#I don’t want jj abrams

[ripegreenfruit]

#the dark inescapable cloud #really harshes my vibe #Star Wars #return of the jedi #anti sequel trilogy #I watch #Andor #and #The Mandalorian #and I want that level of post-ROTJ content #legends is already one alternate timeline #let’s just comic book this thing and have multiple timelines #I don’t want jj abrams #I don’t want jake skywalker #but Poe & Finn should be there #and porgs #limetime

[salteytakesonmanga]

Your explanation about retconing made me think Oda's way of writing is exactly what bring people to think he has every single thing planed down from the start, even if he didn't.

The story has been going on for 20 years, and Oda himself has admitedly had ideas along the way that he added. But the fact he's still able to connect every new idea instead of having to retcon things is what makes one piece feel so perfectly planned and tied.

Anon, you innocently sent me this ask to share your thoughts and unknowingly triggered one of my rants. I’m sorry/thank you.

Anon is referring to this post.

Oda is just a good writer! He is good at the craft of writing! Even if you don’t like the story (I’m assuming you do, but for people who don’t…) it’s just WELL WRITTEN. People really aren’t used to seeing good writing anymore, to seeing tropes deployed effectively and having plot lines actually connect. This isn’t just me being cranky and old, it’s just truth. People are talking about this in film, TV, books… One Piece has been around so long that it comes from a generation of storytelling that is vastly different from our modern media landscape.

I think people are burned out on the way modern storytelling never delivers (looking at you, JJ Abrams) or constantly jerks people around to elicit a reaction, all for the sake of nabbing that viral moment. When they see Oda deploy a trope or a storytelling device they’re immediately suspicious and fearful that it’ll turn into another unsatisfying gotcha. They rush to look for proof that it’s either all part of a detailed master plan, or it’s just a cheap trick to sell more issues.

In both cases, people are looking for a reason to be LESS INVESTED in the story. If he has a master plan, they don’t need to get worried or excited because it’s all heading to some inevitable conclusion that’s been clearly telegraphed and once you’ve cracked the code then you can already tell what the ending will be, so you don’t actually have to care. If he’s winging it, then the story is just a sequence of loosely connected meaningless scenes whose only purpose is to get you hype about a plot leading nowhere, so you don’t actually have to care.

And it breaks my fucking heart.

When it comes to One Piece, so many people are insistent that One Piece is EITHER 100% planned in advance down to every minute detail, or Oda is completely winging the whole thing. But the real answer is somewhere in between, in some muddy grey area that people find really unsatisfying. They want one clear answer that they can hold up as “The Right One,” but life is not made up of black and white answers.

Honestly it makes me really sad that people can read ALL THIS - pirates are evil except actually pirates are good and the Marines are evil except the Marines are trying to protect civilians by keeping countries stable so that's good except the rulers are evil tyrants so that's bad except when they’re not and then they’re good but only sometimes and… - and what they come away with from it is, “Okay but what’s the RIGHT answer.”

The thing that makes One Piece feel like it’s so cohesive despite Oda constantly changing his mind and making shit up is that he has a very strong and clear idea about what’s actually important to the story and what’s flexible. Because he has that as a guide, he can add the Shichibukai and change Vivi from a villain to a princess and make up who Ace’s parent is without diluting what he wants to say.

That’s what it MEANS to be a writer. Foreshadowing isn’t “boring,” it’s good writing. A plot twist you didn’t see isn’t “cheap,” it’s good writing. Fleshing out a backstory isn’t “reconning,” it’s good writing.

#anon ask #asked and answered #saltey takes on one piece #sorry to bombard y'all with these walls of text #saltey says #<- is the tag to block if you don't want to see them

[urrockstar-xe]

never enough - j.m x fem!reader

posted nov 2nd, 2023 12:16 am

hey, sorry i ghosted, I'm not doing to hot but here's something, I'm trying a little November challenge where i try and cope with life things where i write an imagine/blurb inspired by something that happened during my day, here's an argument i had with my mommy in a jj fic lol this isn't my best work but i hope u like it :3

this includes wording stating that the reader's hair is a texture that is easy to play with and the use of y/n and probably inaccurate JJ but i needed his comfort sue me

summary: How do you deal with having to have the very same (or at least very similar) conversations with your loved ones that involve what you're currently going through? Because that's the exact problem you’ve been having with JJ. angst to fluff??? kinda? hurt/comfort? idk

masterlist

wordcount: 1k

“You never do anything to show that you love me, JJ! You throw your arm around my shoulder and call it a fucking day”

Eventually what once was calm and civil and even mature conversations turn into screaming matches.

“I don’t know what else you fucking want from me, Y/n!” JJ’s voice bounced off the walls of the chateau which was luckily empty due to the small fire in the back.

“JJ, I expressed what I needed, I used my words and my actions to show and tell you exactly what I needed and you still couldn’t do me one small favor? I just wanted you to run your fingers through my hair a few times is that so fucking hard?” Your own voice was wavering in volume, sometimes louder and sometimes quiet, defeated even. 

“I listen when you vent, I do better when we have a problem, I even fucking cancel my plans to spend time with you, nothing I do is ever fucking enough for you!” and there it was, the words slipping out of your dear boyfriend’s mouth before he could even think about it, the words that thrown in your face so very often, the words that made you question everything about yourself

He was trying, he was listening and he was being incredibly patient and understanding with you.

The look of regret from his words alone was enough to realize that. 

Until that gross feeling of pride came onto you, possessing your entire being with the rage you’ve had building inside of you for months.

“Fuck you, JJ. fuck you, because I got upset with you and when I tried to walk away and blow off steam you got pissed and bitchy and didn’t fucking let me, and then when I explained my issue to you, you gave me a fucking attitude.” Your words were fast now, spewing out like a soda when you shake it too hard.

“I needed you! And I told you that! Just like you asked me to! How am I supposed to properly communicate with you when you tell me one thing and then turn around and do the fucking opposite!” it was less of a question and more of an accusation but at this point, it was hard to care.

You had tried responsibly talking to him, getting to a better place with him, but it wasn’t getting anywhere. Your relationship with JJ getting heavier on your shoulders and piling what smelt like loads of shit onto what you’ve already been struggling with.

“Y/n, baby-” JJ started but you were already out the door, feeling the guilt from ignoring him as you walked away yet still ignoring his calls even as your friends called out at the sight of you leaving what was supposed to be a night of freedom for the pogues.

When the next day came around the avoiding calls started, when JJ and Y/n got into a fight it caused tension in the entire friend group. There's a reason “pogues don’t date pogues” is such a big rule for you and your friends.

It wasn’t a rift it was just a fear, a fear of losing everything you all had,

all that you guys had. 

But you couldn’t deal with the confrontation today, so you turned off your ringer and went about your day as normal, morning routine, work, go home, homework.

5 pm rolled around and you thought that maybe they had given up (feeding your delusional anxieties and fears at no fault of the pogues but still)

Then there was the knock on your door, and then another after you ignored the first,

This pattern repeated until eventually, you sighed, getting up from your bed to go down the hall and answer who you knew was your impatient boyfriend at the door. 

“Hey, beautiful!” JJ’s voice was quiet as if he was astonished at the fact that you actually opened the door. The array of flowers sat loosely in his hands before he watched you look down at them and back up at him, wordlessly. 

“Oh! This is for you, I uh, wanted to apologize.” JJ was almost stumbling over his words as he went to hand you the flowers, carefully examining you as you took them and moved back into your home, 

He followed, mumbling more apologies before you set the small bouquet on the kitchen counter and turned to him. 

“Listen, Y/n, You were right, I did ask you to be more clear on things you need from me and you were, and I, I dismissed you completely, I was just drunk and all over the place and I’m overworked like hell lately but these aren’t excuses and I’m sorry, my sweet girl, I really mean it” JJ’s words were calculated, he had thought about them all day and he did mean it,

despite this, there was still an aching feeling in your chest,

and the confusion and guilt you felt for still being upset about this stupid mistake caused the recurring tears to well up in your eyes as you stared at JJ’s chest, avoiding his eyes.

“Oh, baby” he whispered, quiet and delicate like if he spoke any louder you’d fall apart in front of him.

Carefully, JJ pulled you into him, not knowing what else to do but you let him, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt as sobs wrecked through your body, broken apologies barely being heard through your tears and shaky breaths but JJ still held you, 

Playing with your hair and shushing you and whispering “It's okay, baby” to every little apology that slipped past your lips. 

You stood with each other like this until you eventually calmed down, JJ had managed to lean against the counter and in turn, get you to lean on him.

“I’ll do better baby I promise” He whispered into your hair, hoping you could hear it through the small pains of your hiccups from crying.

“I’m sorry there's always something wrong with me” you mumbled back, the soft laugh from JJ catching you off guard as he pulled you back just enough to hold your tear-stained cheeks in his hands.

“There’s always somethin’ wrong with us, we’re pogues.” He teased, earning a quiet scoff from you before he shut you up with a soft kiss pressed to your swollen lips and then one on your nose, and another on your forehead. 

“We’ll be okay, pretty lady, we’ll get through it,” 

#jj maybank x you #jj mayback x reader #jj maybank x y/n #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank x pogue!reader #jj mayback imagine #outer banks imagines #jj maybank #jj maybank imagines #jj maybank x fem!reader #jj maybank angst

[ssahopelessly]

The Found Part of Lost

Synopsis: When on the way back to the station, you and Spencer find a friend on the side of the road.

A/N: another “this was supposed to be a drabble” oneshot. Very soft, very cute. I tried my best but it feels rushed and it’s missing a certain sense of something.

Warnings: discussions of Star Trek, reader driving, lost puppy, Spencer driving

Word Count: 1k

Masterlist

“I’m just saying that if Spock and Captain Kirk were in love, one of them would’ve said so.” I rolled my eyes at Spencer. He was unwilling to see the signs I clearly saw between two characters.

“Spencer- when Future Spock meets Kirk in JJ Abrams 2009 Star Trek, before he even says ‘I am Spock’ he says ‘I have been, and always shall be, your friend.’! That sounds like marriage vows!” From the edge of my peripheral vision, I could see Spencer roll his eyes at me now. This would be something we would just continue to argue back and forth about. It was friendly banter though, considering our line of work and the stakes of our everyday lives.

Currently, we were driving back to the local station after visiting the first location they had found a body in this case, and Spencer needed to check something that didn’t show in any of the photos taken by the CSI Unit photographer. We were on some back road, nothing but trees in our view, a few houses tucked in the middle of them. The two lane road was mostly empty, except for the occasional car that would brake in front of us to turn into a driveway. It was still early evening though, a cool breeze blowing in through the window as we continued down the road. But the further we went, I noticed something running along the edge of the pavement where it met the dirt and grass on the side. “Oh no!” I cooed out, pulling the SUV over, immediately turning on the hazards as I cut the engine.

