Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One - Cheap Thoughts

What does Ethan Hunt believe in? He’s been a secret agent for over 25 years, we know very little of his backstory or motivations or morals. What drives him to be who he is? I imagine these are all questions Tom Cruise has asked while making this picture. He dedicates so much of himself to the craft and over the past 20 years has built up his own team of talented and trustworthy people to help make the best films possible, he is the best and he works with the best to make the best. Yet there has been such a focus on the technical side of filmmaking that here in the winter years of this franchise Cruise & Co have begun to look inwards. They know how to construct the perfect spy movie featuring Ethan Hunt, but why does Hunt do it apart from simply because he is the protagonist of a spy movie?

Ethan has people he cares about but almost seems like he doesn’t want to, because in his field to love people is to eventually lose people. The first Mission: Impossible sees Hunt lose his entire team and for a while there he was on a rotating cast of squadmates. He tried to have a normal life in Mission: Impossible III and all that did was put an ordinary person in danger. It wasn’t until Rogue Nation that he realised though he closed himself off to others, they didn’t do the same. His teammates trust him and care for him and to block them off only puts them in more danger. Ethan caring for people drives him, it makes him work harder and makes him do insane things in the name of protecting others.

“I can promise you, that your life will always matter to me more than my own”.

Ethan doesn’t view the world as binary, as one way or another, save this person or that person. He always finds a way, he does the unexpected, when told to go left or right, he goes straight ahead. So what could his ultimate enemy be? An algorithm that predicts what you’re going to do based on what’s been done before, and a person who knows the only way to beat Ethan is to hurt those closest to him. He’s pushed into a corner and is left swinging wildly hoping for an escape, which is not uncommon of Hunt to go in with no plan, just hope, but when someone is able to predict even the unpredictable what do you do then?

Mission: Impossible II had a villain who was able to predict every move Ethan would make, no matter how absurd, and that always sat wrong with me. No man should be able to predict Ethan’s next move. But an all-knowing pseudo-god artificial intelligence? That could crack it. The biggest threat to the future of filmmaking is also the biggest threat in the text of the film. They’re left without relying on technology for cheats and shortcuts, they only have each other and their natural talent, yet Cruise/Hunt will never ask others to risk more for the job than he will himself.

-Danny

Nimona - Cheap Thoughts

It’s no wonder that Disney were so easy and willing to kill this picture off. A film so openly Queer in its characters and storytelling, while also presenting the story in unique animation? I suppose it’s far too radical a film for the Mouse^tm even when tempered with a simple narrative. After the purchase of Fox and thus Blue Sky Studios, the initial company producing the film, Nimona was one of the many projects cancelled in the merger, however they were fortunately enough saved by Annapurna Pictures & Netflix who would continue to produce the film and distribute it respectively.

Nimona is a sci-fi/fantasy blend set in a world with Medival Britain aesthetics combined with futuristic technology and modern behaviours. Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) and his plucky-yet unwanted-sidekick Nimona (Chloe Grace Moretz) are viewed as villains in the eyes of society despite being innocent people, one of whom framed for a crime they didn’t commit and the other simply presenting as a villain is enough to determine them so. Together the two will prove their innocence, expose the true evil of the society they live in and hopefully make the world and each other better along the way.

The titular Nimona is very much deserving of that title, being incredibly entertaining, extroverted, and exaggerated in all of the right ways. While most of the characters are humbler in their animations, her expressions & movements are very traditionally cartoony, taking full advantage of their medium in a way many 3D Animated films seem embarrassed to do so. Though where the subtly lies is with her thematic resonance. Her abilities to shape shift, to change her body in ways that make her more comfortable very much has a subtext of gender identity, very clearly described by her creator ND Stevenson a non-binary/bigender writer & artist saying this was an intentional decision on his part. While the more overt queer representation comes from the second protagonist Ballister who within his first scene is shown to be in a homosexual relationship that gets torn apart by the events of the film, and the two now see their relationship shunned by society.

Some would complain that Nimona does have a basic narrative, which is does, many of the beats can be seen coming from a mile away from even the youngest of audiences. Though truly that doesn’t lead to major issues until the climax of the film, which doesn’t feel all too impactful with how predictable the film has been up until then. Though a complex plot is clearly not what the film is going for. Their goals were to express interesting characters and their queer stories through unique animation and that is something they have achieved with ease.

-Danny