Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

HP and I will be covering the nineteen eighty seven cult classic Little Shop of Horrors. Excellent choice, everyone. I could do an entire show right now with a zero research. That's how monomoniacally obsessed with the film I was at one point in my life. Did you finish watching? And or why not? You must have your reasons, like I'm a dummy who doesn't enjoy thoughtful entertainment for adults and still has stormtroopers and tie fighters in it. Not my

cup of blue milk? All right, let's just get into it. Bond, James Bond, what will happen now that the evil Amazon has him in their clutches? Maybe they won't be so fucking ponderous like everything after Casino Royale, And maybe they won't be so fucking silly like everything after License to Kill. I'm not a Bond hater. I love Doub seven and que and Moneypenny, the whole mcgilla. I thought they were a great snapshot of their time period, a perfect time capsule.

In some ways, Bond was never a trendsetter other than his inaugural debut, but then everything is an innovation at least one time. Instead, Bond has always seemed to be playing cultural catch up. During the actual space race, when men were landing on the Moon, they couldn't get Bond into orbit. No, it would be Star Wars and the mania surrounding that that would give us a Moon Raker. They turned it down Steven Spielberg's offer to direct a

Bond film, and then they made Moonraker. Raiders of the Lost Dark's creation wasn't a direct reaction to that, Lucas had been cooking up the character for years, but Spielberg accepting the directing gig happened right after the Broccolis rebuffed him. Indiana Jones in that way, is like a multitude of films out there James Bond imitated. There are obvious ones, the films that claim to be parody or homage like in like Flint, that man from Rio, doctor Goldfoot in

the Bikini Machine. Have you seen that one fantastic secret Agent Super Dragons Zeta one comes spy with me. That's not even mentioning the TV series inspired by Bond, Secret Squirrel,

Get Smart, the Man from Uncle Wild Wild West, and near the end of the nineteen sixties, Mission Impossible Now. Creator Bruce Geller will claim inspiration for the series was the heist film took copy, but I think the spy backdrop is no coincidence. In the shadow of Double O seven, the IMF the Impossible Mission Force, led by Jim Phelps, for the majority of the show's run, forwarded the Reds

and the terrorists, and the industrialists and the criminals. The tape recorder mission briefing with the threat that it will self destruct in five seconds, and the lit fuse credit sequence, combined with that fucking score, continued in the public consciousness along after the series was canceled in seventy three. There was a revival in nineteen eighty eight, but the whole affair was gruesome. ABC dusted off a bunch of old Mission Impossible scripts and had them produced in Australia to

circumvent the then current writers strike. It wouldn't be until the nineteen nineties that a fan would take control of the series with his newly formed production company. Mister Tom Gunn, Mister oldtime rock and roll in his underwear. Mister he was in Legend with Tim Curry. Huh, Now that's most people, not me. I love Legend and I don't think he's miscast in it either. He just has a shitty part to do anyway, mister cocktail. Remember the high stakes, cutthroat

world of bottles spinning, hippie hippy shake. Yes, Tom Cruise. Scandals noted, all right, Tom Cruise. Weirdness noted, all right, Tom Cruise. Bizarre religion noted. Meanwhile, Brian de Palm is standing behind the screen of some film festival watching his latest movie, Carlito's Way, and he's thinking, well, this is it. I can't do any better as a filmmaker, and he fucking panics and thinks I got to take the next

thing they offer me. Lucky for everyone, Tom Cruise has dinner with Spielberg, who is talking up to Palmer, and we have mission impossible. So they take Jim Phelps and they make him the villain of the first movie. Thus, Peter Graves refuses to return for the film, and young Agent Ethan Hunt moves to the top. I love the

first Mission Impossible. It's got great echoes of the original series while taking it into the realms of giant action set pieces under the guidance of a cinematic master. It sets so many precedents for the rest of the series, the most important being Tom Cruise front and center for insane stunts. Yeah, the helicopter jump at the end is great, but it's in a best that ILM can deliver kind of way. It's the fish tank stunt, the red light green light, the you've never seen me upset, exploding fish

tank sequence. Tom Cruise needed to be talked into the least life threatening stunt he has ever performed. I'm convinced that it's this moment, to Palma's assertion that the stunt is safe, and even if it isn't, film is forever that turned Cruise's world upside down, and we've been watching him try to commit suicide ever since. That first film is a high point. If we didn't get another, I'd be good with it, though I do have one grievance. They kill Emelio s Devenz with the rest of the

team in the opening gambit. I know they did it to instill a sense of vulnerability in all of our characters, and it worked. But I was so stoked when he showed up as their tech guy. Granted he had to make room for TENK guy Luther played by series favorite Ving Raims, but still to Palmer delivered the action, but he also steeped the movie in late Cold War tension. It's a perfect capper to the original series. Incidentally, I

looked for this but I could not find it. There was an MTV mission Impossible premiere special where they're talking to the act on the red carpet and Kennedy, you remember Kennedy, glasses, curly hair, Republican, and she's interviewing Martin Landau and she has no idea that Landell was on the first three seasons of the show. And he gets so fucking mad at her, and then he storms off, and then he comes back and he yells at her