“What are you doing?” Spencer started sitting up in his seat, simultaneously unfastening his seatbelt.

“Do you not see it?” I was exiting the vehicle now, Spencer also exiting from his side. A few feet ahead of us, was a puppy sniffing and walking alongside the road. “Hey buddy.” My voice dropped a bit as I lowered down to the ground, trying to get the puppy’s attention. It looked back at us, stopping in its steps as I got closer. Slowing down, I went into a squat, holding my hand out for it. “Hey, where’s your home?”

“I don’t think-“ Looking over my shoulder, I tried to hush Spencer as the puppy slowly approached me. It stopped in front of me as I held my hand towards its nose. It was sniffing the surface before lowering its head a bit more. Testing the boundary, I started to pet its head, brushing the fur back as it eased into my touch. “What if it has a disease?” Spencer was worrying behind me, trying to look over my shoulder at the interaction.

“It’s a baby Spencer.” With both hands, I went to pick up the puppy, quickly holding it to my chest. “Do you think Hotch will let us-“

“Us?!” I was caught in the puppy dog, doe eye stare. It was so helpless, triggering the nerve in me that wanted to take care of such a small thing. Walking past him, I made my way towards the back of the SUV.

“Spencer, I need you to drive back to the station.”

“Me?!”

“Yes Spencer, you!” In the trunk, I found a discarded box for it to ride in along with a towel that I could use to line the interior of the box. Taking the passenger seat, I navigated buckling my seatbelt with the box in my lap, the puppy looking over the sides to assess its surroundings. Spencer watched me from the driver's seat now, shaking his head as he started the car. “What?”

“Hotch isn’t going to let you take him on the jet.” Picking him up from the box, I confirmed whether it was a boy or a girl before looking back to Spencer, trying to put on my best puppy eyes in return.

“Why not?” I began to pout, running my hand over the back of his head as he shook with anxiety in the box. “What should we name him?”

Putting the car back in drive, we continued driving towards the station again. “Because a FBI jet is no place for a puppy and besides, he’s probably lost from around here. You would have to get a vet assessment before you leave, we should just drop it off at a shelter.” Ignoring the many facts he was bringing up, I looked back to the puppy in my lap.

“I think we should name him Spock.” I was picturing it now, taking the little guy home to my apartment back in D.C. How fun it would be to have a little fur baby running around the house.

“Okay, you’re not naming him after a half human, half vulcan.” He was trying to reason with me now despite insisting he needed to go to a shelter.

“What about Jim?” I voiced, thinking it was ironic that Captain Kirk often wore the yellow uniform while this puppy had golden fur. Things were only clicking into sense in my head.

“A dog named Jim?”

“After James Tiberius Kirk-“

“I know the connection but- Hotch isn’t going to let you keep this puppy, I’m sorry.”

Spencer was in fact wrong. When we returned to the station, Hotch did immediately just look at the two of us and the golden fur wrapped in the towel. It was a quick “no,” but as I explained the story, he started to soften ever so slightly under the stern exterior he often tried to exude. We reached a deal in that we would contact the local shelter and veterinarian, give a description of the dog and where we found him. When all work at the station had been wrapped up, Spencer and I would take him to the vet so they could scan for a chip in hopes of finding the owner.

The case closed after three days and on our way to the jet, we picked up the first puppy to board the BAU jet, a welcomed passenger on our way back to Quantico. When a quiet atmosphere took over the cabin of the jet, I couldn’t help but notice how Jim had curled up at Spencer’s feet, both asleep. I smug smirk moved over my lips and I tried to fight off the pride it was giving me, the sense of knowing better. “Don’t let this be a repeating occurrence.” Hotch spoke beside me, looking over another case file in this lap.

“It won’t. I promise.” Silence settled over us again.

“You really named the little guy Jim?” I nodded, meeting his gaze when I looked back over to him. “I’m guessing after Captain Kirk.”

“The best Jim.” A laugh escaped with his exhale, a smile moving over his lips now.

Tell me what you think here!

#criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid fandom #oneshot #aaron hotchner #ssahopelessly

[clingyduoapologist]

hello!! I was redirected here by bronzetomatoes after inquiring about kylo ren hate (I think the hitting him with a car post is so funny and also i know so little about star wars. it adds to the comedy tbh) and i was told if i want the funny/thorough answer that you’re the place to go. so if you’d like to, go absolutely off the walls about it :)

My friend have you come to the right place.

SO BASICALLY Star Wars is a story about how 3 good movies collectively altered the course of human history by making just like, stupid amounts of money right?

So obviously, Disney was like “I need to get in on that” and bought Star Wars and then started working on their own trilogy. If you’re a Star Wars fan, this is pretty cool! New planets, new character, new lore! It was pretty awesome. The trailer for the first movie in this new trilogy came out and everyone loved it! So much interesting things!!! A female protagonist?!?!? Wow this is so awesome!!!

The problem was the movie isn’t very good.

Don’t get me wrong the force awakens is fine, definitely the best movie in the trilogy, the problem is that it wasn’t good enough, not for most audiences, and especially not for Disney. So they fired JJ Abrams, who directed the force awakens, and hired Ryan Johnson to direct the second movie: the last Jedi.

I fucking hate the last Jedi.

And so did like half the world, and what followed the release of the film was probably the worst fucking time in the history of life on earth to be a Star Wars fan, as basically the entire fanbase devolved into a civil war between last jedi haters and last jedi defenders.

But amongst all the fighting, another group was beginning to form, one that had began in the shadows of the Force Awakens, but was now bolstered by the release of the last Jedi, a shadowy and secretive threat that was about to rear it’s ugly head:

Reylo.

Now, Reylo, as a ship is like, fine? It’s literally just the most barebones enemies to lovers ship you can imagine.

But Reylo as a fanbase? That’s where things start to get interesting. Because what Reylo lacked in character and writing, it made up for in hot fucking actors (I mean it’s fucking Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver what did you expect). this in turn led to a vicious cycle where Reylo fans were extremely uh… motivated… and also had basically blank canvases to build off of. This lead to the Reylo fandom becoming almost a separate entity to the Star Wars fandom, which only further boosted their forces.

But what made Reylo infamous was the scale. These guys were loud, and were prepared to rip anyone to shreds for even the smallest injustices. It was a dog eat dog world, and one that maintained itself through a constant state of war.

But setting Reylo fans aside for a second, you may be wondering “Okay but what does any of that have to do with Kylo Ren?” Which, sure fair question. But to answer that, we have to look at Reylo not as a ship, but as characters.

Now, Rey, as far as protagonists go, is… fine? She’s definitely screwed majorly by being in a completely unplanned trilogy of movies that wasn’t interest in making her a compelling and likable character, but like even then I’d be lying if I said that she wasn’t at the very least interesting. And again like I’ll take any excuse to see Daisy Ridl- sorry what, anyways point is Rey Palpatine skywalker kenobi whatever is a perfectly mediocre protagonist and thus, while sexist assholes may try to convince you that she burned the world’s crops and poisoned the town water supply, truth be told I and many others fans became at worst indifferent, and best charmed by her.

But Kylo Ren? Kylo Motherfucking Ren? Ben SWOLO himself?

This man makes me violent.

And it’s not because he’s more well written then Rey, or even because his writing is particularly worse, as far as I’m concerned they’re both hand in unlovable in in terms of writing quality.

The problem with Kylo is that he could of been so much better, so easily, and yet people still fawned over him.

Like, this guy is Darth Vader’s Fucking Grandson, Luke Skywalker’s Nephew, Son of Han Solo and Leia Skywalker, 1 hot actor removed from self insert character, and yet these writers fucking struggle, each and every time, to figure out what to do with him. Like they are fucking racking their brains trying to make a guy with one of the sickest lightsaber designs ever and a badass outfit all being acted by ADAM FUCKING DRIVER “interesting.”

And PEOPLE FUCKING FELL FOR IT. Like if you go into almost any even slightly sad tag in ao3 I guarantee there will be at least one kylo fic. Like I can not stress to you enough how many people fucking lost their MINDS!!!

FOR HIM

And remember, this is all ON TOP of the fawning that Reylo stans had already been doing. Which only made things worse, if you can even believe that.

And so ever since Rise of Skywalker managed to drag the sequel trilogy’s tired, burning, mangled corpse over the finish line, and all the buzz over it died down, and every YouTube video essayist/movie analyzer saw dollar signs in their eyes, we’re left here, with Adam Driver’s tits swaying in the wind. And for what? The most stock Sad Boy Villaintm of all time and his British gf? A marginally cool lightsaber design? Maybe like, 1 cool fight scene at the end of the first movie?

Like… I’m just left to stare… Stare at this man’s hot topic shopper ass hair cut and Zuko wannabe facial scar, left with nothing better to do than seethe, quietly and angrily, at a character who could have been so much, who could have done so much, but yet was doomed to only ever be himself.

In the end, I suppose I am like Sisyphus, rolling my anger up a hill, knowing that it’ll only roll back down again anyway, and yet not an ounce less motivated to continue my toil. Because Kylo Ren is my enemy, my one true opposite in this great narrative we call reality.

And at least, on some nights, I can rest easy knowing that he fucking died at the end.

#so so so so sorry for ranting at you. #I may have uh #gone a bit insane while writing this #but uh #hey you asked for #it #asks #Star Wars #reylo neg #<- for tag blocking purposes

[piglet26]

Rey Solo... Rey from Jakku.... Rey No one... anything but Rey Skywalker.

The Last Jedi simply revealed that Rey was a "nobody" – perhaps the most shocking and least expected outcome for the Rey lineage debate. It was a perfect twist in our heroine story despite people seeming desperate for her to be connected to some man already in the franchise.

Daisy Ridley has even expressed her frustration with the Rey’s lineage debate multiple times, “I love that Rey is such a great character, they’re like: ‘No, no, she has to be… she has to be-’She’s her own person! Let her be her guys, let her live."

Exactly! Why did people care so much? Maybe initially, it was fun to hypothesize. However, once the reveal came out people actually liked that she was fresh, a brand new start instead of just nostalgia, or, a way to continue on a males legacy. We have Ben Solo for that, or, at least we did.

More than a shocking twist created just to subvert expectations, the Rey “no one” reveal encapsulated The Last Jedi’s perfect message – anyone could be the hero of their own story.  Rey’s realization was that her heritage don’t matter ... all that matters is who she chooses to be now. Rey’s legacy didn't need to be defined by Luke or Leia, which would leave her free to start her own story - hell, Star Wars to have a future. On the other end was Ben/Kylo Ren, who did come from the mighty Skywalker family and hailed as the son of heroes and wanted to escape that legacy.

