Ethan Hunt and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the world's fate at stake and dark forces from Ethan's past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan must consider that nothing can matter more than his mission—not even the lives of those he cares about most.
02 Apr Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
The Women
I’m sensitive to situations where women are the drivers.
What we usually have in these kinds of films is a superhuman guy, often going ‘rogue’ (a movie term) dealing with bad guys. There’s a minor shift here where the opponent is not a secretive, well financed evil group. It is an AI, enabled consciousness. I think in the followup, that will matter as an escalation of the system he’s up against.
But far more significant to me is the move under McQuarrie to humanise Ethan. They’ve done so by allowing him to move among women, and women at his level. Here, we have the primary adversary is the White Widow. We’ve been introduced to a nameless pre-IMF love interest, so the physical bad guy is an echo of her. (I think this is new.). We have Ilsa from the previous two films, a genuine love interest. And Grace, a new one. In the near background is Paris, who betrays her masters for Ethan and dies for it.
The plot is pretty simple, revolving around a macGuffin. We have the standard CIA and MI6 machinations, but they are passive here. What’s complex is the movement of the female pieces. Not a shred of sexualised bodies. Not a hint of subservience.
We used to have a guy doing what is right more or less alone against all odds. The point is that he was alone, save his two buddies. Now he is humanised, has serious emotional baggage, and while he has a male adversary, his movements are primarily within female space.
Excellent, and applauded.
Posted in 2024
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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