some more. If you have that clip, please send it to Fathom Alone seven to one at a gmail dot com. I'll put it here on this episode's that's my email. It's in the episode description. If you have that clip, please share and I will share with everybody. It's hilarious, as was Kennedy miming jerking off after Martin Landau finally stomps away. Mission Impossible Part two. It sucks. I don't know what to tell you. It was exciting that John wu was getting the big Hollywood gigs, but it also

became pretty evident pretty quickly in his Tinseltown tenure. Unless the leads were throwing bullets at each other in close quarters, it wasn't going to amount to much. I'm sorry that movie is garbage. Name a one memorable thing other than the hokey motors dancing Best Forgotten Now three. Mission Impossible three was promising. Jj Abrams hadn't yet ruined every franchise, and he manages to not ruin this one. He gets it back on track and even adds some intriguing notions,

like a private life for Ethan Hunt. That's a privilege denied to Jim Phelps over six seasons of the TV show, and it provided the series high villain wise in the form of Philip Seymour Hoffman. He added a level of danger. I don't think they've replicated still I don't want to watch Part three again anytime soon. Those first three movies, whatever their quality, whatever their ranking, can be considered prologue. However, Mission Impossible begins once they leap onto the subtitle train

in camera no cuts. It's the intriguingly named ghost Protocol that this film series takes off. Huge stinks here. It feels way more grounded and way less superheroy. It's the live action debut of Incredibles and Iron Giant director Brad Byrd, and it's got Cruz hanging off a building praying to die on camera, and while he's uncredited on the film.

About halfway through production, Cruz brings in his vultary screenwriter Christopher macquary to punch up the story and the dialogue, and McQuary takes over the franchise and much the way Cruz had done nearly a decade before. In Rogue Nation, he gives us an organization to battle the syndicate made of rogue agents from every country, embodied by Sean Harris.

I said Philip Seymour Hoffman hasn't been topped, but I think Sean Harris ties he's so creepily still, And yet you've no doubt capable, and it gives us super undercover IMF agent Ilse of Faust played by Rebecca Ferguson. Once she joins the franchise, you will retroactively feel her absence when you watch any of the earlier films. She's fucking fantastic, probably my favorite character, which leads us to, what are you crazy? We haven't even gotten to mine. This is

all four play so far? Fine hit at hp K because it takes film. Thank you, hp You know Tom Cruise wants Heimlich to Koala. I didn't know you were ranking them, but I guess this is your number one. Huh, good girl, I think I agree with you. Mission Impossible

Fallout manages what every film prior has tried clumsily to do, balancing personal and professional entwining them, really giving us a plot that is as much driven as Ethan hunts need to protect the ones he loves with his duty to the world. Overall, it's got Henry Cavill lockin and load in his arms for a fistfight. That fight is the best hand to hand fight in the series. By the way, I rewatched it again for this episode in Heyes Zeus Magomba. It is a brutal in all the best fucking ways.

The team dynamic is at its best here Alec Baldwin as their handler, Cruz, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg Ving Raims. All that's missing is Emilio Estevez. I keep waiting for him to return, that it was some dummy or there was that patented mission Impossible mask involved, but no, not here. It's the film's only real flaw. Sean Harris returns as the nominal villain at the beginning as well. This movie is hard to top, and they took their fucking time

developing the word salad sandwich Mission Impossible. Dead Reckoning Part One that would follow, which was supposed to be filmed back to back with Dead Reckoning Part two. Incidentally, Dead Reckoning was the original title of George Romero's Land of the Dead, his preferred title, but there was no way Universal was giving modern zombie movie money for anything less

than an of the Dead. That Lord of the Rings Back to the Future film and movies back to mac business didn't happen either, neither did a part two, but we'll get there. Having Part one in the title is a cagey move. It was a similar phenomenon with the Matrix films. Knowing there's a third film on the way lowers the stakes for the movie automatically. As bad as the scenario becomes for our hero, even if it ends on a total bummer, they're coming back and have another

shot next year or the year after that. Not only that, Not only that, it cleverly makes the film critic proof. Well, you have to see the whole thing to appreciate it as is. You've only seen half the movie. Yeah, we know we paid money for no resolution. We put a down payment on a resolution. I can handle him a ROAs ending to a film, but I got to know that it's the ending, ending on a bummer where everyone

lives to regret. It is something I've accepted in my own life, so it doesn't ruin my day if some fictional characters run into a bit of grief at the end of a story. Also, I don't know how I feel about an amorphous artificial intelligence as a villain. It pushes the series into Moonraker's status. You know, James Bond could have theoretically gone to space at any time, but

no one wanted him to. On the plus side, there's Hayley atwell, just like I'm going wherever Cap goes cinematically, Ditto founder of Shield Peggy Carter, and Tom Cruise nearly manages to unalive himself via dirt bike in a very long fall. But I just couldn't tell you if that movie was good until I saw Mission Impossible Final Reckoning. So now the previous film is only called Dead Reckoning,

and this is the Final Reckoning. It turns out the only way to actually like Dead Reckoning Part one now is on its own, because if it's part two of the fucking slog, that is the new Mission Impossible movie. Who needs it?