Then here comes JJ "Nostalgia Kind" Abrams and Chris Terrio. Terrio here “We also thought that Rey’s arc cannot be finished after Episode VIII. You can leave Episode VIII and say, “Well, now, Rey is content. She’s discovered her parents aren’t Skywalkers, or whatever, and that’s fine.” But so much of her personal story was about where she came from, what kept her on Jakku all those years and the trauma that shaped her. We see quite strongly in Episode VII that something mysterious and troubling happened to her. Although she did get some answers in Episode VIII, we didn’t feel that that story was over. We felt that there were still more questions in Rey’s head about where she came from and where she was going. So, that was the other big idea that we had to address in this film. Rian’s answer to, “What’s the worst news that Rey could receive?” was that she comes from junk traders, and that’s true. She does come from junk traders; we didn’t contradict that.” No, you just went back to what you wanted in the beginning.

By the end Rey takes on not only the Skywalker name but she looks over two suns which brings me to the point of this essay...... if Ben wasn't going to be there, then she should have taken last name. Rey Solo.

What's irritating about LucasFilm/Disney is their desire to appease everyone. I don't give a damn about the antis, nor should they. Reylos were a big support group for the films and mightily invested. TROS came off as trying to please everyone. If we really think about, with the exception of the end of Exegol, the Rey and Kylo interactions lacked depth and intimacy. Perhaps it's just not the style of JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio, who did support the pairing.

While I'm 100% convinced Reylo was planned, all the creators seemed very open to adjusting if it wasn't working. Hence why Finn and Poe were both open considerations, especially Finn. I don’t think Adam or Daisy intentionally played up any sexual tension in their scenes together to give us an impression about something in TFA.  I think it just happened.  Early bird Reylos picked up on it.  Some critics, including the one who wrote the TFA review for Time magazine, picked up on it. Rian Johnson picked up on it too and the rest is history.

Leia’s behavior's is odd for entire decades. Being a trained Jedi herself, she could have taught her son - instead she sent him to his uncle( Oh wait, that was a retcon). Han was either helping with the Resistance or off doing something shady. From the novels we learn that Ben heard his parents arguing and talking about him like he was a monster ever since he was a child, and that when he was sent away this seemed to confirm to him that something was wrong with him and had to be fixed. (From the novels we also learn that he actually had no ambition to become a Jedi and wanted to be a pilot - true Skywalker and also Solo that he is -, but he had no say in the matter.)

For both Ben and Rey, their journey is about letting go of childhood trauma and discovering their own independence. Ultimately it's about their pairing being both emotionally healing AND a balance in the force. They are a DYAD after all. I saw all this to say, he is her closest personal connection and impact through the 3 films. Leia is her master but we don't see that, it happened off camera.

Terrio says that the decision to have Rey take on the name “Skywalker” was a way to show that “you can choose your ancestry.” Which is not true and also a strange thing to say considering.

Which brings me to the correction of this tricky trail. Pay Adam Driver want he wants and reunite the dyad.

#reylo #star wars #ben solo #rey star wars #kylo x rey #rey skywalker #finnrey #kylo ren #ben solo deserved better #ben solo x rey

[see-fee]

What are you thoughts on Apple TVs Foundation version?

Ah. I never wanted to talk about that, but I guess my thoughts on the subject are as worth putting down as any, so here goes.

Boring, dumb, cringeworthy, badly written by hacks.

Bad showrunner/writers, bad cast (one or two exceptions). Bad everything except the visuals. I couldn’t be bothered to continue past the second or third episode, where I Raych-quit from the sheer stupidity.

Not because it strayed from Asimov’s work (though it can hardly be called an adaptation when it so flagrantly disregards its source material). I can assess and enjoy adaptations on their own merits. The show is simply not entertaining—a cardinal sin for entertainment. Things happened one after another and I just didn’t care. I wanted to, but I didn’t.

It wasn’t even enjoyable in a greasy burger/guilty pleasure way (e.g. Whedon’s Firefly or early JJ Abrams like Fringe). I’ve gotten far more discerning with age/maturity but I do still watch dumb popcorn fare (including the I, Robot summer blockbuster). And this show wasn’t that for me. Because it was sold as more than that, in a world where shows like Andor exist.

Because it pretends to be smart when it clearly isn’t, when its incompetent writers have never written anything of value in their lives. Very stupid people are behind it: Goyer and Friedman. Showrunner and writer David Goyer is a talentless hack whose own writing/producing portfolio is riddled with trashy bottom-of-the-barrel superhero mediocrity (rated as low as 3/10, 4/10, 5/10 on IMDb, and the way ratings work is that there are false positives but no false negatives), who somehow weaseled his way into successful franchises where other writers did the heavy lifting. Its other writer Josh Friedman has nothing remotely decent under his belt, either. These cheap hacks have obviously never read or understood their source material beyond a perfunctory skim (and if you believe anything they spew, I've got a waterfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. Two words: publicity & marketing.) The proof is in the pudding—Goyer and Friedman lack the brains to handle the material, let alone deviate from it.

I didn’t finish the season because I don’t think it gets better. The core problems I noted aren't going anywhere, and plenty of sensible people with good taste have shared the issues they have with it, and much of that is in line with my own experience or expectations of quality.

Season 2 reeks of jumping the shark. I’ve seen the trailer and laughed at its ridiculousness. It was a flurry of “we have Star Wars at home” scenes and also for some bizarre reason there were dragons? Or something? They’re not even pretending to be Asimov’s story any more—which is probably better for everyone involved.

Change My View: I sometimes wonder if I ought to give it another go, though I don’t have Apple TV anymore which adds to the friction. If anybody mature (I'm a full decade past my meme years) with decent taste (more Oppenheimer than Barbie, more modernist than postmodern internet shitposter, more level-headed than rabid fanatical addict) wants to tell me how this show has some merit despite its flaws and is worth my time, please do. I’m all ears.

Criticism on writing + cast below 👇

Characters, dialogue, plot are badly written/designed.

They do stupid things for stupid reasons (mostly: the plot requires it). Reciting prime numbers beCaUsE mAtH. (Cube did it better.)

That early swimming pool sex scene—whereas it was plausible for the characters in Game of Thrones or the Expanse, here in the hands of dumb writers it’s a girl thirsting over a guy she just met because The Plot Requires It, so that this guy can randomly stab Seldon later in a truly idiotic turn.

Machiavellian characters like Salvor Hardin get downgraded into some basic military chad guarding the Ethereum logo, for some pathetically trite Chosen One storyline and a lame what’s-in-the-vault mystery with a hilariously awful payoff. (I laughed so hard when I found out what it was. That you-know-who was literally in the vault.)

The two decent cast members are surrounded by a pack of Z-rate bargain bin actors whose previous credits hover in the 2/10–5/10 range.

Lee Pace is recycling his Joe MacMillan from Halt and Catch Fire but with a chest-baring wardrobe, since he’s the designated eye candy. Jared Harris is phoning it in, also recycling the same role he’s cornered a niche on: whistleblower-guy-who-gets-ignored-then-dies, a la Chernobyl and The Terror.

Laura Birn is doing a passable job with what she’s given to work with, but, in an utterly inexplicable design choice, the poor woman must stand in an asinine arms-akimbo pose all the damned time because we need to remember iT’s a rObOt. Who can cry and have sex but not stand normally. Or something. (Humans did it better.)

Terrence Mann was a forgettable snooze-fest—so was Lou Llobell.

Leah Harvey and the rest I saw were laughably awful.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

Fallout is one of my favorite action movies of all time, but I haven’t seen Ghost Protocol (I’m very inconsistent with my franchise watching). Are they similar movies? What do you like about GP?

i think if you loved fallout, you should definitely watch ghost protocol. having finished my first trip through the entire franchise today with fallout, which indeed fucks, i am now qualified to say that kind of the whole thing with the missions impossible is that each time, they promise “the same movie, but kind of different,” and each time they more or less deliver, with the back half being more similar to each other than any of the first three are to anything else in the franchise, so that while fallout and ghost protocol are different - fallout has a certain heaviness where ghost protocol is all light, fallout’s look is warm and hazy while ghost protocol is crisp and bright - it is extremely difficult for me to envision the filmgoer who loves fallout and thinks ghost protocol sucks. i think they’re pretty equal in quality, with which one you like better coming down more or less to taste. tbh i would throw rogue nation in here too, which doesn’t quite have the it-factor of gp and fallout to me, but which definitely provides ample footage of tom cruise doing insane shit that is shot to look maximally cool as fucking hell. (i think the first two are both great and worth watching - i have learned 2 is much maligned but it’s balls to the wall crazy and horny as hell and i had a great time - but their vibes are both different enough from the later movies that i can imagine someone who loves the back half of the series but not the front, and indeed have seen those people out in the wild. 3 is complete and utter garbage start to finish and is only worth watching because spending time with all the things jj abrams sucks so much at really does set you up to appreciate the strengths of the subsequent entries. i spent all of ghost protocol marveling at how awesome it is when something cool is happening on screen and the movie knows it’s cool so the camera just slows the fuck down and lets you actually see it in all its coolness.)

as to the question of what specifically i liked about ghost protocol, which i do think emerged as my favorite of the bunch, i mean, so many things:

said this already but tom cruise in this movie is maybe the hottest he’s ever fucking been. he’s got the hint of wildness in the haircut (shades of his glorious mi2 hair) but also an incipient agedness, a hint of being just past his boyish good looks which as i think i said earlier he adjusted to by hitting either the hormones or the gym or both to fully transition from his youthful impishness to Man Hot, and, i don’t know, it really does it for me.

it also genuinely works for the movie - one of the things that fascinates me about tom cruise (noted terrible person and evil cult member/apologist) is that he is a rare actor who you can watch getting better over the course of his career, because most successful screen actors either coast on whatever got them into that world in the first place (looks, mostly, but sometimes whatever it is people see in will ferrell) OR are successful screen actors because they are in fact tremendously good at acting. tom cruise has always been good at being a movie star - your eyeballs want to watch him, they just do - but he’s found additional dimensions to the craft of what he does as he’s gone on (largely, actually, by becoming a more understated performer, which is so interesting to me as contrasted with the leo dicaprio of it all), and in the mission impossible world, i think this is the movie where he kind of locks into a particular gently world-weary exasperation for ethan hunt that he takes with him through the rest of franchise.

the movie is not world-weary, though. the movie is, like, effervescently, joyfully fun, tip to toe. there’s a playfulness to the proceedings, a lightness to the touch, that i found just dazzling to watch. and to be clear, this isn’t, like, the MCU-style jokeyness of constantly undercutting your own tension or drama or whatever (although it is probably the funniest of the bunch) - all the missions impossible are 100% earnest and sincere - it’s more a sense that the movie is letting the audience in on a marvelous joke, which is how yes, we are doing all these silly, insane, wild things, isn’t that fucking cool? aren’t we all happy about it? i am.

this doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen MI3 but points to this movie (and actually also to fallout) for i think making the best possible choices in the wake of jj abrams’s absolutely terrible decision to give ethan hunt a wife

when the movie first started, while i was relieved to get away from the hideousness of jabrams world, i was at first a little disappointed to have properly entered the era of contemporary action blockbusters where everything is always chrome because i had loved the first two movies’ use of color so much (lots of great greens and blues in the first one; all that horny red in 2!). but i actually wound up really falling in love with the style as the movie unfolded - it’s a movie in love with a stark white sky and the contrast of black and gray and the well-deployed pop of some big color, and it became clear to me that this was all, like, intentional and aesthetically minded and not just a default to What Action Movies Look Now, and once i understood that i was like, actually i love how crisp and clear everything is, i love that this all feels like it’s happening at noon on a cloudy day in february. (the thing that cemented it is that you can tell when the last act is starting because after all that clear bright white, suddenly it’s sunset and everything is a little bit golden from then to the very end). there’s a thing with a red balloon that is just… it’s great. delightful. delightful! jabrams SAYS he wants his movies to delight you but this movie actually does it.

after the much more uh mission-practical gear of the first three movies i don’t know who was like “let’s dress tom cruise up like he’s about to go model watches for GQ and THEN have him beat the shit out of people” but i want to kiss that person on the mouth. the aesthetic really does at some points feel like it’s right of the pages of a high-end menswear magazine or something and i mean that in the best way possible, it’s so stylish and great to look at but also the juxtaposition between the zillion dollar suits and the relentless levels of hand-to-hand combat is SO much fun to watch

this movie has some real fun with a couple Gadgets!

tom cruise wears a bruce springsteen shirt

josh holloway is in it for like four minutes

the thing everyone talks about with this movie is the skyscraper climbing sequence and the reason they all talk about it is because it’s sick as hell. the fact that they do it is awesome but it’s also absolutely done right to wring every last drop of awesomeness out of it, both in the way events unfold and in the way it’s shot. i’m a film idiot i don’t know anything about cinema but i know that watching that on a TV on my couch at home, knowing it was coming and also knowing, duh, ethan hunt does not die, i felt actual biological twinges of the same anxious physical effects i feel if i look down from up too high or accidentally get too close to the subway tracks. like they HAD me.

it’s just so fun. it pops! it dazzles! it plays! it’s a movie that gives a sense of being made by people gleefully excited to play with the very coolest toys in the sandbox and happy to share them with you. it's the carly rae jepsen album of mission impossible movies

seriously i am going to be getting over tom cruise’s hair in this movie the entire rest of my life

#askbox #missions impossible

[ophiespeaks]

Pleeaaassse tell me what you're changing😃 I'm always up to discuss stuff for my Star Wars DR cuz I know barely anything😂

oh my gosh yes!!!

so essentially, my main problem with the sequel films is that they made rey way too overpowered way too quickly because of poor choices made by the directors and writers. i could ramble for hours about JJ Abram’s negative impact on the star wars canon and how passion for a project doesn’t always equal a polished product, but that’s a whole other thing lol.

so, pretty much everything from episodes 1-6 is canon in my dr. anakin’s turn to the dark side, luke skywalker’s mastery of the force, etc. but— everything after that is sort of my own interpretation! Basically, I’m the sole survivor of a planet that was destroyed by the Empire years ago. My parents sent me to the Jedi temple because of my force abilities and i was taken on as a youngling pretty much immediately because luke didn’t want to be the last of a dying species. I was the first youngling after the fall of the empire, but he’d slowly get more and more young force users to build up a school of jedi younglings. In my dr but not necessarily in canon, a youngling is slightly different from a padawan. younglings are taught the force basics. history of the jedi, stories of the sith, midichlorians, all that boring stuff. Then, when they’re older, they’re taken on as an official padawan to begin their actual jedi training. essentially i don’t think 5 year olds should be wielding lightsabers and have the weight of the world on their shoulders so i made younglings and padawans different things!!!

I was the oldest youngling and the first padawan luke took on (besides Leia, but she left for the same reasons she does in canon— she’s told if she becomes a Jedi then her son will fall to the dark side). In the prequels, we see padawan braids— and i thought the idea was so cool that i took some inspiration from canon and made the braids way more complicated than they needed to be.

they’re broken down into two types of markers: bands (like rubber bands to hold the hair together!) and beads (decorative colored cylinders) that each have meaning!

bands:

bands signify the steps on the journey, mostly the passage of time.

Black - Black is the initial band that is given to start the braid, given to younglings when they’re accepted into the temple.

Yellow - Yellow is the band given when a jedi master takes on the youngling as a Padawan. It marks their first steps to becoming a Jedi.

Purple - Purple is the band given with each year of progression. I imagine the Jedi used to have a ceremony each year where every youngling/padawan gained a new purple band.

White - Completion of Jedi training. Will always be the last marker of the braid, meant to signify that the padawan is ready to take the trials to become a Jedi.

beads:

beads signify the completion of a task, or the mastery of an area of force learning.

White - Force Healing

Blue - Mechanics (technical force abilities, lightsaber creation, droid work, engines, it kind of encompasses ALL mechanics)

Red - Piloting

Green - Living Force (Meditiation, force visions, etc.)

Yellow - Weapons (typically lightsabers)

Black - Completion of covert operation (think of obi-wan and qui-gon being tasked with protecting padme in episode 1, that’s a “covert operation”)

A padawan has to get all of their beads and bands to be able to qualify to take on the trials. However, I never got that far: here’s some more lore from my dr!

So, I was taken on as a padawan at 10. After living my whole life at the temple and learning jedi teachings since like 1 year old. While I am inherently powerful with the Force, years of discipline were in order before I could just go out and have cool lightsaber fights with bad guys. All the while— the New Republic is slowly falling to the First Order. The way the old empire had established itself was through careful politics. But, since the New Republic had barely been established after the fall of the empire, the First Order uses much more brutality and forceful tactics to win sections of the galaxy. At 12, I convinced Luke to let me help with the New Republic/Rebellion. He thought that i’d be safe in Leia’s hands, and it would count as covert operations for obtaining my black padawan bead, so it’s allowed. But I do have to maintain Jedi code. A big portion of which is focused on steering clear of attachments and being selfless. So, I’m essentially an advisor to Leia on behalf of what’s left of the Jedi order. Around this same time Leia and Han notice that Ben’s force capabilities are too much for them to handle, so they send him to the temple with Luke. It’s almost like we swap places, which is cool. Leia really likes me and because he’s gone, I’m almost like a surrogate kid to her. All the while I’m just trying my best to help the rebellion and complete my Jedi training. My teachings still go on— Luke uses force projection usually, or if we’re not busy we meet on an outer-rim planet. But it’s too dangerous to go back and forth all the time because the First Order might find the Jedi temple.

I turn 18 and realize that I’ve kinda got to make a choice. The Rebellion is in the midst of what is essentially an ongoing war with the First Order, but if I’m going to become a Jedi I’d need to go back to the temple soon for the more intensive parts of finishing up my training. Unfortunately, the choice is kind of made for me not too long afterwards. I sense a disturbance and immediately pull together Han, Leia, and some of the Rebellion to return to the Jedi temple. And it’s…empty. It becomes apparent that Ben Solo sold the temple out and it was raided by First Order, who took the younglings to become the knights of Ren. And Luke is nowhere to be found. So, I dedicate myself to finding him. Han and Leia give me the falcon to go out and search for him, and I do. Living by myself and hopping from planet to planet, usually doing some good deeds here or there. A kill order is placed on my head by Kylo Ren, who I’ve come to gather is the lost Ben Solo.

So, that’s where my dr actually starts lmao. I’m marooned in Jakuu until I can trade enough to patch up the falcon. Finn’s still a defector because that’s such a cool plot line, Poe Dameron still crashes, and essentially I replace Rey because she’s boring 🤭 but I actually have a REASON to be powerful.

Main changes to what actually happens is that this isn’t really a war dr, at least not really. The New Order and the Rebellion kinda have to team-up against giant force monsters (they’re a thing in comics/expanded universe content it’s so difficult to explain what the hell I’m talking about so just trust me). So, Kylo and I actually have to work directly together as a Jedi Padawan and Sith Apprentice because that’s such a cool idea in my head. Meanwhile, I’m still looking for Luke AND I’ve also started training a force-sensitive Finn as a Padawan. There’s kind of a lot going on lol.

sorry i like yapping you don’t have to read allat🙏

#ophie speaks #shut up ophie #reality shifting #shifting #desired reality #shifting realities #shiftblr #shifttok #dr scripting

[unexpectedreylo]

The Reylo Heresies #1

Heresy:  Reylo wasn’t planned as a ship.

It’s an assumption among Reylos that the romantic relationship was entirely planned from the beginning and it was absolutely Lucasfilm’s intention they would end up the one true pairing of the sequel trilogy.

I’m here to tell you I don’t think that’s true at all.  Most of what we got was basically an accident, a confluence of factors that added up to something nobody really planned or expected.

What happened was the Jedi Killer--a character from early drafts/outlines that ultimately became Kylo Ren--was meant to be something of an antagonist for the female protagonist who became Rey.  Given that both were gifted in the Force there would naturally be some kind of connection between them, some push-pull, some light side/dark side tension.  Those elements made it in the films.  The oft-posted/retweeted concept art from The Art of TFA shows the Jedi Killer in a Phantom of the Opera type from behind embrace of the female protagonist.  (Weirdly and fortuitously enough it was modeled from a photo shoot featuring Adam Driver some time before he was actually cast.)  This is often used as evidence Reylo was “planned” from the beginning.  Aside from this artwork though there’s nothing suggested in Lucas’s outlines or known earlier drafts of the TFA script that Rey and Kylo Ren were being set up in the same sense Anakin and Padmé or Han and Leia were.  In fact my initial impression after seeing TFA was that Rey and Kylo were cousins!

Any discussion about romance by JJ Abrams or others involved with the TFA when the film came out was very cagey and not very specific.  In fact if anything, TFA flirts but doesn’t get to first base with anybody:  not Kylo and Rey, not Rey and Finn, and not Finn and Poe.  All Abrams did was establish a kind of connection between the dynamic duo but he didn’t realize that if you have a young attractive man and a young attractive woman looking at each other intensely a lot or if you have her faint in his strong arms then he carries her away, people are going to think there’s something going on.  Lightsabers?  That’s just foreplay!

I don’t think Adam or Daisy intentionally played up any sexual tension in their scenes together to give us an impression about something in TFA.  I think it just happened.  Early bird Reylos picked up on it.  Some critics, including the one who wrote the TFA review for Time magazine, picked up on it.  And perhaps, just maybe, Rian Johnson picked up on it too.

