response 146 of 326:

Jun 1 02:03 UTC 2000

Yeah, it's a shame the moon flew out of orbit last year. ^_^

response 148 of 326:

Jun 1 05:03 UTC 2000

  Snuck out of work a little early tonight to make it to the late-matinee
  showing of Mission:Implausible.

  I suppose it was entertaining in a way, but if there's any justice in the
  world it should lead to legislation requiring Hollywood, before releasing
  and distributing any action movie, to screen it for a test audience of
  ordinarily intelligent 8-year-olds.  If the movie doesn't display at least
  enough internal consistency for an enthusiastic 8-year-old to describe the
  plot in a way that makes sense to someone who hasn't seen the movie, then
  it doesn't get released.

  Obviously a totally *huge* amount of work, including a phenomenal amount
  of meticulous attention to detail, goes into the making of a mega-dollar
  action movie.  So why is it that when it comes time to make a big-budget
  movie, the studios seem to devote far more time to choosing the music 
  that goes on the soundtrack than they do examining the script for any sort
  of logical consistency?

  I'm not claiming to want a realistic or true-to-life action film.  I'm
  totally OK with the idea that the whole genre exists to fulfill a need 
  for escapist fantasy.  I just want to walk out of the theater without
  feeling confused and vaguely insulted.  Is that *so* much to ask?

  Within the peculiar but established logic of the action movie universe,
  Mission:Impossible 2 gets off to a fairly decent plot.  The bad guys have
  stolen something important and the good guys have to resort to highly
  unusual methods to get it back.  So far so good..  About half-way through,
  though, the logical consistency of Mission:Impossible starts completely
  disintegrating, even by action-movie standards. 

  Before the end of the movie, long before you can sort out how things got
  so out of hand, the main characters are running around some sort of
  bizarre island biotech-storage facilities where white doves flutter
  artistically through the underground corridors.  By the time people start
  pulling off the rubber face masks and voice-modulators that imbue such
  magical powers of disguise, you're too bemused to congratulate the hero
  for the astonishing foresight which led him to pack all of the masks he
  couldn't have anticipated needing for his commando raid on the island
  fortress (who'd've known he'd need a mask OF HIMSELF?  or does he simply
  make them on the spot?)

  In the end, the most annoying thing about Mission:Impossible is the
  blantantly obvious attention paid to every tiny detail *except* the script.
  When the filmmaker is sufficiently in control of his medium to give us a
  shot of flames reflected in the iris and pupil of the villains eye, yet no
  attempt is made to give the characters an iota of believable motivation,
  the viewer has to feel like the target of a fair amount of contempt.
  What really bugs me is that it seems that with just a little bit of effort,
  an excellent movie could've been made, using the same action sequences,
  but obeying at least the laws of action movie logic.  Even an attempt would
  have been nice..

response 150 of 326:

Jun 1 14:59 UTC 2000

re #148: The last James Bond movie was exactly the same. I think it's 
that special effects are getting to be too easy to produce, while well-
written scripts are getting harder to write. And on top of that, most 
people that go to movies like MI2 don't really care about plot. 

response 152 of 326:

Jun 1 21:23 UTC 2000

Mike- maybe the bio-energy provided by an occupied mind (occupied by 
the Matrix, doncha know) was greater than that provided by cows... 
<grins> Just a, yanno, thought...

response 154 of 326:

Jun 1 21:59 UTC 2000

  I'm not trying to poke holes in "The Matrix"..  For what it's worth,
  my opinion is that the filmmakers of "The Matrix" gave the viewer just
  enough expository and explanatory mumbo-jumbo to keep things moving along.
  It wasn't tightly written enough to stand up to analysis after the movie
  was over, but it was never intended to do so.  The point is, that in
  "The Matrix", or any other successful action movie, the plot is well
  enough constructed to at least last for two hours or so before simply
  disintegrating under the weight of its own implausibility. 

