Challenging. Intellectual. Nuanced. These are 3 words that don’t describe “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”. Having recently watched its latest iteration, I want to talk about how the movie meets expectations and provides nothing more than an entertaining ride, instead of a challenging and thoughtful experience. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation stars Tom Cruise in a mindless action movie that encourages its audience to turn off their brains and accept whatever happens on-screen – and that’s not a bad thing. After four iterations, the team behind the series have a winning formula. They know what the audience wants – familiar characters, over-the-top set pieces, and Tom Cruise running towards pretty much anything – they’ve delivered in the past, and with their fifth iteration, they continue to do so. The movie introduces/re-introduces the same set of character roles that have existed in every iteration since the first movie. You got the supportive and humorous tech-geek, the cold-hearted villain that wants to take over the world, the attractive double agent that can kick ass – they’re all there. Mission Impossible constantly ensures the audience that there is no character or plot that is in anyway slightly nuanced. It’s all black and white, and there isn’t anything more than what meets the eye. “We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys.” Even if you’ve never watched a Mission Impossible movie before, the movie does a great job of making sure you know who these characters are without using any brain power. The story here isn’t as strong has the previous movies, and is the typical “Agent goes rogue against the CIA”, which is basically every season of “24”. Things are so over-the-top and extremely unrelatable that it forces you to accept that the movie takes place in this alternate reality with its own set of universal rules. It reminds me of Fast & Furious in the sense that, yeah sure it takes part in our world, but it has its own set of rules when it comes to physics and gravity. Right from the start, the movie lets the audience know what they’re in for. They start out with a huge over-the-top set piece, encouraging even those that are unfamiliar with the series to suspend their disbelief for whatever happens next. Despite having its biggest set piece right from the start, the pacing is smartly done, as it constantly keeps the audience at the edge of their seat. Even though its story is potentially the weakest of the series, the action scenes aren’t there for the sake of having action scenes, but are integrated within the story to always progress it forward. I’m at this point in my life where I try to learn from every experience. After watching a movie like Mission Impossible, I can see how many people would not have this big takeaway that inspires them to do something different, and instead think about what their plans are for dinner or where to go next. The team behind Mission Impossible know that you came to see an action movie. You didn’t come here to think, to challenge yourself, and it doesn’t bother coming close to challenging any social norms or the status quo. That’s not what Mission Impossible is or has ever been about, and that’s okay.

You can checkout my take on Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar here.

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