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variations on the theme of spy films
Jul. 28th, 2018 01:58 amMy thoughts on watching my first film in the Mission Impossible series, Mission Impossible: Fallout: HEY, NOBODY TOLD ME ETHAN HUNT IS A SOFT AND SELF-DEPRECATING CUTIE WHO'S ALMOST ALWAYS IN OVER HIS HEAD AND SOMETIMES HAS NIGHTMARES.
WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS. I'd have watched the rest of the series a whole lot sooner if I'd known! To think that all this time I've been labouring under the delusion that he was Just Another Spy Who Kicks Ass. ...Not that Spies Who Kick Ass are not my weakness; they absolutely are, it's a thing. But y'know, there is a cookie cutter when it comes to these characters, and there is the fact thatpeople men boys tend to strike up conversations around the concept of 'who would win? James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer or Ethan Hunt?', which made me broadly put Hunt in the same category as the other three - who tend as such to be ~pretty dark and brutal. I was also probably going off my impression of Tom Cruise's other spy/agent character, Jack Reacher - both of whose films I enjoyed a great deal, but felt no particular affinity toward the character himself. So Ethan's actual character was a super pleasant surprise.
Seriously. Wholesome. He's doing the job because he cares too much and he hasn't let it make him cynical at all. He knows all the shit he ends up pulling is surreal and that he shouldn't have got out of any of it alive. He makes no secret of flying by the seat of his pants when he has to, and even laughs at himself for it. He has an ex he's on healthy speaking terms with. And he makes sure everyone's safe, and he sometimes has nightmares. I'm not in love - my 'compassionate hero in a high-ranking government job' top spot belongs to Sam Gerard from The Fugitive, who, though he is many things, is decidedly not a spy - but I am impressed.
I do continue to be unimpressed with the general tendency of Boys (an occupational hazard in thriller film fandom) to always be like "bro, let's put all the super spies together in a hypothetical FIGHT and then find out who would hypothetically WIN". I propose instead that we put them all in a room-escape game, with real-world consequences to make it fun, and tell them they have to fight, when the truth is they can only actually win by cooperating. So, superspies / covert operatives with franchises unite: James Bond, movieverse Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer (24) and Ethan Hunt. Maybe toss in Jack Reacher and also Martin Riggs (Lethal Weapon) - and although Jack Ryan is an analyst rather than a spy spy, he also gets in on account of a) working for the CIA and b) having Harrison Ford's face.
I figure Riggs starts a bunch of squabbles for the fun of it, Bond goes around shooting stuff, and Ryan is the first to call bullshit. This is stupid, Ryan says. Why are we fighting each other, Ryan says. (Just because some punk said so? Ryan says, pointing an angry finger at a security camera.)
Hunt says, reasonably, "Because there are three of us here called Jack."
Then Natasha Romanoff busts them all out of there, with Evelyn Salt in tow, because they're both awesome and deserve their own franchises.
WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS. I'd have watched the rest of the series a whole lot sooner if I'd known! To think that all this time I've been labouring under the delusion that he was Just Another Spy Who Kicks Ass. ...Not that Spies Who Kick Ass are not my weakness; they absolutely are, it's a thing. But y'know, there is a cookie cutter when it comes to these characters, and there is the fact that
Seriously. Wholesome. He's doing the job because he cares too much and he hasn't let it make him cynical at all. He knows all the shit he ends up pulling is surreal and that he shouldn't have got out of any of it alive. He makes no secret of flying by the seat of his pants when he has to, and even laughs at himself for it. He has an ex he's on healthy speaking terms with. And he makes sure everyone's safe, and he sometimes has nightmares. I'm not in love - my 'compassionate hero in a high-ranking government job' top spot belongs to Sam Gerard from The Fugitive, who, though he is many things, is decidedly not a spy - but I am impressed.
I do continue to be unimpressed with the general tendency of Boys (an occupational hazard in thriller film fandom) to always be like "bro, let's put all the super spies together in a hypothetical FIGHT and then find out who would hypothetically WIN". I propose instead that we put them all in a room-escape game, with real-world consequences to make it fun, and tell them they have to fight, when the truth is they can only actually win by cooperating. So, superspies / covert operatives with franchises unite: James Bond, movieverse Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer (24) and Ethan Hunt. Maybe toss in Jack Reacher and also Martin Riggs (Lethal Weapon) - and although Jack Ryan is an analyst rather than a spy spy, he also gets in on account of a) working for the CIA and b) having Harrison Ford's face.
I figure Riggs starts a bunch of squabbles for the fun of it, Bond goes around shooting stuff, and Ryan is the first to call bullshit. This is stupid, Ryan says. Why are we fighting each other, Ryan says. (Just because some punk said so? Ryan says, pointing an angry finger at a security camera.)
Hunt says, reasonably, "Because there are three of us here called Jack."
Then Natasha Romanoff busts them all out of there, with Evelyn Salt in tow, because they're both awesome and deserve their own franchises.
