MI:3

[Kal]

MI made 45, MI2 made 57, and this one was expected to make 60-70. It's not bad, but for the press and the studio is not good.

Also, considering the movie had a production budget of 150 million, plus the heavy marketing... they need to make a lot more.

The 48 million includes Sunday estimates. Although the day isnt over, they calculate the projections for the day very well based on the last two days. They usually dont miss for more than 1 or 2 mil.

[McfLy]

Too bad about the poor box office opening. I enjoyed this entry. Perhaps it will just linger in the top 10 for the weeks to come since this flick is getting positive word of mouth from the people who have seen it already. One thing that I disliked about the film was the score, the music seemed like it could be in any generic action flick.

[modage]

i liked the music and thought it was probably more of a throwback to the series as far as the 60's flourishes go.  (not as good as the incredibles though).

[matt35mm]

The score sounded a lot like the general Alias score.

I enjoyed the music enough, but I do think that between scoring Alias, Lost, and this film (and those are only 3 that I'm aware of), Michael Giacchino was probably just stretched too thin, or had to do this really quickly.  I didn't think it was a weak score, but I could imagine it being better if perhaps more time was spent on it.

I also enjoyed the general mood in the theater of "What the fuck are we watching?  I thought this was supposed to be an action movie..." towards the beginning of the movie, after the prologue piece, with the party and all the cutesiness and good vibes (not to mention The Emotions).

[Gamblour.]

I think it was interseting how:

SPOILERS FOR THIS FILM AND Television's LOST!!!!!

The scene where hot wife is giving CPR to Tom Cruise is almost exactly done in the same way that Jack reviving Charlie in season one of Lost was done....very intense, escalating, then pounding, with very minimal music. Lost's worked better, but still fucking great.

END SPOILERS

This movie was so cool. Every action was so intense, I think I will have beaten David Blaine for holding my breath the longest. And I just can't say enough good shit about PSH....he steals the fucking show. Simon Pegg was awesome, if only to see him again. Keri Russell was actually impressive, I never watched Felicity, but I enjoyed her performance. Hated the ending, but what can you do?

[©brad]

The score sounded a lot like the general Alias score.

yah, the score is the only thing that irked me. it wasn't necessarily bad. it just seemed to bounce all over the place. they coulda utilized the classic theme in a cooler way.

[Kal]

I loved it... much better that what expected... and I think everybody loved it so maybe that will help their BO results for the next weeks (until X3 and all the others start).

Anyways, PHS was terrific. Its true, like others said, how he becomes the character. If you see Tom, I couldnt help but imagine Jerry Maguire at the beginning during the party and all that, and I thought about Vanilla Sky at one point when he cant walk very well... but PHS was just the bad motherfucker of MI3 and nobody else during the movie!

The ending wasnt great, but what can you expect? Its MI3 after all...

I would have liked more screen time for PHS and Felicity... she was great but it was just too short!

I noticed a lot of similarities to Lost and Alias... especially the way the story is told, and the mix between reality (their real, human, emotional life) and the action *mission impossible*!

[MacGuffin]

Interview: J.J. Abrams
The co-writer and director of M:i:III!

IGN FilmForce recently took part in a conference call interview with J.J. Abrams, the co-writer and director of Mission: Impossible III, his feature film helming debut. Abrams is currently one of the most powerful creative forces in U.S. television, having created such series as the powerhouse Lost, the departing Alias and the past hit Felicity.

Abrams spoke to the press about the rigors of making M;I:III, as well as what fans of Lost and Alias can look forward to:

Q: Did any of the ideas in Mission: Impossible III, be they for action scenes or other elements, come from anything you wanted to do at some point on Alias, but could not for whatever reason being they were not appropriate for Sydney Bristow or for a TV budget?