  In my opinion this is definitely not true of Mission:Impossible 2,
  which is the primary flaw which ruined my enjoyment of the movie. 

response 156 of 326:

Jun 2 01:26 UTC 2000

IMO, plausability does not necessarily a good movie make.
Most of the time, I don't really give a damn about plot flaws.  Realism and
plausability has absolutely no meaning to me when I'm watching a movie.  I
go purely to be entertained, and neither realism nor plausability of plat
affects that entertainment value for me.

Thus, I enjoyed Mission Impossible 2

response 158 of 326:

Jun 2 01:51 UTC 2000

They weren't doves - they are pigeons.  It's a John Woo thing.

response 160 of 326:

Jun 2 02:45 UTC 2000

re 157 - well, some plot is required, and MI2 had a plot.  The plot itself
wasn't implausible, though many parts of the story were very VERY loosely
connected.

Hey, porn movies don't have plots, why should action flicks? :)

response 162 of 326:

Jun 2 11:35 UTC 2000

air-rats

response 164 of 326:

Jun 4 02:43 UTC 2000

  Saying that it's "stylized" implies that at some point someone made a
  conscious decision to make it the way it was, rather than it winding
  up that way because of laziness, incompetence, or some unfortunate
  convergence of conflicting artistic priorities.

  Besides, I'm not sure that I agree whether the issue of whether something
  is done in the style of an action movie and whether or not its plot makes
  even a little sense as a work of narrative fiction are at all linked.
  Granted, it seems like a lot of modern filmmakers seem to think they are,
  and obviously those people spend a much greater portion of their time than
  I do thinking about action movie issues, but I would argue that the 
  existence of at least moderately plausible films which are still undeniably
  action movies is a powerful counterargument.

  I guess what it comes down to is that I don't believe that sometime during
  scriptwriting (or at any other point in the production) the writer sat down
  with the director and producer and said something like:  "OK, guys, here's
  the deal..  I can either write you an action movie, *OR* I can write you a
  movie where the story makes sense.  Which will it be?"

response 166 of 326:

Jun 4 03:51 UTC 2000

 There are certainly elements like that in M:I2.  For example the only
 explanation for the otherwise inexplicable birds fluttering around the
 bio-tech facility is that director John Woo has some gratuitous fixation
 involving fluttering birds (if you have the temerity to doubt me, punish
 yourself by watching his previous Hollywood movie, "Face Off", which will
 amply illustrate Woo's pigeon fetish..)

 I think, though, that MI:2's problems go much deeper than an expository
 scene or two left on the [literal or metaphorical] cutting-room floor.

 Essentially the supposedly super-comptetent characters just make puzzlingly
 dumb decisions, decisions which are so obviously stupid, even at the time,
 that the viewer is jolted out of the story.  They're like big drum crashes
 out of rhythm..  I can't conceive of any scenes or chapters that might've
 been left out that would explain why the characters choose to act as they do.
 At the same time, though, I probably *could* come up with reasons for them
 to engage in all of same motorcycle chases, rope stunts, and gun fights
 they get into.  Those reasons would be pretty contrived, but they'd at least
 keep things moving along..

 --

 I don't want to beat this to death.  Nor do I want to single out M:I2,
 the problems I'm describing are sadly not unique to this particular film.

 I just wonder:  do even action-movie audiences *really* care so little
 about plot?  Maybe they do -- certainly if there's one thing I'd count
 on the studios to get right it'd be to understand as much as possible
 about what brings people into movies, and a zillion dollars of action
 blockbuster earnings at the box office certainly suggests they know what
 they're doing.  But maybe, just maybe, there's room for both a vestigial
 plot *and* the usual complement of explosions, harrowing aerobatic stunts,
 and kung fu..

 (yeah, I know..  that *does* sound pretty farfetched..)

response 168 of 326:

Jun 4 04:56 UTC 2000

  I actually thought about following up #166 with a note clarifying that
  contrary to what one might guess from my recent writings in this item
  I often really enjoy the totally off-the-wall "plots" of Chinese action
  movies, perhaps because they rarely even pretend to make sense.  Maybe
  what I object to is when a movie tries to act like it should make sense
  and simply fails completely..