarine. Oh, but before we can go to his submarine, we must first figure out where it is. Which means we have to go find its coordinates. Where are the people who know the coordinates? In Antarctica.

It goes on and on and on and on and on.

And I don’t know why McQuarrie would think any of this was even slightly entertaining. I suppose he thinks it’s “smarter” than going with one clear McMuffin. But dude, we’re not here to play your game of McMuffin Roulette. We want to watch some cool set pieces! By making us suffer through 40 minutes of gobbledygook exposition between every set piece is disastrous screenwriting.

It’s so bad that I’m actually reevaluating McQuarrie’s entire screenwriting career. Has he ever been a good screenwriter? I’m starting to wonder if his only value to the movie industry is keeping Tom Cruise alive long enough to finish each movie.

Then, we finally get to the big impossible mission, the submarine dive, AND IT SUCKED! That set piece sucked. I’m sorry. It was Tom Cruise swimming in silence for 20 minutes. I love Tom Cruise but there is a limit to what I’m able to bear with him. Quietly swimming through a wrecked submarine to find the source code for the evil AI (why in the world would the AI source code be in a submarine??????) was peak levels of “who the hell cares.”

Even the most dramatic part of the set piece is something THEY TOLD US WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AHEAD OF TIME! They say that Ethan Hunt is going to die while he’s in the freezing water before he can get to the surface but that’s okay because the frozen water is going to preserve his body and they’re going to bring him back to life.

And that’s exactly what happened! So there was no suspense at all. “Here he is, dying. Here they are, grabbing him. Here they are, reviving him. Oh, and, yup, they revived him, just like they said!” Where’s the suspense when you’ve already told us exactly what’s going to happen?

I’m even going to push back on the featured set piece of the movie, the bi-plane sequence. For starters, why are we flying perfectly brightly painted World War 1 airplanes? What’s the logic behind that?

Are we even trying to connect the dots anymore? Clearly, they wanted to use the bright unique planes in the climax but didn’t spend a single moment coming up with a reason for why these planes would be available to the characters.

You have to try!

Steven Spielberg loves making movies this way – stitching together plot beats to get to set pieces. But what’s so great about movies like Indiana Jones is that all of the set pieces MAKE SENSE.

When Indy is dragging himself underneath the moving jeep at the end, it’s because that line of cars is transporting the Ark of the Covenant. So he’s trying to catch up to the ark. These planes have absolutely nothing to do with the movie. It’s almost like Ethan Hunt ran over to an airport and the movie production said, “Here, use this one.” There was no attempt to integrate the planes into the story in any logical way.

And the scene wasn’t even that good! There’s no dialogue, which you would think would be a good thing as this was an action set piece, but there were several key moments where it was unclear what Ethan Hunt was trying to do and why. There were two seats in the plane and I think he accidentally got into the wrong seat, the one that doesn’t control the plane. But that one still has basic controls for the plane? So he was using secondary, harder, controls for the plane?

What am I supposed to be thinking in that moment? Am I supposed to be in suspense because Ethan is trying to decide whether to risk his life attempting to get to the “real control” seat or stay safe using the “less reliable control seat?” Who knows! Cause nobody tells us.

And if you’re internally arguing with me about how exciting this scene was, let me ask you this. If you didn’t know that Tom Cruise was doing all these stunts for real, would you think it was a good scene? I get that Cruise and his stunts are part of the package here. You can’t take away one without taking away the other. But I’m judging this ending on the dramatic impact to the story. And the story in this plane chase was ho-hum. Chase, get close, grab on, punch guy.  That was it.

I did like when the bad guy gleefully screamed that he was the only one with a parachute before getting his head split open on the tail. That was great. But then Tom Cruise ends up having a parachute later!!!! That perfectly encapsulates the last 5 Mission Impossible movies. Logic does not matter. We’re told Ethan is screwed cause he doesn’t have a parachute. But then he just does have a parachute for some reason.

I’m glad these movies are over. They’re not as cool as James Bond films. They’re not as gritty as Jason Bourne films. They’re not as pretty as John Wick films. And they’re not as fun as Fast and Furious films. They were always second rate to me and it’s nice to finally put them to bed.

I would not recommend ANYBODY see this movie. You will be disappointed. There isn’t a single memorable moment in the film, in my opinion. It’s a total waste of time.  But thank goodness it’s the last waste of time.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If there was ever an example of why you should keep your plotting simple, it’s this movie. It’s ridiculous how over plotted this is. It’s ridiculous how many boring exposition scenes we’re dragged through as a result of that over plotting. Please, I beg of you – keep your plots simple. Or else they’ll end up like Mission Impossible 26.