J.J. Abrams: There were so many things that we wanted to do on Alias that we could never in a million years afford, and one of the things that we did in this movie was this Vatican break-in sequence, which a sequence like that requires so many pieces. It is a very intricately, visually intricately told sequence, and in television you never have the time to do the kind of pieces that you need to really sort of tell it properly. Clearly, sequences like on the bridge, the helicopter chase, the whole factory sequence, the Shanghai jump, each one of them in a weird way was a dream version of the kind of thing we might conceive of doing on Alias, but never have the time or budget to properly execute.

Q: Now that you have completed Mission, will you be returning your focus to running Lost or are there other movies?

Abrams: I look forward to going back to Lost, although ultimately I hope to do both. It is an amazing work experience doing this movie, and if they will have me back to direct another movie I would love to do it.

Q: In talking to some of the stars in the movie, invariably they get asked how they felt about you being a first time feature director and coming from television. I was wondering what is it like to have all those questions floating around about you, and secondly, did you ever doubt yourself?

Abrams: I am getting the same question too, which is what was it like to be a first time feature director. The opportunity to do this movie was so remarkable. I cannot think of anyone else who would let someone who never directed a feature before take the reins of something that is this large in scale, this expensive, and yet Tom [Cruise] did. I mean he believed in me, and never wavered from that during the entire experience. I do think that there were moments that I was in shock that I was given this opportunity, but the truth is I wanted to do this all my life. The pressure and experience of doing television seemed to continually confirm that doing a movie was something that was certainly possible. I did not necessarily think that the first movie I would get a chance to direct would be something as large as this one, but the crew was so incredible. Tom, and his producing partner, Paula Wagner were so supportive from the beginning that I always felt, and I believe the whole crew always felt, incredibly supported and safe, which always allows for more creativity. So the whole experience was great, and I honestly never doubted that I could do it. It actually felt incredibly comfortable doing it. It was a fun challenge.

Q: What were you looking for with the other IMF team members?

Abrams: I wanted to make sure that we were casting actors and writing parts that were as strong as they could be because you know when you got Tom Cruise, it is that blinding star power. You cannot put him on screen with someone who cannot play at that level or they will get drowned out and the movie will not have a spark. So you bring in actors like Laurence Fishburne, Billy Crudup, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, certainly Philip Seymour Hoffman. And you find people like Michelle Monaghan or Maggie Q, and I got to bring Keri Russell back because I worked with her on Felicity. It was incredibly important to me for not just the team, but for all the supporting actors, that they be not just wonderful actors, but have a certain level of that charisma. It was great to see Tom with all these actors because I am sure he could feel that same energy coming from them, and it only made him better and that certainly makes the film better. Populating it with people who are that compelling to watch.

Q: With his immediate IMF team in particular, what were you looking for as far as how they would compliment his activities?

Abrams: Well, I wanted to make sure that very quickly everyone felt incredibly distinct. What I loved about Jonathan Rhys Myers is he sort of felt to me in many ways the Irish version of where Tom was in the first Mission movie, which is a little bit more of a cocky guy who is at an age when he has not been doing this for very long. With Maggie Q, I really wanted to have an incredibly strong female and powerful voice and character, and someone who was as lethal as she is brave, and as she is vulnerable, and Maggie brought all that. She also looked incredibly good. That red dress that she wears to of all places, the Vatican. I knew we had Ving [Rhames] coming back, who I had loved in so much of the work he had done in other films. I felt like he still had not been as relatable as I wanted him to be in the first two films, and I just think he so brought an incredible personality to the role of Luther. So it was just important that Tom's character be surrounded by distinct and unique and compelling other characters.

Q: In this Mission, you seem to go into a lot more details about the tricks of the trade, like showing how the masks are made and how Ethan calibrates the wire for his signature drop. Was that a conscious decision to kind of lift the curtain a little bit and show how the team does what they do? Why did you go for that?

