"Accomplishments"
In theaters: The new Mission: Impossible movie, Dead Reckoning (Part One), is well-titled given that the team is truly running this mission blind, improvising like they never have before, real seat of your pants stuff. That's a little bit off-model, but I'm hoping for a return to form in Part Two. The big bad is ripped from the headlines, a sentient A.I. that has designs on world domination and some slick, eccentric agents of its own (including Pom "Mantis" Klementieff as an anime girl assassin), forcing the IMF to go more and more analog, with the promise of tech solutions that feel more like the TV series than all the hacking in the movies. Because of the dreaded 2-part structure (what is it with 2023 and Part Ones?), this chapter is essentially a chase for an elaborate MacGuffin, relentless but well-paced, with all the quality stunts you expect from a Tom Cruise production. All the publicity was about that motorcycle parachute jump, but it's far from the best set piece (for me? the climax on the Orient Express). But I think what helps the film is how much humor has been injected into this one (perhaps to cover the MacGuffinism and the heavier moments). Simon Pegg has usually been the comic relief and that's been most of it, but here there's a lot of fun to be had besides. The higher-ups who can't believe the IMF is a thing, the comedy double act of the two government agents sent after Ethan Hunt (they're in their own buddy cop movie and very funny), Ethan's general tiredness and his having to train a new member of the team who isn't adept at EVERYthing yet (Hayley Atwell, who is awesome in this as an international jewel thief). As usual, a great time at the movies, and though a Part One, it satisfyingly feels at the end like things have been accomplished. And as we near a finale for the film series, they also go into some of the back story of Ethan and lore of the IMF.
At home: It seems that every time a new Mission: Impossible movie comes out, I chug a season of the old show. If Seasons 2 and 3 were the height of the program, with its iconic cast, Season 4, though it has lost both Rollin and Cinnamon (Landau and Bain) shows the confidence of a hit show. It doesn't skip a beat, with Leonard Nimoy very ably filling in for Landau as the Great Paris. He's probably getting old scripts meant for Rollin Hand, but Paris comes into his own when they inject a bit of magic in there. The character is more showy and has more fun than his predecessor, setting him apart. No one replaces Bain though, and we're instead greeted by various female guest-stars of varying quality (Lee Meriwether makes repeat appearances, happily) based on the "type" required. As we head into the 70s, the show feels more comfortable with sexual innuendo and violence, with most episodes ending on the bad guy getting shot off camera (this IMF is responsible for a LOT of killing), but the biggest sign of the show's confidence is that it offers several two-parters and even a THREE-parter. "The Falcon" is in fact a high point because it dares to have the mission go tits up! For once, we're not sure if IMF team members won't be captured, killed and/or disavowed. It also features one of two animal agents this season, which is something I wish the movies were bold enough to do. Mission: Impossible could have floundered after losing its main cast, but Jim Phelps bounced back and found a new stash a glossies to drop on his glass table, no problem.
We know Soderbergh can do heists that go right (the Ocean's series), but in No Sudden Move, things go very wrong indeed. As I'm wont to say in these cases: That's... a fiasco. Deeeeetroit, 1954. Three criminals are hired to get a certain document, using a compromised company man to get at it, but things evolve (or devolve) greatly from there as Don Cheadle's cool-as-balls thief wants more and more money to get his life in order. No one can be trusted (or can they?) in this thing, and that's part of the joy of it, a fine, fine cast (Benicio del Toro, David Harbour, Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, John Hamm, Ray Liotta...) double crossing each other as the stakes rise higher and higher. These are thieves we can root for, and the true villain is elsewhere. You WANT to punch the air (as with an Ocean's film), so it's deflating seeing where the characters end up, but that's just the kind of story being told. The fish eye lens is a bit of a weird choice.
Books: With the third book of the Time Wars series, The Pimpernel Plot, Simon Hawke gets more brazen about injecting fictional historical personages into History. While previous books' Ivanhoe, Robin Hood and Three Musketeers had some historical basis, the Scarlet Pimpernel is the Baroness Orczy's pure literary creation. And yet, when an apparently real Lord Blakeney is killed due to a time agent's accidental actions, Finn Delaney is tasked with impersonating him and carrying out the Pimpernel's ferrying of aristocrats out of Revolutionary France, and if he can, resisting his beautiful wife's allure. Has Hawke accepted that Finn and Andre are more interesting than his original hero, Lucas Priest? Maybe because Luke is very much sidelined in this. it would be a simple mission and retread of Orczy's material if not for the secret aftermath of the previous novel and the elusive Mongoose showing up with plans within plans of his own. It's not a confusing read, but it's one that requires a lot of exposition, some of which to be proven untrue anyway, and like a story out of the Silver Age of comics, the final chapter is a big talky explanation. From this point on, the books start with an explanation of what the Time Wars are, and how time travel works, the clearest it's been, and it doesn't have to clutter up the narrative itself. Small mercy given the story already has a lot of information to dump on the reader. That said, I do like the prose and the featured characters, and though we JUST had a story set in France, this one feels very different.
Comics: When I picked up Jurassic League, I was hoping Daniel Warren Johnson (Do a Powerbomb!) was doing the art as well as the writing. His co-writer Juan Gedeon actually supplies the art (except for the disastrously ugly third issue, which undermines the project considerably, but it also gets a bit simplified when they drop inkers on him, so I guess he couldn't keep up with the schedule), and has a style not dissimilar to Johnson's (who still did the covers). The concept is a kooky Elseworlds take on the Justice League and various villains, where the supers set is represented by humanoid dinosaurs in a world that combines primeval creatures and cave people ("little beasts"). I'm not sure we ever get beyond that initial joke, however. The plot has the League come together for the first time to fight a dino-Darkseid, just like the New52's first Justice League story (NOT a classic), and there are moments reinterpreted from other sources (including BvS, another NOT a classic). Some good jokes along the way (Aquapterix being the most fun to play with, I think), the action is certainly fierce, but the story is necessarily derivative, and not derivative of particularly beloved material. The ending seems to hint at something and then pulls back, so I'm bothered by that too. Dinosaurs + superheroes + this particular creative team should have = gold, but it's a more of a bronze.
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