I think Abrams was shooting for some vague Force siblings, good twin/evil twin kind of thing.  Johnson IMO saw a thread of something else as a result of the way Daisy and Adam played off each other and didn’t want to just repeat the Luke and Leia thing.  So in TLJ he pushed the relationship more into the romantic territory and let the sexual tension between Rey and Kylo go nuts.  There’s a reason why the number of Reylos exploded after that movie came out, me included.  Johnson pulled every visual trick in the book to make you think there’s more going on than just the Force.  It’s really similar to the arc between Ana de Armas and Chris Evans in “Knives Out” but way more intense.  You could cut the sexual tension with a knife and serve it with tea.  It was also absolutely the best thing about TLJ and the sequels in general.  

Johnson left Rey and Kylo back in their enemies corners at the end of TLJ but the Reylo beast was on the loose and there was no putting it back in the cage.  I’m sure Lucasfilm, Chris Terrio, and JJ Abrams were pulling their hair out because they had no idea how to resolve something they didn’t intend in the first place.  Johnson had been given free reign and I’m sure that will never happen again with any Star Wars feature film.  If one is ever made.

My best piece of evidence that Reylo wasn’t really planned was its near total absence in Colin Trevorrow’s Duel of the Fates screenplay.  In fact, Colin T. forced Johnson to stick in that “Hi, I’m Poe” scene at the end of TLJ to justify a kissing scene with Rey and Poe in his script.  DOTF features Rey and Kylo fighting like Itchy and Scratchy until he’s dying and decides to be nice and tell Rey she was named after a beach in San Diego.  (Solana, in case you’re wondering.)  If Reylo had been planned there would’ve been a lot more than that.

Ultimately JJerio had to acknowledge Reylo even if there was no intent whatsoever to give Rey and Ben a HEA, so we got (let’s be honest) way better scenes between them in TROS than in DOTF.  There wasn’t even a dyad concept in DOTF.  And no kiss.

To summarize, we got Reylo largely from Rian Johnson as well as the chemistry between Daisy and Adam.  Nobody could’ve planned that from the beginning.

[odetoviscera]

Liveblogging Mission: Impossible 3, Lens Flare-ily

BACK. BACK AGAIN. THE MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. THE ETHAN: HUNTED MAYBE I ASSUME??? THEMATIC COLOUR BASED ON THE PARAMOUNT+ BANNER: COOL BLUE.

i think these are just getting longer. liveblogging below.

this movie released in 2006, when i was sixteen and therefore very likely to have seen it. i have the vague impression that i did. i still don’t remember anything specific about it, but we’ll see if any Buried Memories resurface during this viewing lol

paramount logo now comes with Vaguely Sinister Sounds

oop, i hear ethan getting electrocuted

and oh BOY is he looking rough. my boy :( we’re in media res i guess lol. “we’ve put an explosive charge in your head.” i bet you’re wondering how i got into this mess--

is that philip seymour hoffman??? yes it is, as our villain for the piece, one assumes. you don’t waste philip seymour hoffman on your cold open only villain who never shows up again lol

“you’re gonna tell me where the rabbit’s foot is or she dies” so firstly: obviously The Villain has made an accurate assessment of Ethan Hunt’s Survival Instincts. secondly: whomst? whomst this? “jules” apparently.

ethan goes from “we can talk like gentlemen”-- shot of a goon with a broken nose that i assume ethan gave him here, btw, which: split second of levity, thank you movie-- to RATTLING THE CHAINS ON HIS CHAIR LIKE A DOG ON A CHOKE CHAIN between the villain counting from two to three. i am. FULL OF CONCERN. movie has done a genuinely good job setting a High Stress Threshold from the word go lol

OOF villain just shot hostage lady in i think the knee? it went pretty fast. either way he is Not Impressed with ethan’s attempts at negotiation.

you know i am genuinely not sure ethan actually knows what villain guy wants? he seems to be legitimately losing his mind about hostage lady, i’m not sure he’d still be prevaricating by this point. sometimes he surprises me though!

HMM. got to count of ten, and i’m not sure if that was a gunshot or the Mission Impossible Match Lighting for the opening! will be interested to see if we’re going back in time or if this was the Trauma Setup for the film

so who’s our director on this-- oh it’s JJ ABRAMS? where is this in his filmography… huh, i guess this was his directorial debut in film. he’d previously worked as a director in tv on alias and lost, though-- alias is presumably what got him this one. okay, so i should expect lens flare and, ugh, “mystery boxes” lol

and the credits end with I THINK hostage lady jules opening her fridge. kind of hard to tell without the duct tape lol. but i believe this means we’re in Flashback Territory

oh ethan is kissing on her. look at that smile! one must imagine ethan hunt happy

okay her family’s over. awww, ethan: “it’s going well right?” i wonder if this is the first time he’s meeting her whole family or? regardless he is seeking Validation. insecure ethan hunt. bless.

oh it’s their engagement party! but yes it seems like this is the first time they’re meeting him. whirlwind romance?

“ethan doesn’t have his parents anymore either”-- i guess his mom died between movies?

dfklha;ldkfha;slkh ethan boring everyone at the party with his “i work at the department of transportation” cover lol

dfl;kkhas;ldkfha;lskh okay the ladies are in the kitchen gossiping and i am PRETTY SURE ethan is reading their lips from across the room lol

jules is a nurse! and apparently they met while skydiving or something lol, which based on ethan’s Freeclimbing Hobby i guess does track as something he’d do in his freetime, but DOES also open the possibility that they met on a job. i’m undecided on whether she Knows™ lol

this is all very wholesome, even without the cold open i’d know it was doomed

phone call “is this mr. ethan hunt” and he doesn’t Get It immediately despite the Sinister Tone bc he’s in Happy Ethan Cover Mode.

aaaand the penny drops. “all-expenses paid trip to mexico”

ethan: chucks the ice out the back door

ethan: oh nooo we ran out of ice i’ll go get some

listen i don’t know enough about cars to tell you what kind this is, but it is a Dad Car. ethan hunt is engaging Dad Mode before he even gets married

omg they even have a DOG. does the dog die??? hang on i have to know this before i become emotionally attached-- okay per doesthedogdie.com NO. THE DOG IS SAFE.

anyway i can’t believe The Local 7/11 is where ethan has meetings with his handler lol. oh hm ethan is Training Operatives now instead of working, apparently. this seems like a positive career move! i’m sure it won’t last!

“agent farris” is missing-- that’s not nyah is it? …no, nyah is nordoff-hall. someone else ethan trained, presumably. (speaking of which, what happened with nyah?)

and of course ethan can’t resist at least Retrieving the mission brief hidden in the disposable camera lol. oh good lord, i figured it would just be on the film reel, no, this thing has an IRIS SCANNER, someone introduce me to imf’s q, who is the silly bastard inventing these

oh we got a name for villain guy now, “owen davian”-- has farris hostage, they aren’t disavowing her bc they want her intel, apparently.

new team!

declan gormley-- sorry about your name my guy-- is an “aviation machinist” (so probably our pilot) and a sysop engineer, so probably also our hacker

zhen lei is a “lan computer networker”-- …sure-- with “combat assault skills” which should come in handy even if ethan is now specced more for soldiering than he used to be

luther! love to see you but why haven’t you retired with your bajillion dollars yet. also why are there so many hackers on this team. anyway, he’s also got “artillery equipment specialist” listed in his credentials, which i assume is from that one time he fired a bazooka at a car chasing ethan last movie lol

“this message, let’s call it my excellent engagement gift to you--” dhf;lakhd;flkhas dude. no.

i will say the latest imf bigwig seems less infuriating than the last two, even if he is Dragging Ethan Out Of Retirement. it is an “if you choose to accept it”! i mean ethan will, inevitably, accept it, bc he’s Himself, but there’s at least a hypothetical out.

ethan’s having nightmares :( 

and yep, now he’s telling julia he’ll have to “go on a business trip”. although he tells her it’ll only be for a night, which is probably over-optimistic of him.

LUTHER!!!! he is exuding Competence and Confidence which is an interesting change of pace from him, lol, he’s often been a bit Anxious in the previous two movies. not about his skills, but about like. The Inherent Dangers Of The Job. i guess this is Older Wiser Luther lol

and it looks like we’re going STRAIGHT into the extraction, no setup, so uh. i’m not sure it’s gonna go well. also, first of the Really Noticeable Lens Flares lol

i will say, egregious lens flares notwithstanding lol, this is actually really well lit for a night scene. you remember when films used to LIGHT for dark scenes instead of just doing them IN the dark? those were the days

okay this is an interesting exchange between ethan and luther. luther says “you know i got your six.” and ethan’s response is just “hey, man. that’s your job.” which, objectively speaking, is TRUE-- but there’s a beat afterwards where they just look at each other before they move on. i’m not sure if this is some kind of unresolved tension from ethan having gotten out of field work for a while, if this is luther alluding to ethan’s tendency from the last movie to go into situations without the POSSIBILITY of backup, if luther is trying to remind ethan that he’s got a Full (and Fully Trained) team for possibly the first time since the first movie, if luther is trying to remind ethan that they’re FRIENDS and being kind of gently rebuffed bc this is a high-stakes field operation… unclear.

anyway luther has gotten Four Computer-Operated Guns that he can run from the safety of his little combat van setup, lol.

lkafd;lkfh;alsh okay listen. luther has heat-vision on the building. okay. i’ll buy it. luther locates a heat-signature that appears to be sitting in a slightly reclined position that looks uncomfortable and probably like restraint-- cool! that’s probably our hostage! but the computer then announcing “target match” with “VASCULAR ID CONFIRMED”-- that! is not! how that works!

okay so real quick: vascular pattern recognition is real, blood vessel patterns are about as unique as fingerprints and iris patterns, but significantly harder to counterfeit bc they’re Beneath The Skin. but you DO NOT identify vascular patterns by heat signature, they ARE NOT analyses of the entire vascular system of the body, they usually FUNCTION LIKE FINGERPRINT SCANNERS, bc they assess the blood vessel patterns beneath the skin of a fingertip. it’s a photographic comparison between the database pattern and the registered pattern, which is scanned with infrared leds and fancy cameras. it’s only more secure than a fingerprint bc of the Beneath The Skin part. don’t ask me why i know this, i write fanfiction, you just pick these things up. THIS IS NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!

look at some more lens flare. also i need you to know that the yellow lights on the left side are flickering in time with the fluttering cymbal in the score.

fh;alksdhf;lakkh luther, mid-op, “at some point we gotta go over this whole getting married thing.” luther is demanding to know if julia is good enough for his ethan lol i’m guessing he’s grumpy he wasn’t consulted

hmm, they’re drugging farris with something, “give her 10ccs more”-- oh hey, the one creepily petting her hair is the goon with the future broken nose, btw. deserved.