Abrams: Yes, and thank you for mentioning that little calibrating thing on the wire. That kind of stuff to me was... it was so easy not to do that stuff, but I thought part of the fun of Mission: Impossible the series for me was always not just the what and the why but the how, and I just loved watching this team using the kind of equipment, and using it with such a precision that I wished I had that kind of equipment, and I wished I knew how the hell to do that stuff. It is easy to skip that stuff, and go over right to the end game, and get to the point, but I feel like part of getting to know and love the team is seeing them do their job, and appreciating why they do their job, and appreciating why they have been chosen to be out in the field. Doing that kind of stuff with the mask or doing the little moments with the calibration thing here and there, when Tom puts the cross on the wall, or when we see Ving open up the drill case... all these little details were to me the things that it felt when I watched the show. It respected the audience in their ability to track the sort of machinations of that kind of operation, and I just feel like if you lose that stuff you are not getting to really see the details that matter. So that was really important to me that we do that stuff.

Q: You throw Ethan out of windows or off the top of building. Then he leaps off the building in Shanghai. Why are you so attracted to the jump?

Abrams: To me the fun of the movie is having the crazy larger than life moments, and also the incredibly relatable intimate character moments, and so part of that stuff... the jumping off a building, the repelling down, which is obviously just a nod to the first films... that stuff was for me. Just part of showing the extreme measures that Ethan has to go to, to either pull off a certain mission or rescue the woman he loves, and its classic old school physical thrills, but those do not really thrill us anymore unless we have characters that we relate to, and so the goal was to try and do both.

Q: The first two films were such huge blockbusters. Why mess with success in terms of adding elements of romance and humor? And, secondly, do you think the film may be hampered or perhaps even helped by the publicity surrounding Tom's life?

Abrams: I did not think going into this [thinking] that I wanted to copy the first movie or the second movie. What I thought was my dream version of Mission: Impossible still had not gotten made, which was a version that allowed us to see who these characters were as people not just as spies. And I loved the idea of exploring what it would look like when Ethan Hunt goes home. Not just what his home looked like but who is there, and if there is a woman in his life does she know what he does? My guess is no, and if not how does he live with himself betraying this woman? And he must know these two roles are going to collide. It is just going to happen. So that became sort of one of the themes of the movie. It was not a question of messing with success, I actually felt that the first two films for me would have been even better had they spent some time investing in the characters, and the people. In a movie like Jaws, when Roy Scheider is sitting at the table and his kid's mimicking him and his wife is watching, you know you could have lost that scene from that movie and told the same story, but it would not have allowed you to invest in the people as much as you do. And that is my favorite thing that the great blockbuster-type movies have done, which is they have the thrills and the action but the critical thing is investment in character.

In terms of Tom's publicity, I am sure you can find evidence that any publicity is good publicity, and also find evidence equally valid that having him go on Oprah is not a good thing for him. It is like you can probably find anything to support a point of view, but my feeling is, what I control, what I can do is try and make a movie that is entertaining, and hopefully one that you leave a theatre feeling better and more empowered then you did when you got there. So I am hoping that the audience... and I believe that the audiences who will see this film are smart enough to differentiate the two, the actor and the character. I think that the opening sequence of the movie is very purposefully shocking and terrifying, and I wanted to see this character as vulnerable and as frightened as he has ever been, and it was not because of any publicity stuff. It was just simply having Tom Cruise in a movie. He is such an icon that I wanted from the very beginning of the movie not to have him playing a cool guy, but rather having him play an absolutely vulnerable, relatable man who we relate to. I got to tell you, knowing Tom as well as I do, I see everyday who this guy is as a real person, and he is funny, and he is self deprecating, and he is smart, and he is easy going, and he is kind. Not just to me, but to everyone who worked on the crew. He is a good person. So I wanted to see a little bit less of an icon and a little bit more of us, for the everyman in this character. I think the audience will see that.

Q: What was the most challenging thing for you making this film?

