Oh, those boys and their toys
Since the water was turned off for repairs in our building today, I left early to the city and went to see "Mission Impossible 3", to start up the summer blockbuster season.
Item! Before the movie, there was a trailer for the coming-up Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy "The Break-Up". I had already watched the trailer for this movie at the Apple trailer site, but I wonder what has happened here, since instead of being a movie about a woman who breaks up with her stupid boyfriend and then competes with him, this movie seemed to be about some lovable schlub who is annoyed by some of the behaviour and attitude that his girlfriend and her faggy brother give him. When she realizes that she is about to lose him for this, she engages in a project to make things better with him, and this involves shaving her beaver to make her sexier. I wonder why I had earlier misunderstood the premise of this movie so completely.
Item! In the main movie, agent Ethan Hunt is back to defend the world against the menace of the blonde Germanic supercriminals and their upper-class mannerisms. I try not to totally spoil this exciting thriller and its surprising twists and turns for my readers who intend to go see it, other than say that the whole movie was generally rather stupid and unexciting, and the whole plot including the McGuffin and the hero's second chance of redemption after the first failure and the villain's magic weapon and the countermeasure to the said magic weapon were in this movie even more idiotic than I expected. At least this movie didn't reach the level of Moonraker in its dreamlike surrealism and schizophrenic logic of cause and effect.
But if you are sensitive to spoilers, stop reading now. Don't say I didn't warn you. OK, that is now out of the way. Once you have seen the trailer, you have seen pretty much everything that this movie has to offer plot- and actionwise, except for a couple of technically nice scenes that demonstrated how far CGI has come. There is delightfully little of any kind of mask play which I think is stupid, even though not quite as stupid as in old Batman comics, where Batman can mask himself to look exactly like some guy whose height and body composition is nothing like his, and wear the whole Batman uniform under the facemask and clothes. (You'd think that Bats would get pretty hot in there.) There are also a few aspects in this movie that I fully expect Steve Sailer to deservingly skewer if/when he reviews this film: once you have seen the movie, you know exactly which ones I mean. For example, once you remember what is the Hollywood's basic explanation why Muslims ever do anything bad, certain other plot twists shouldn't be that difficult to guess.
Maybe I shall next make a few observations about the proper henchman tactics, which apply more generally that just in this movie. First of all, assume that you are chasing an unarmed fleeing helicopter in your state-of-the-art attack chopper and an array of heatseeking missiles. Now, let's assume the other chopper flies through a field of giant wind power rotors. What do you do? Listen carefully: do not, I mean seriously fucking do not try to follow your prey there to test if you can also repeat their aerial stunts of flying through the giant spinning rotors. Jesus, the whole point of having a helicopter in the first place is that you can rise higher and fly above obstacles instead of through them. From this higher vantage point, you could also shoot your missiles a lot better, ja?
You might also think that by now, when some surveillance camera goes black, the proper behaviour at the control room is not to wonder about the various ways that the camera may have broken by itself, but to assume that you are under attack. If you are put to guard duty with three other men to escort a dangerous prisoner who is tied up on a gurney, this is not the time to stand in some kind of parade formation face sternly ahead like you were ready for an inspection. At least one of these men should be paying attention to this dangerous prisoner so that he doesn't, you know, wiggle himself free or anything. You'd think that this would be pretty basic stuff already for every organization of villainy, but apparently not.
But then again, it's not like the actions of the superiors on either side were that much smarter either. Let's see, we have a terrorist supercriminal who the U.S. government hasn't been able to locate in the past ten years, but the Vatican still knows where to send his invitation for a charity event. I'd say that these guys just aren't looking hard enough. And you know, dudes, when you are transporting some captured supervillain from point A to point B, you don't have to be so honored by his aristocratic presence that you have to take the most scenic and exotic route possible.
On the supervillain's side, once again there was a total lack of any kind of threat assessment on how many bodyguards one should have escorting the supervillain and how many henchmen he should place in the evil villainy hideout. Either the good guys won't find your evil hideout, in which case you don't really need any henchmen, or they will find it, in which case your men should actually be ready for a fight, and you should have enough men to realistically have a chance against the attacker that you can realistically expect to face, yes? Even better, wouldn't it be time to structure the evil organization on a more cell-like basis, so that if your leader if captured, you don't have to engage in a massive operation to set him free? Imagine a more anarchic and networked bottom-up organization with no permanent leaders at all! That would be, like, more in the spirit of this new century. You could start on this path by reading "Emergence" by Steven Johnson.
