EW calls MI3 the worst of the Franchise
Below MI2, do you agree?
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/31/mission-impossible-movies-best-worst
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5. M:I:iii
The biggest bug with this movie is, for some people, its central feature. Always a keen observer of upcoming talent, Cruise plucked J.J. Abrams from small-screen cult glory and gave him his first shot at a megabudget feature film. So the third Mission is recognizable as a spiritual sibling to Alias: A spy thriller that treats the central agent as a kind of superhero, alternating between their Normal Life and the Spy World. Abrams loves to make things personal — he would later kill Kirk’s father and Spock’s mother in the same movie — and so the third film is the one that tries hardest to dimensionalize Ethan Hunt. He’s retired and happily engaged; he only comes back to work for a this-time-it’s-personal rescue mission. (Abrams initially pitched Alias with the question “What if Felicity were a spy?” and so it’s appropriate that, in his first movie, Felicity actually is a spy.)
The problem with this is simple: I’m not sure Ethan Hunt is really supposed to be a typical human person. Monaghan’s fine in a thankless role — her whole purpose is representing “normality” — but their chemistry lacks the sparks of Cruise/Ferguson and the gauzy-goofy melodrama of Cruise/Newton. M:I:iii hired legitimate genius Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, but his Owen Davian is maybe the most abstract bad guy (in a franchise that already trends toward abstract megalomanics.) This is an Abrams production through and through, which means it starts with an exciting flashforward — that ultimately leads into a deflating less-cool-than-you-think reveal.
The film knocks one scene out of the park — I’d put the Vatican City infiltration in the franchise’s top five setpieces — but Abrams was still a big screen newbie, and the early helicopter-chase sequence feels choppy. (Another Mission that’s a movie of its time: The whole thing plays a bit like a Bourne movie riff, all shaky-cams and monochrome nightscapes.) It’s servicable—and forgettable. But the film did provide us with one immortal moment: Tom Cruise doing casual small talk.