Abrams: The most challenging thing was probably the logistics of filming in the United States, in Los Angeles and Virginia, and shooting in Italy in two cities, and China in two cities, and Berlin, and having all the visual effects shots there. There are many, many visual effects shots in this movie, special effects and stunts, and it was really just logistically preparing this. A lot of that credit goes to the producers of the movie who helped schedule and set up the production of the film, but you know we were incredibly responsible I think making this movie. We finished ahead of schedule and under budget. For me it was totally a result of having a crew that was just hard working and dedicated and great at what they do, and my TV training has gotten me used to limited time and budget. But the hardest thing truly was always just in every scene where people are talking, making sure you believe that those people hate each other or that those two guys are great friends or that couple is in love. I mean it was always the stuff that was the most relatable stuff, the most mundane that ultimately people will just know rings true or not. So the stunt work was always a cool and exciting challenge but the hardest stuff was always the most unexpected kind of small character work.

Q: Will there ever be a Lost movie?

Abrams: I think we make it every week. I honestly do not know what else we would do, but there have been discussions of sort of all different types of things in Lost, but it feels like to me that the ambition at least in the production in that series is to try and make a little movie every week.

Q: You've got a bunch of TV finales coming up. With Alias ending I think a little sooner than all of you might have hoped, has it been hard to tie up all of the threads you had going?

Abrams: Not really. I got to say on Alias, which is the only show that really needs to tie up everything, this is something we had been anticipating for awhile. I think it is the right time to end the series. It is definitely bittersweet for a lot of obvious reasons. It is an incredible cast and crew. We will miss them but hope to work with all of them again. It is actually a really good finale. I think it is incredibly satisfying. It connects all these pieces that have been in the Alias universe from the beginning, and I am really proud of the work that Jeff Pinkner and Drew Goddard and the other amazing writers in the show have done. Not just this year but building up to the finale, which I think is going to be a really, really powerful and exciting ending.

Q: And with Lost, do you have to come with a season cliffhanger that will top the hatch in the last season?

Abrams: I can tell you that Damon Lindelof has done just that. The ending of this year of Lost blows the ending of last season out of the water. It is an incredible finale.

Q: But there has not been like a single thing... like last year, the hatch was sort of a dominant mystery. Now there is so many. What is the one thing that you can leave hanging?

Abrams: You will see what happens but I can tell you that a lot of it has been there and has been building from the beginning of this season. It is not out of the blue, but what happens at the very end of this year is... for me, it is like the greatest finale I have ever heard.

Q: Any thoughts on an Alias movie?

Abrams: Alias is going to rest and in just the right way. It is the right way for it to go out.

[pete]

spoiler kinda

it was fun and serious, which was good I guess.  I liked how every action sequence set the heroes back just a little bit more.  I enjoyed the movie all the way until the climax, then it ended too abruptly and quickly.  In movies where the hero is obviously bigger and badder than the bad guy, you really need a leverage, and there was none in this movie.  it was so short and uneventful.  the ladies here were all very bland.  Maggie Q is a hottie but she just wasn't very charismatic or starlike in this one, dunno if it was her fault or maybe the producers didn't want the ladies to compete with Tom Cruise.  His wife was really really plain and Kerri Russel got to shine just a tiny bit.

[Gamblour.]

Watch Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and you will fall in love with Michelle Monaghan (I can't believe you haven't already. Also I'm embarrassed that I've been confusing her name with Bridget Moynahan for some time now. Their IMDb pictures are incredibly similar as well.)

[Alexandro]

I'm seeing this movie, of course. I just don't expect my critical judgement to tag along. The most interesting part of Mission Impossible 3 is how much money it will make and how it will juxtapose the image of Tom Cruise to the world. For the last 6 years, he has been consistently coming out with one film a year. The difference is not how screen time he gets in every film (he always gets ample amount) but how each film carries a different marker for the Tom Cruise persona. Every film gives him a new sympathy or endearment. With Collateral, it was the smarter-than-anyone-in-the-room bad guy. In Minority Report, the martyred hero. With Mission Impossible 2, the limitless hero. With The Last Samurai, just cliches. Vanilla Sky, the role of all extremes with no ties in. A role similiar to his one in Magnolia but with no depth of character attached.