blow some charges and luther is lighting this place UP with his four guns lol. this seems like it might be SLIGHTLY risky with ethan and a hostage inside, but i assume they’re accounted for in the targeting ranges

ethan takes down one goon with a short burst, so he’s upgraded from hand guns to something more robust. he just gets Shootier and Shootier each movie lol

farris gets an adrenaline shot so that she can participate in her own rescue, i assume-- hopefully that doesn’t interact too badly with whatever she’s drugged with

i haven’t seen enough of the new teammates to really get a sense of them yet but zhen admittedly looks cool as hell moving through the facility towards her objective lol. i can’t get a decent screengrab of this bc the lights are flashing constantly, the cuts are too fast, and paramount+ won’t let me scroll frame by frame but just trust me that she is cool and we love a woman in military gear. also she VERY narrowly avoids getting blown up by a grenade by flinging herself out a window.

uh-oh, farris is telling ethan to turn off his transmitter so she can talk to him Privately. that’s ominous, especially Mid-Rescue while the building is full of holes

they were interrupted by a firefight, and farris’ adrenaline has definitely kicked in! looks like ethan trained her well

the intel (?) that zhen came for has been slightly blown up, hopefully still useful

fkha;ldkfh;lakshdf;lkah

lindsey: i’m out, how many rounds you got?

ethan, making The Most Concerned Unconcerned Face: …………Enough

also he makes like a thousand tiny flinching faces while he’s gearing up to take his One Shot, which Must Kill This Man bc “enough” means “one bullet”, which makes it extremely clear how much his blase “now i’m out :|”

after said shot does kill said man is a FUCKING MASK. ethan hunt knows half his reputation is cool one-liners after he does something absurd and that that’s the part people will remember, and he plays into that ON PURPOSE bc his previous job role was BEING THE FACE. i am begging everyone on earth to remember that this man’s SECOND career is soldier, and he came from THE THEATRE OF ESPIONAGE. he is a dramatic bitch INTENTIONALLY to ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING.

one INCREDIBLY hot extraction on the top of luther’s van later, and everybody’s getting on the helicopter without farris getting to have her solo talk with ethan-- aaaaand now she’s complaining of a sudden intense headache, which probably means her head is about to explode ala “we’ve put an explosive charge in your head” from the cold open

…uhoh, declan-- i was right, he is our pilot-- is hesitating to take off, and i hear another helicopter approaching-- yeah, that’s a gunship. and alas it does not get taken out by the van blowing up, so they’re being pursued-- through a field of wind turbines which is an interesting visual AND an interesting tactic by declan

oh my god so much lens flare though lol. the music is getting increasingly ominous

they've located the bomb in farris' head! according to ethan’s little magic scanner device, it contains at least nitroglycerin and magnesium, and it looks about the size of a pill, so… possibly her head does not explode as such, just. burn from the inside out.

declan doing some VERY tight maneuvering to dodge some missiles. luther is leaning out the side of the helicopter with a handgun apparently hoping he can use it to shoot down a gunship lol. MAYBE if he can get a shot through the windscreen???

….okay so ethan’s plan for dealing with the explosive is to shock farris with the defibrillator-- i’m kind of unclear on whether the plan is to use the defib on the chest as intended or like. on her HEAD. hopefully the former lol

second missile fired-- ah, okay, it looks like luther’s gun was actually a flare gun, he’s just fired it in an attempt to divert the missile ala firing chaff. which works! shears a turbine blade off into a field of very alarmed sheep lol

third missile lock, and declan just went BETWEEN THE BLADES of a wind turbine, which the following gunship really should not have attempted lol, it got crunched like tinfoil. we love to see that imf competence on display-- which their AGENTS typically do! their organization as a whole, less so

aaand the aed’s thirty-second charging window was just slightly too long and farris’ charge has detonated in her brain. relatively bloodless, although her eyes get kind of fucked up, which i will do you the favour of not screencapping

this is the face of ethan hunt about to go on the warpath, by the way

ethan hunt returning to his nice domestic life after a mission that ended in complete failure despite everyone technically doing a spectacular job

aaand putting the mask on for the almost-wife. there was a MOMENT where he wasn’t caught up and he still looked lost and devastated, and she caught it-- bc of course she did-- and he couldn’t tell her what it was about, so-- The Patented Ethan Hunt Grin comes on. this is almost extra tragic? bc like… clearly he doesn’t want his spy life to overlap with his wife life. understandable (hi cold open) and probably unavoidable, given she wouldn’t have clearance to know 99% of it anyway. but just the emotional distance between Party Ethan who seemed genuinely happy and excited and nervous in that Border Collie way-- meeting new people! being nice to them! getting his girlfriend’s brother a beer! “it’s going well, right?”-- and this ethan, who is papering over his hurt bc he can’t afford to show her what it’s about.

and you can see she doesn’t entirely buy it, either. if she survives this movie, that’s going to become an ongoing source of conflict.

oh i take it back, apparently laurence fishburne is the REAL IMF brass of this movie, and he sucks just as much as the rest of them lol. “i read your training brief on agent farris. the words you used were “beyond capable.” that still stand, mr hunt?” fuck you dude, like ya’ll don’t lose agents left and right around here

oof, yep, the intel did get fried by the grenade, which is not making the imf any happier. not, to be clear, that i want the imf to be happy. fuck the imf ethan, GO FREELANCE, these people have sucked in EVERY MOVIE

oof, farris was his First Ever recommendation for field duty. no wonder this is hitting him like a train

hmm, ethan just got a call at farris’ funeral asking for a “mr. kelvin” which must be one of his cover identities, since he answers to it. apparently farris-- or “farris”-- sent him a postcard from berlin. the postcard has no text-- it has a “microdot”, per luther’s examination, but there’s nothing on THAT either. Mysterious™

luther just asked if there was anything going on between ethan and farris-- honestly, fair question, given his track record with hooking up with the ladies he works with lol, although in at least one case that was a honeytrap working on him lol-- and ethan reports that she was “like his little sister”, which-- aww, and also :( 

fla;ksdhf;laskh;lkh ethan @ luther “remember when you were sweet? can you remember that far back?” ETHAN IT WAS AT MOST TWO MOVIES AGO. arguably last movie, no i am not over his little terrified teary voice when ethan is doing dumb shit lol

new character! benji, who i have gathered from @leupagus is part of the Ongoing Team-- currently he is apparently a desk tech at imf who is complaining that the hard drives they recovered are fried lol. ethan already knows him, which is interesting.

flkahdl;fkhasl he did recover something from the Fried Drives anyway lol, so i guess he just wanted to complain. specifically he’s uncovered that davian is going to be at the vatican, and also that he’s there to get The Rabbit’s Foot (of cold open fame)

benji is one of those “tell a rambling story to get around to the point” people lol

interesting, ethan is trying to get musgrave-- the guy i originally thought was the imf brass of the movie, not technically ethan’s handler since ethan technically isn’t doing field work lol, i think he called himself a branch manager or something at some point-- “deniability” on the operation he’s about to undertake based on benji’s find. meaning he’s trying to protect musgrave’s reputation after it took a ding from the failure to recover farris.

ethan letting julia know he’s going to be “away on business” again, this time for TWO days. he interrupted her at work to have this conversation on, apparently, the roof of the hospital she works at, which is an interesting choice lol. she is Not Happy About It and asking for explanations which i can’t imagine he’s going to give her.

alskdhf;laskhdf;lkash;lkh she asks for reassurance that their relationship is real and he’s like “you know what fuck it let’s get married Right Now in the hospital chapel”. they have to use some little plastic rings he got in the gift shop or something lol. adorable. i’m love them.

aaaaand time to break into the vatican! plan: kidnap davian (and also get his buyers, which i’m assuming means ethan will be pulling out a Davian Face Mask at some point)

this is their hilariously analogue solution to not being able to loop a static shot to a vatican cctv camera. hopefully ethan didn’t get a bird in the frame lol

also he’s now dressed up as a priest and i would love to know how uncomfortable it was to keep those robes wrapped up inside the worker jumpsuit he was wearing earlier

i’m guessing this is zhen who’s underwater breaking into a vent, and it looks like declan has had his own costume change into a tourist!

actually come to think of it, how does this whole team from the failed op have time to do ethan’s off-the-books operation? how frequently do imf agents get work? we know the imf keeps tabs on them, from that time they tracked ethan down during his freeclimbing vacation, so the imf surely Knows they’re all in the vatican, and that would be suspicious even without whatever equipment they requisitioned-- surely they don’t just own all of this shit themselves-- and especially with them all having been on a failed op together like. last week. so either the imf is spectacularly incompetent-- totally possible-- or they’re aware of this operation and tacitly approve bc it means they can just DOUBLE disavow everyone if it goes wrong

oh it was luther underwater! i assumed he was in the van. this begs the question of where zhen is-- ah, i hear her teasing declan lol-- they have her in a Very pretty car, although bright orange makes me suspect this is a decoy rather than a getaway vehicle lol

alksdhf;lkash;lkah luther and ethan just blew a hole in a wall of the vatican catacombs. way to destroy some irreplaceable art history boys lol

ma’am you didn’t have to slay me like this but thank you

ooooh are we going to get to see how they make the plastic face masks???

dflaksjdf;lkahs luther is trying to patch things up with ethan about him being snippy about ethan’s engagement. WAIT until he hears ethan is already married lol.

luther: a normal relationship isn’t possible for people like us ethan: i don’t agree with that luther: then i’m smarter than you

LUTHER YOU DON’T HAVE TO ROAST HIM LIKE THAT (pls continue it’s very entertaining)

The Facemaskification Process-- put a big plastic sheet over the dummy head, input a bunch of photos of the target face at various angles, i’m unclear if these are lasers or saws but Something cuts away the plastic to match

luther has ethan as a captive audience while they prep for him to pretend to be davian, so he’s continuing to harangue ethan about his relationship lol. “23 months” is his estimate for how long it’ll last, which is Suspiciously Specific, luther, you projecting a bit babe?