Item! Before the movie, there was a trailer for the coming-up Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy "The Break-Up". I had already watched the trailer for this movie at the Apple trailer site, but I wonder what has happened here, since instead of being a movie about a woman who breaks up with her stupid boyfriend and then competes with him, this movie seemed to be about some lovable schlub who is annoyed by some of the behaviour and attitude that his girlfriend and her faggy brother give him. When she realizes that she is about to lose him for this, she engages in a project to make things better with him, and this involves shaving her beaver to make her sexier. I wonder why I had earlier misunderstood the premise of this movie so completely.
Item! In the main movie, agent Ethan Hunt is back to defend the world against the menace of the blonde Germanic supercriminals and their upper-class mannerisms. I try not to totally spoil this exciting thriller and its surprising twists and turns for my readers who intend to go see it, other than say that the whole movie was generally rather stupid and unexciting, and the whole plot including the McGuffin and the hero's second chance of redemption after the first failure and the villain's magic weapon and the countermeasure to the said magic weapon were in this movie even more idiotic than I expected. At least this movie didn't reach the level of Moonraker in its dreamlike surrealism and schizophrenic logic of cause and effect.
But if you are sensitive to spoilers, stop reading now. Don't say I didn't warn you. OK, that is now out of the way. Once you have seen the trailer, you have seen pretty much everything that this movie has to offer plot- and actionwise, except for a couple of technically nice scenes that demonstrated how far CGI has come. There is delightfully little of any kind of mask play which I think is stupid, even though not quite as stupid as in old Batman comics, where Batman can mask himself to look exactly like some guy whose height and body composition is nothing like his, and wear the whole Batman uniform under the facemask and clothes. (You'd think that Bats would get pretty hot in there.) There are also a few aspects in this movie that I fully expect Steve Sailer to deservingly skewer if/when he reviews this film: once you have seen the movie, you know exactly which ones I mean. For example, once you remember what is the Hollywood's basic explanation why Muslims ever do anything bad, certain other plot twists shouldn't be that difficult to guess.
Maybe I shall next make a few observations about the proper henchman tactics, which apply more generally that just in this movie. First of all, assume that you are chasing an unarmed fleeing helicopter in your state-of-the-art attack chopper and an array of heatseeking missiles. Now, let's assume the other chopper flies through a field of giant wind power rotors. What do you do? Listen carefully: do not, I mean seriously fucking do not try to follow your prey there to test if you can also repeat their aerial stunts of flying through the giant spinning rotors. Jesus, the whole point of having a helicopter in the first place is that you can rise higher and fly above obstacles instead of through them. From this higher vantage point, you could also shoot your missiles a lot better, ja?
You might also think that by now, when some surveillance camera goes black, the proper behaviour at the control room is not to wonder about the various ways that the camera may have broken by itself, but to assume that you are under attack. If you are put to guard duty with three other men to escort a dangerous prisoner who is tied up on a gurney, this is not the time to stand in some kind of parade formation face sternly ahead like you were ready for an inspection. At least one of these men should be paying attention to this dangerous prisoner so that he doesn't, you know, wiggle himself free or anything. You'd think that this would be pretty basic stuff already for every organization of villainy, but apparently not.
But then again, it's not like the actions of the superiors on either side were that much smarter either. Let's see, we have a terrorist supercriminal who the U.S. government hasn't been able to locate in the past ten years, but the Vatican still knows where to send his invitation for a charity event. I'd say that these guys just aren't looking hard enough. And you know, dudes, when you are transporting some captured supervillain from point A to point B, you don't have to be so honored by his aristocratic presence that you have to take the most scenic and exotic route possible.
On the supervillain's side, once again there was a total lack of any kind of threat assessment on how many bodyguards one should have escorting the supervillain and how many henchmen he should place in the evil villainy hideout. Either the good guys won't find your evil hideout, in which case you don't really need any henchmen, or they will find it, in which case your men should actually be ready for a fight, and you should have enough men to realistically have a chance against the attacker that you can realistically expect to face, yes? Even better, wouldn't it be time to structure the evil organization on a more cell-like basis, so that if your leader if captured, you don't have to engage in a massive operation to set him free? Imagine a more anarchic and networked bottom-up organization with no permanent leaders at all! That would be, like, more in the spirit of this new century. You could start on this path by reading "Emergence" by Steven Johnson.
Comments