The one film that did try to give him somewhat of an interesting character was War of the Worlds. A few scenes did show a down and out father, but those scenes were few and far between all the ridiculous ones of him running and jumping to green screen projected imagery. It is not unexpected for a film star to cater to roles that show them in a good light but Cruise has so thoroughly avvoided character roles the last 6 years its just ridiculous. Julia Roberts similarily kept to just comedy for a while and a lot of films that ridiculously showed her as an art buff. (I counted 4 roles that did that)

I remember reading an interview recently where a writer complained of wanting to go into criticism for aesthetic studies of film but fell into commenting on the societal popularity of movies instead. I personally dispell such a retract but I admit I am heading that way for any new and (likely) future Tom Cruise movie. His trend of one movie a year is not stopping and by looking at his upcoming projects I don't think their lack of objectivity or talent will stop either.

I would say that his character in Collateral goes way beyond being just showing him as the "smarter-than-anyone-in-the-room", I would say is actually a character role. That's how it clicked to me on first wiewing and then watching the movie with Mann's commetary I think they were actually aiming for a full character and they got it...

About M:I:3, I enjoyed it while it lasted, but the harsh truth about it, as it is for the other two, is that is nothing but a forgettable action film with nothing even slightly original going on...PSH could have been the true kick ass villain of this decade but this is TOM CRUISE movie, and that's that...All the girls are there for ornamental porpuses, all the other actors too. I like Cruise because of how crazy he really is, and he has some good moments here (the first scene with Hoffman is actually a respectable follow up to their last time together onscreen in that awful frogs movie), but this is just candy of the kind that rots your teeth....

[killafilm]

I found this to be totally fun and awesome.  The perfect way to start up the summer movie season.

So, my question for you JJ fans, is this the sum of all of his work in TV? Or should I really go back and check out alias? I already plan on jumping into Lost in the near future.

[modage]

check out ALIAS.  its better, because even though they dont have the budget for this level of awesome action you have a lot longer to develop the characters and storylines.  but stop after season 2. 

[Gold Trumpet]

I would say that his character in Collateral goes way beyond being just showing him as the "smarter-than-anyone-in-the-room", I would say is actually a character role. That's how it clicked to me on first wiewing and then watching the movie with Mann's commetary I think they were actually aiming for a full character and they got it...

I disagree. The mainstay of a character is emotional depth. Cruise's character, while realistic enough, is an intimidation performance set to counter Foxx's character. Never do we understand how Cruise's character came to be the way he is. We merely get his weird philosophy and antics the same way we got it from Orson Welles in the Third Man. That film is considered by many to be unique for the time, but the redeeming qualities is Welles' presence and his "Cuckoo clock" speech. A similar redemption is in Collateral, except the writing is awful. Cruise's character is really the dumbest villian I've ever seen in a movie. And Welles only appeared in The Third Man for twenty minutes. The mystery around his character increased the effectiveness of his limited on screen performance. Tom Cruise appears through out Collateral and his performance becomes numbing.

About M:I:3, I enjoyed it while it lasted, but the harsh truth about it, as it is for the other two, is that is nothing but a forgettable action film with nothing even slightly original going on...PSH could have been the true kick ass villain of this decade but this is TOM CRUISE movie, and that's that...All the girls are there for ornamental porpuses, all the other actors too. I like Cruise because of how crazy he really is, and he has some good moments here (the first scene with Hoffman is actually a respectable follow up to their last time together onscreen in that awful frogs movie), but this is just candy of the kind that rots your teeth....

This I more agree with. I enjoyed this one more than any of the others, but I knew my enjoyment wouldn't last to a second viewing and the movie was bad enough to not even make me desire a second viewing. Its just this one had some humility where the others didn't.

First, the Tom Cruise persona did impede on this film. The character of his wife was a non-character. It was a re-affirmation (on screen) of Tom Cruise's love for Katie Holmes. After the initial prologue with PSH, the film starts out with a family scene that could have been ripped out a 1980s nostalgia movie. Never have I felt a scene planted on for an effect the way this one was. Then through out the film we get no measure of the relationship or her character besides Cruise's implications of how serious it is to other characters. I especially loved the moment when Tom Cruise said "my wife" to Ving Rhames with a don't cross me tone. The character of his wife is a stand in role for her to look sad at every right moment and be an enough of a look a like to Katie Holmes. Them running away happily at the end has more to do with the projected image Tom Cruise wants the audience to have of him than anything necessary for the movie. The porthole this films shows the meaning of marriage as defined by Cruise is a good study in propaganda.