Continued Facemaskification: airbrushing the colours from the same photos. this raises some questions about lighting-- both in terms of the lighting the source photos are taken in-- does the mask hold up to the same scrutiny under different lighting conditions than the source photos?-- and things like subsurface scatter, which presumably wouldn’t work with a mask that’s built like this one seems to be. obviously you can paint a facsimile of subsurface scatter, but again, that won’t hold up under various lighting conditions. many questions remain.

lol luther is continuing to try to talk ethan out of this by telling him how much he’s going to screw up the girl, and ethan finally breaks in with “jules and i got married two days ago.”-- which is an interesting timeline note, by the way-- and luther after a beat is just “..........congratulations.”

zhen has just dumped red wine on davian to divert him to a bathroom lol

very creepy ethan lol

ah, and now we get a look at how the vocoder gets set up the first time-- he’s having davian read a phonetic passage to collect voice samples to clone. idk how accurate that was to 2006, but voice cloning ai is actually pretty achievable today-- unfortunately, for deepfake reasons.

ksdhf;lkashd;lflkah okay so post-kidnapping switcheroo the cover to get ethan/”davian” away from his bodyguards is to have zhen offer to “wash his shirt”/offer sexual favours and having “davian” take her up on it lol. which, i’ll grant you, he seems plausibly like that kind of creep and zhen looks. uh. listen we’d all follow her to a hotel room is what i’m saying.

fajhdlfas;lkh the center console in zhen’s car rolls back so they can all exfil into the sewers-- meaning the bodyguards can’t even follow her car. “what’s up”

and then they BLOW UP THE CAR, which is going to a) have vatican security Swarming, and b) davian’s bodyguards (and anyone else who knows him) will now think he’s dead!

lovely full team shot zipping away on a speedboat. ethan has “dad taking the kids on a joyride” energy lol

and we’re only halfway into the movie so can’t wait to see how this unqualified success goes spectacularly tits-up

fakhdl;fkhas;ldkh musgrave just claimed to be aware the operation was happening, presumably to give ETHAN cover from the brass for going off-book (well, also to get credit)-- you boys need to coordinate better on who is covering for who

davian Starts Off this interrogation with “do you have a wife, girlfriend? bc i’m going to hurt her” which like. accurate from the cold open. apparently he thinks his best strategy is to Antagonize his captor, which, well, it’s a choice lol

ethan responds, as you might expect, by threatening to dump davian out of a moving plane if he doesn’t get the information he wants. luther has to talk him down-- “this isn’t you”, which is interesting, bc i would have said that was true TWO movies ago, m:i ethan avoided conflict like the plague, but m:i 2 ethan MIGHT have pulled a stunt like this. and of course now in mi:3, ethan is Emotionally Compromised by losing his protege and having a Very New Wife to worry about. which might ultimately be the real reason that romantic relationships outside of the intelligence community are unwise.

luther ultimately does talk him down, but it’s a close thing. (and davian a) doesn’t talk, and b) heard ethan’s first name when luther was pleading with him not to lose his single strand of chill.)

davian gets picked up in an armoured vehicle into imf custody, but given we’re following its progress i doubt he’ll stay in it long enough to get to a detainment facility

on the drive luther has apparently gotten farris’ microdot file decrypted and sent back to him! let’s see what was so important-- OOOOOH, she traced a call to davian from laurence fishburne’s office at the imf. can’t trust any of these motherfuckers

and yep, the convoy’s going-- looks like they’re being attacked by missiles of some kind. (ah, there’s a fighter (? very small silhouette) in the air, that’s probably where the missiles came from, so air-to-surface rather than rocket-propelled) lots of civilian traffic also getting caught as collateral, and they’re on a bridge, so could very well be a collapse coming. 

jeez, and a HELICOPTER. they’ve certainly got air coverage locked down

(zhen and declan are both here and trying to help, but i mean. options are pretty slim.)

ethan shouts at all the civilians to get down as the heli squad starts firing indiscriminately onto the bridge-- at least once woman gets shot, luther goes out to try to get her into cover, and ethan takes off to try to get a good shot to do something Useful with his handgun Versus A Helicopter with multiple armed combatants onboard

oh interesting, he’s trying to get davian out of the truck-- presumably to hold him hostage so the helicopter will stop shooting at civilians. no dice, they just shot the driver, and they make those trucks hard to break into for, you know, the obvious reasons

fa;lkdhf;lah ethan’s got to crawl back into his Flipped Truck, which is one good shove away from falling through a hole in the bridge, to get a gun that can actually do shit to a helicopter

heli squad has dropped onto the bridge to extract davian, this foam presumably will either explode or eat through the side-- huh, looks like it sort of flash-froze, i assume so they can shatter the metal somehow

ah okay, the “fighter” is a drone being piloted from the helicopter

ethan nearly gets blown up and DOES get to bodyslam a car. this after the car crash from the initial missile impacts. this boy is coming out with broken ribs and a concussion minimum, he’s lucky his wife is a nurse

ethan gets his new gun put together and manages to take out the drone, which ALMOST but not quite dings one of the helicopters (which, i hadn’t realized there were two until now, scenes have been a little disjointed) on its way down

ethan makes a FLYING leap across the destroyed bridge-- gratuitous lens flare again lol-- unfortunately doesn’t quite make his jump, manages to hold on to some rubble so he doesn’t tumble into the water but it slows his pursuit of davian, who is now being hustled to a helicopter

ethan manages to fire a few rounds at the helicopter on its way by, but no dice, davian is in the wind (literally). ethan calls home right away bc i guess he assumes davian can have her kidnapped Instantaneously-- which apparently is true, bc julia isn’t home and her brother (apparently crashing at their house lol) asks ethan if “his friend” found him and that he told “some english guy” that julia might know where ethan was and to try her at the hospital. soooo great job rick, your sister’s maybe gonna die.

ethan has requisitioned the least-crashed car on the bridge, which seems fair under the circumstances, although i’m sure the owner-- if they aren’t shot-- will have other opinions

oh julia’s not kidnapped yet! she’s still at work, that’s why she’s not answering ethan’s calls

okay the receptionist at the hospital knowing ethan well enough to respond to his very abrupt “I Need To Talk To Julia” with “hey honey, i’ll transfer you” is adorable

…Some English guy just stuck a Mysterious Yellow Dot (which will make her pass out momentarily i’m sure) to julia’s arm and her reaction is just :)? what’s that? sweetheart… no… develop an aversion to people putting things on you without your permission…

oof, ethan literally passes right by Julia On A Gurney being taken out of the hospital, but of course Some English Guy has her under a sheet, so he doesn’t realize

and davian calls to give ethan a “julia’s life for the rabbit’s foot” 48 hour ultimatum. problematic given ethan still doesn’t know what the hell that is, although he does at least tell ethan that the location is in the case they got with davian.

aaand of course this is the moment the imf rolls up to take ethan into custody, so yet again he’s about to be at odds with his own organization. i’ll say it again, ethan: GO. FREELANCE.

this is really gonna cut into his 48 hour timeline also why the fuck have they MUZZLED HIM

laurence fishburne of course is saying Some Bullshit, musgrave of course is nodding along like “yes sir of course sir ethan hunt is a traitor sir”-- ACTUALLY, stray thought. farris didn’t hear laurence fishburne talk to davian, she just knows the call came from his office, which seems to be the same building musgrave works in. musgrave making calls from his boss’ office, perhaps?

hmm, musgrave is mouthing to ethan silently so ethan can read his lips without the rest of the office picking it up, and then slips him something to get out of his restraints. this does not make him less suspicious, if he’s working with davian he has a motive to want ethan out and hunting the rabbit’s foot.

captain america stole his elevator fight scene from ethan hunt. except ethan’s doing it while still half-tied to a gurney, so who really wins here?

escape into the elevator shaft, shockingly well-lit lol

fha;lkdhf;alskhdlk brassel (laurence fishburne, i’ve finally learned his name lol) hearing His Own Voice giving orders he hasn’t given over the radio. ethan works fast. why he has a voice strip with brassel’s voice encoded on its easily to hand i don’t know, but it’s better than last movie when he did a full outfit swap, vocoder, and face mask switcheroo with the villain’s not-boyfriend

oh huh looks like the imf facility is actually underneath the department of transportation, that’s where that cover story comes from lol. df;lkha;ldkfh;lak and ethan ditches his radio next to a boombox so the only thing on the imf security channel is sister sledge playing “we are family” lol

musgrave apparently directed the entire team to the same shanghai apartment he told ethan to go to on Rabbit’s Foot duty

the team settles in to debate their entrance strategies and ethan, Of Course, chooses the roof access lol. he’s gonna Jump from one building to the target building. well, swing, but still. and the basejump from the building to exfil lol

we are at 2 hours until the Julia Dies ultimatum

ethan looking very brooding and cool, and presumably doing math in his head about the velocity and angles he needs to hit if he doesn’t want to unceremoniously splatter on a roof. luther gives him a pep talk which is very matter-of-fact and does not allow for the plan to go sideways, which, like. it will, but we appreciate the solidarity. luther, yet again, for best boy.

awww, ethan thanks luther for coming and luther’s response is “that’s my job.” CALL BACK TO THE WEIRD MOMENT FROM THE FARRIS OP, whatever that weird tension was-- probably about julia, considering the rest of the movie-- it has been Resolved in the midst of this Crisis.

julia if you survive this movie you should have No Doubts about this man’s love for you ever again lol

oof, at the terminus of the swing he still has like a twenty foot drop ONTO A GLASS ROOF which he is now sliding directly down. ethan. babe. i know time is short and options are limited but pls.

catches himself on the gutter and literally says “...okay” in the most strangled voice lol. oh, more lens flare. honestly there’s been so much i can’t even call it out specifically lol

luther: he made it! he made it! ….i knew he’d make it I TOLD YOU HE WAS STILL SWEET ETHAN.

we aren’t even seeing ethan’s actual theft of the rabbit’s foot, we’re watching the team outside wait for him and count down the minutes, which is a fascinating choice that i actually really like. we’ve seen ethan do impressive spy shit, none of that’s new. watching the new team react to ethan’s radio silence, that IS new. luther is trying to maintain chill. declan is Fretting. zhen is apparently PRAYING under her breath. (apparently a prayer she’d say to bring home her Lost Cat as a kid, which-- love you zhen, pls stick around for next movie.) flkah;dlkfha;lkh aww, declan asks her to teach him the Lost Cat Prayer, presumably bc he needs Some Kind Of Distraction-- they get interrupted by ethan finally coming back on the line (things have, predictably, gone pear-shaped) but it’s a cute moment

so, ethan’s base jumping From The Roof was already going to be cutting it very close on the lower limits of height for that-- he instead jumps out a window like halfway down the building, which means if he hits the ground he will do it Hard-- so instead he crashes into the window of, i think, a different building, although it’s unclear how intentional that was given how much drag he was fighting

oop, his chute is about to drag him back out the window lol. having been dragged around campus by my own portfolio getting caught in a wind tunnel-- my sympathies, ethan, you belong to the north wind now

his chute catches on a streetlight, which does him the favour of not splattering him, although it does drop him into oncoming traffic-- that truck driver is a hero for not obliterating him or spinning out and slamming into every other vehicle on the road btw

team picks him up and they’re now in a highspeed car chase with building security while ethan tries to make the call to davian to tell him he’s got the rabbit’s foot

oh noooo zhen got hit. that better be a flesh wound ma’am we’ve had enough women dying this franchise thanks

apparently ethan decided the angles INSIDE the car weren’t good enough and he’s sick of being shot at. being the Best Spy, he of course manages to blow the pursuit vehicle's tires, so they're home free!

musgrave still so suspicious. “go secure” ethan says, “we are” musgrave says, sir. that’s your cellphone and you didn’t do literally anything, if that’s secure i’ll EAT your phone. anyway, ethan is calling to tell him that he’s tagged the rabbit’s foot so that the imf can retrieve it after ethan makes the exchange with davian. which, if anyone at the imf is both competent and not a traitor-- A BIG ASK, I AM AWARE-- means the cold open should have some cavalry coming, hypothetically

the team Reluctantly lets ethan go off to make his Solo Handoff/get captured

ethan at the drop point gets into a vehicle and on instructions from Some English Guy also Drinks A Mystery Vial, which i’m sure will go great for him

interestingly it appears to be making him hallucinate being intimate with julia, and then we wake up in the cold open!

so yeah, it seems like ethan legitimately thought he’d given the rabbit’s foot to davian and his confusion and prevariation here are bc he legitimately doesn’t know how to fix this

meanwhile the team has arrived home to uh. This on the landing strip

well. it WAS indeed a gunshot. and julia does now seem to be dead.