cold seriously? And if so so, you think their enjoyment will hinge on their film's proper place in the franchise? Who knows? Maybe it was a run time issue, point being the days of previously on are long over for feature films, which is why it was confounding that the first twenty minutes of this film is not a recap of the previous film, but of the entire franchise. Twenty minutes I check my watch twenty minutes until the fucking

fuse is lit and Lalo Schiffrin's indelible score begins. But you know what, the movie's two hours and forty five minutes. They could spare it, and the credit sequence is always energizing, so you can put that nonsense past you, right, No, we're not done. Now is another twenty five minutes of effectively recapping the last film. We've already been Ethan hunting

through history. Now we really need to know where everyone's place is on the board in what the snakes are again, because we're all dummies who've wandered in from the wilderness. Who is this Ethan Hunt? What happened to Jim Phelps? They connect Jim Phelps to this film by the way Johnvoy's character from the first film, Peter Graves on the series, they clumsily connect him to the plotline of this one

and the Rabbit's Foot from Part three. This movie spends so much time trying to tie up loose ends that nobody cares about that it forgets to devise anything incredible action wise, and what action there is begins forty five minutes into this film. It's not really easy to describe how disappointing this movie ended up being. It's two decades that could have just been standalone adventures, but McQuary decided

everything needs to be interconnected. So if this is the end of the Ethan Hunt saga, what a fucking drag. And I'm not saying they need to make another. They don't. Ethan Hunt has served us nobly, and I don't think either him nor McQuary has one innovation for this character or any action left in them. The movie isn't worthless. Everyone's good. Nick Offerman as good as a Secretary of Defense and former CIA director in previous films, and Queen

of Wakanda Angela Bassett is the president now. Simon Pegg also really comes into his own film, and I like the configuration of the team that they end up with, but this is it. The biplane stuff is incredible, and yes that's Tom Cruise flying and dangling and hanging. It's an incredible sequence, but it is in no way visceral. It's not moving anything forward or paying off anything. They're using biplanes because anything with digital assets can be controlled

by the villain. The entity an AI virus from a sunken Russian sub that is basically Skynet. This movie is the terminator if Skynett instead of calculating that all humans were the ultimate threat and then, as Kyle Ree says in that film, decided our fate in a micro second. Instead of doing that, Skynett kept sending regular status updates to the governments of the world. Hey, I've got access to India's nuclear program now, and now I'm satisfied. JK.

I'm going to get control of all of them. See it's waiting till it has control of every nuclear arsenal, and then it's going to launch them all conveniently, giving our characters a clock to work against. If that's not enough, it sends some human coffin sized case with some VR interface to communicate directly with Ethan. You know, it plugs him in and does all VR shit. Who built the case, who machined the parts? Was it the entity or was it is Sime Morales, who is the human face of

the entity in the last film. It's great to see him again. I love is Sime Morales. He's fucking great here. But here is also where they really dropped the fucking ball. A tech guy with a grudge against Ethan Hunt partnered with an AI tech villain, and it's not Emilio Estevez. Are you fucking kidding me? Don't see this movie? You're fine without it. And if you didn't see the last one,

bully take the win. Don't bother with these overly serious slogs through one of the most previously fun, lighthearted, and exhilarating ways to spend your time and money at the movies.

I take no joy in saying any of this. It's all distasteful. You know why, because there is not one human being out there championing film and the movie going experience more than and Tom Cruise. The man is literally putting his life on the line with every feature. I admire him. People die every day for nothing, at least with him, his death would end up as a fucking excellent sequence in a film. Do you think it's part of his contract that his death has to be used

in the final film? I sure hope so, because apparently Macquarie and Cruz and Henry Cavill Twist are teaming up for a World War two flick. Here's hoping everyone dies during the making of it, all right, that's going to do it a little shorter than usual this week, but it's a shorter week here in the States. If you want to support this show, go to Patreon dot com slash fathom alone. That'll cost you, though, Instead, why not write us a good review or share us on social media?

Five stars thumbs up. You know what to do. Out on Friday, we are covering the next two episodes of Tales from the Dark Side, And if you haven't already checked out our episodes of Fusco Fest, detailing the works of screenwriter John Fusco speaking of Emelia Westaves, then you're missing out. Don't miss out. Our theme song was composed by frequent co host HP I'm putting his links in the description as well. He's got a new album out on band camp. You can grab it for free right now,

and I encourage you to do so. But if you haven't heard his music show, Noise Junkies, then I highly suggest you go there immediately. Till next time for Ripley Gene, I'm fallom alone. Guess we'll leave you with a bit from Mission Impossible. Shocker.

taught her myself. Every now and then she sends up a signal to let Ethan know she's safe, and that keeps them going.