DAN WEBSTER:
Save for the occasional film festival, it’s been years since I’ve had to stand in line to see a movie. It’s been even longer since I’ve walked into a theater to see every seat filled.
I can recall going to the old Lincoln Heights complex in 1987 to see Three Men and a Baby. After battling the throng to score tickets, we hurried to the house in which the movie was playing—and it was packed, so much so that it wouldn’t surprise me if the roar of laughter that filled the theater when Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg tried to change the baby’s diapers is still echoing through that part of the South Hill.
Those kinds of scenes are exceedingly rare these days. Even when something big opens, the kind of blockbuster that begs to be seen on the big screen, it seldom attracts enough moviegoers to fill half of any house, regardless of size. On average, I typically see no more than 20 other people at once, and their reactions never begin to match the decibel levels of the past.
That’s no doubt why before we hear the beginning notes of Lalo Schifrin’s familiar theme, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning—the latest chapter in the eight-film franchise—opens with star Tom Cruise personally thanking us for showing up. With Bloomberg reporting that theatrical ticket sales are down 11 percent this year, even given the recent Memorial Day Weekend spike, producers are going to great lengths to lure audiences back.
And Mission: Impossible – the Final Reckoning is exactly the kind of movie that fits their, well, mission. That’s because it should be seen on the big screen, in fact the biggest screen you can find. My wife, Mary Pat Treuthart, and I watched it the afternoon it opened at AMC River Park Square’s IMAX.
The key question is whether making the effort to see the movie is worth springing for tickets that range from $16 and change for children to $19 and change for adults, not to mention the attendant cost of popcorn, drinks and other treats, which could add an additional $30 to $40—or more—to the bill.
Any answer has to come in two parts: First, again, Mission: Impossible – the Final Reckoning is designed to be seen on the big screen. Even though we’re still weeks away from the official start of summer, this Tom Cruise vehicle is a trademark summer blockbuster. It’s filled with impressive stunts, picturesque scenery and the kind of action sequences designed to appeal to everyone’s inner 14-year-old.
We’ve been watching previews of those stunts for months, the most touted being Cruise’s wing-walking exploits, a stunt meant to match his climbing the world’s highest building, the Burj Khalifa, in 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, or hanging alongside an Airbus A400M in 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. And, indeed, it does just that.
Deserving praise, too, is the part of the team-written script that director Christopher McQuarrie applies to a fuller understanding of the world as we know it—or at least some of us hope to know it—with women in charge of the country (Angela Bassett as the president) and a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier (Hannah Waddingham as a Navy admiral), plus Black and Brown characters filling important roles (Ving Rhames as the tech-expert Luther) instead of being consigned, as they have throughout history, mostly to the background.
But, then, there’s the second part of the question—so much of that very same script is an attempt to capture what the franchise is all about, Ethan Hunt’s quest to save the world from evil-doers lurking both inside and outside of the very government that keeps hiring him to achieve, of course, the impossible.
To do so, and to wrap things up—because this is purported to be the last installment in the three-decade-old franchise—McQuarrie gives us a rat-a-tat-tat explanation of what’s going on that had me addled only 20 minutes into the film’s 2-hour-and-49-minute running time. And I never really did catch up.
But… no matter. His film is less about content than an assemblage of said stunts, fights and explosions, all revolving around the central McGuffin—an artificial intelligence dubbed “The Entity” that wants to extinguish all of humanity. So just sit back, munch on that $10 bucket of popcorn and enjoy the fact that, if nothing else, you probably won’t have to fight to find a seat.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
——
Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.
