The Mission Impossible Conundrum

Gina Carano is in talks to join the cast of Fast Six. This is of course a perfect move on the production’s part. A tough woman character is needed for that franchise to get more fans now that its not about racing cars, instead of the sexy lady characters the film is populated with.

If there’s on thing all of us here at Movie Movie can agree on, it’s that Fast Five was a masterpiece of action cinema. It worked at a fast pace, had likeable characters, and a good balance of believable and unbelievable stunts. Movies lately seem to want to choose only one path.

I call this the Mission Impossible Conundrum.

On the one hand you have Tom Cruise hanging from a wire over a pressure sensitive floor for 10 minutes and it’s one of the most memorable scenes of the 1990s. Or you have any scene in MI:2 which I couldn’t have described to you a month after seeing it.

Outlandish can be fun, but when it’s coupled with truly frightening stunt work you really are in for a treat. In the newest MI film, the most famous scene is without a doubt the building climb. If you saw this on the big screen, chances are it made you squirm. You could feel every person around you begin to sweat. It looked completely plausible. In stark contrast to this when Cruise leaps from the window the audience felt calm. It looked neat and many clapped when he landed safely, but this would have been forgettable without the climb.

Moviegoers need the slap and the punch. It seems like for every Bourne film we get 10 more close quarters fighting movies. It feels like producers are practically waving a certificate of authenticity for actual fighting styles in the audience faces. For every Transformers there are 10 more CGI porn action films. Where the producers are practically waving a checkbook in your face.

Can’t we have both?

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,