Second, this wasn't even a good action movie. Besides the intricacy of some of the action sequences, the drama and suspence played to stiff showing. J.J. Abrams set up almost every tense situation as a what-can-come-around-the-corner potboiler. It keeps the audience guessing and in suspence the first time around but no doubt second and third viewings will lag because there is so little story. There is no signs of character to mesh between all these action sequences. I'm not talking dramatic character portraits. I'm speaking of the amazing mesh the original Die Hard was able to have between an action situation and following characters and a story. Abrams filmed this movie as a standard Alfred Hitchcock circus only. The only thing that mattered were effects to utilize suspense.

See, I sincerely believe Alfred Hitchcock has to be the most overrated filmmaker ever. I don't even think he was very good. He was a technician of suspence with camera tricks he perfected in the 1930s and 1940s and never updated afterword. He never got more daring with story. He kept the same motions of camera work and character objectivity through out all his films and when he was dealing with weaker stories (especially in the 1960s) he did nothing to direct above them. He directed them as according to every film he directed before and the resulting films (like The Birds) were weak and embarassing. Only good writing ever saved Hitchcock. J.J. Abrams utilizes Hitchcock's book of suspence and plays with all the tricks in the action sequences that the resulting film is an exercise in how effective suspence can be but also a definite reminder it can never make an entire movie.

The sad thing is that we are neck deep in the CGI-laced world of filmmaking that we excuse Mission Impossible 3 because it bucks this trend just a little bit even if it is really a bad movie. I'll still rewatch Die Hard anyday.

And really, JB, Philip Seymour Hoffmann's role here is better than his one in Capote? How can you even compare the roles? And how can you not but respect what he did in Capote so much more because it is played with such life around it and this one is played to such genre conventions?

[Alexandro]

GT, we are definetely seing different things on Collateral. I don't expect to convince you of anything, but I just wanna say something. I agree that a character to be a character needs emotional depth, but I don't think that for emotional dept to be there by necessity you need to understand why someone got to be the way he is on the particular film you're watching at that particular point in their fictional lives as film characters. Just as life, sometimes you know someone for ages and never fullly understand how they became who they are, let alone in a period of one night. Mann's and Cruise's approach to the character of Vincent was that they had this brief period of time to portray him as a real person, but they never indended to flesh him out completely. Nevertheless, they both had an input on the character on things that didn't end up in the film but that were part of Vincent's life story, such as his childhood in Indiana, his father's line of work, when did he started to like jazz, who did he work for before, etc...these things are besides the point of the main storyline on collateral, but for an actor, they make a difference. You said it yourself that his performance was of a "smarter than anyone in the room", and now you say he's the dumbest villain you've ever seen. I think that's because what he appears to be at the beginning of the movie and what he really is at the end are different things, and that's because Vincent is not the machine-like assasin he's trying to appear, and he's crumbling down. There's a dynamic that goes on during collateral between the two characters, and in my opinion, it's a rich one. From where I'm standing, both Mann and Cruise gave a lot of effort and commitment to that character and it shows. For me it's never numbing. I actually think is Cruise's finest moment along with Magnolia, with the difference that T,J, Mackey is a showy role with big dramatic moments and Vincent is all about control and restraint. But if it's not your cup of tea, then, well, that's fine.

About Hitchcock, I agree and disagree. Obviously his films were better when a good, solid script was behind them, but he wasn't a writer, so as a director, I think, you only need Psycho as a prove of his brilliance. He had a huge ability to entertain and at the same time lurk into darker issues that sometimes only he knew how personal really were for himself. In any case, we should have more overrated Hitchcocks nowadays, instead of overrated JJ Abrahams who seem ot be getting way more credit than they actually deserve.