One Must Imagine Ethan Hunt Happy

and in comes musgrave i KNEW IT you little rat

oh ooof. “it’s complicated. you can’t just open the canister. we had to be sure you brought the real thing. now we know.” so LITERALLY he brought you what you wanted, and you killed julia For Show.

unfathomable that ethan hunt is not fully deranged by the end of this movie. i would be eating musgrave’s bone marrow by the end of the runtime.

…gross, but apparently that is some other RANDOM woman-- actually i think it’s davian’s other bodyguard, which, not great benefits there-- they just killed with a julia mask on? i guess that’s good for ethan but also What The Fuck???

ah, bc musgrave is using her as further leverage to find out What Farris Knew.

flkha;lfkhd;lkfahs;lhkds musgrave is complaining that brassel is an “affirmative action poster boy” DUDE YOUR MOTIVE IS JUST RACISM? RACISM AND JEALOUSY? YOU WHINY LITTLE PISSBABY SIT DOWN

“and when the sand settles, our country will do what it does best. cleanup. infrastructure. democracy wins.” god were people really buying that in 2006. i guess that was only five years after 9/11, nationalism was High and the bush admin was still in place. anyway, Yet More Racism from this twerp

ethan asks for a phone call to confirm that julia is alive. amusingly, the fact that julia can remember what the lake is called means it’s Much Less Likely to actually be her on the phone, given she couldn’t remember it during The Party

i see now why they muzzled him lol

huh, ethan called benji as his first point of contact once he’s knocked out musgrave and gotten out of his restraints

benji goes from “you’re on interpol’s most wanted! i’m hanging up!” to “i’m going to lose my citizenship over you” in the space of like thirty seconds and ethan doesn’t even say PLEASE lol

lol benji is being ethan’s on-call gps service. he is doing this At Work, by the way, at the organization that currently wants ethan’s head on a stick, so he keeps having to pause to make Pleasant Office Noises at his coworkers lol. also featuring: The Ethan Sprint

jkhfjkhskdfak a couple of little old chinese men took one look at ethan gasping and bleeding in the doorway and ratted out the villain’s location

aaand while looking around he promptly knocks a bunch of shit off a table. guess those concussions are finally catching up to you, babe. but we’ve found julia!

unfortunately at exactly THAT moment, davian remembers he put a bomb in ethan’s head

well, if he can win this fight with davian while his brain is about to fry, at least his wife is a nurse! she can probably shock him both to death and back to life! if there’s an aed around! which i haven’t seen one, but for plot reasons, probably is somewhere!

ethan has, as per tradition, engaged Emergency Fight Mode at the threat to a loved one! i don’t know why these villains keep threatening people he cares about, it goes SO MUCH WORSE than when they just threaten him

dfl;kha;ldkfha;l okay rolling davian on top of him and into the path of an oncoming vehicle is novel and definitely ends the fight quickly, which is good given ethan has a couple of minutes before his brain melts. also honestly refreshing after the like fifteen-minute fight with the main antagonist of the last movie

fha;lkdhfl;aksh;l ethan hands julia his gun, tells her it’s a very accurate close range weapon, and then immediately follows up with “don’t point it at me” lol

he’s a good teacher! giving julia instructions about how to use the gun that mirror things she’s done at home-- “shove the new mag in like the batteries in the flashlight in the kitchen”. also he is clearly setting up a diy electrocution, which, well, it’s not like he’s got a better option, apparently this don’t use defibrillators at whatever sketchy back alley clinic this is

and of course AS SOON as julia flips the switch to short out the bomb/shock him to death, someone starts shooting at her so she can’t immediately start resuscitation. so ethan is now lying dead on the floor (it’s! temporary!!!) and julia has been promoted to Action Girl!

aaaand since she’s a brain death time limit with ethan, she does NOT wait for the goon to come to her, she just figures out where he is, pops up, and empties an ENTIRE mag into him lol

oooh! and then turned around and did the same to musgrave! well done ma’am, marriage material indeed

now the Sad CPR

also ethan goes from Dead to Firing Position in the space of One Heartbeat

lol sees musgrave dead on the floor and his response is “you did that? …wow” in this very admiring tone lol while julia is still reeling from him not being dead

and yeah ethan kind of has to spill the beans to her at this point lol

apparently the white house is now asking for ethan directly and by name

hey, julia gets to meet the team!

and off they go on their honeymoon!

alright MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 COMPLETE. about as much lens flare as i expected, only “mystery box” that i detected was that no one ever fessed up about what the fuck “the rabbit’s foot” was supposed to be for, but for the purposes of this particular film it doesn’t really matter, it’s just a plot macguffin.

i did not, in fact, remember a single goddamn thing about this movie lol

ethan gets physically put through a wringer in this film, this might be the most cumulatively beaten up he’s been so far. i didn’t make a count or anything, but he’s got probably more than one concussion, multiple broken ribs, has to have sprained every joint in his body, wouldn’t be surprised if he’s fucked up his spine, and also he was dead for a few minutes after electrocuting himself with an unknown voltage.

on the other hand, this is the happiest we might have ever seen him! also the most despairing. dichotomy of ethan. i’m glad julia didn’t die! not just bc she’s good for ethan, she also seems cool in her own right, i’m hoping that unlike nyah she’ll stick around for further movies.

actually i would like to keep this whole team! declan and zhen were fun in the screentime they got. benji was fun and they could use somebody at the home office who isn’t a Complete Twit.

i still think they should all go freelance. luther’s done it before! and the imf keeps fucking ethan in particular over! and apparently their ranks are absolutely RIDDLED with traitors who want to work with black marketeers lol.

i’m not sure ethan’s Ethan Stunts here should contribute to the Does Ethan Have A Death Wish conversation, bc in this particular film most of them are motivated by Trying To Save Julia and he’s clearly at the end of his mental and emotional rope from the moment she’s taken. it is, admittedly, probably not healthy for him to hinge so much of his sense of security and comfort on one person, but it’s too late now.

8.5/10, the style was a little too frenetic to keep track of the action all the time and the lens flare was exactly as much too much as you’d expect, but the story was solid except for the rabbit’s foot contrivance being a little too meta-textually irrelevant for my tastes and there was a lot of good Pathos in ethan finally trying and failing to settle down, and good performances from everybody.

would watch zhen swan around in a red dress again.

#ODE TO IMPOSSIBLE #mission: impossible #mission: impossible 3 #tumblr is harassing me personally with the 30-image limit #there were so many more screengrabs i would have included in this one #it was still not quite as visually interesting as the first but it had some good shots

[chambergambit]

thinking about jj abrams career for some reason. his skills as a director lie in 1, fun action set pieces and 2, manipulating nostalgia to create emotional investment. i personally think this is done best in Super 8, a film that was in many ways a precursor to Stranger Things, but is now mostly forgotten, so i’m gonna talk about Star Trek instead.

Star Trek 2009 in incredibly fun and rewatchable, but deliberately side-steps the franchise’s philosophical ideals (specificall, examining what an ideal society would look like and what structural inequalities we would have to address to get there). this is because abrams doesn’t care about the franchise or its ideals, and only did the movie in hopes that the nerd cred it gave him would land him a Star Wars movie in a future (a move that, for better or worse, worked). he openly stated this in a daily show interview he did as promo for the fucking movie. jon stewart was absolutely baffled and it was hilarious. i remember watching the interview when it aired and thinking "...that does not bode well.”

i was right. abram’s utter inability to give a shit results in Star Trek Into Darkness, which directly betrays the franchise’s philosophical ideals, banking entirely on what abrams thought adiences liked about previous Star Trek movies and wanted to see more of. he very lazily just tried to remake Wrath of Khan without considering what made WoK not just work, but matter. 

Star Trek Beyond kinda miraculously manages a return to both fun and ideals. unfortunately, only already invested fans cared, and i don’t think we will return to this particular side of Star Trek for a very long time. 

#jj abrams #star trek

[these-are-the-first-steps]

what if rian johnson was co writer of tfa and tros when Sabe was Rey's grandmother

Tbh with you, anon, I think tfa was a perfect star wars movie for what it needed to be. It remains the best film of the ST. And I actually didn’t like tlj when it came out because it was clearly a six hour movie crammed into two and a half and I didn’t feel like Rian pulled it off. It took too long to get to the points it wanted to make and imo chose the wrong scenarios to make them- aka “The only real difference between the empire/FO and the rebellion/resistance is money” (which I really really liked and is a theme also reflected in the books that came out- too bad they chose a weird casino escapade for it??), and “Sometimes things fail and it’s a disaster and that’s just the way it is and you have to eat it if you want to keep going”. They didn’t know how to write for a disillusioned Luke Skywalker and Kylo was half baked at best.

Honestly all of tlj was half baked. It needed another year of pre-pro to become its best, and it couldn’t get it because of disney and their shitty “schedules”.

All this to say that I don’t know how much better TROS would have been with Rian because the notice was so so short. Do I think we would have gotten a happier ending? Yeah, I do, unless it was disney dictating Kylo die (who knows) in which case it would have ended the same. I think it would have been a little smarter and less plot hole-y. Frankly TROS set the bar in the sewer it’s so low, so even a disjointed Rian sequel would have been mediocre on the surface but 50x better than what JJ Abrams put out. So maybe that’s a win? We would have been disappointed either way, to be honest with you.

Otherwise, I like Rey being nobody. I don’t want her to be anyone’s granddaughter. I want her to be a sad but optimistic feral little sand rat who knows what she wants and takes it while maintaining a heart. Why does she need to have any fancy relatives to be that and still be attractive and still make an impact? Why do we still try to pigeonhole ourselves with all that?

Thanks for the message, anon, sorry I wrote an essay. I guess I have Thoughts these days. 🫠

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

the mandalorian, for the fandom asks 🥰

Two birds, one stone! Let's start with Star Wars the entire franchise.

The first character I first fell in love with: Finn

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Cassian Andor. I liked his character in Rogue One. Love his character even more in his show.

The character everyone else loves that I don’t: This is an endless list but I nominate Rian Johnson, who is not a character but sure ruined a fuckton of characters for me in a movie that so many people think is the Best Of All Time. okay.

The character I love that everyone else hates: Genuinely have no idea. Pretty sure this would also be an endless list.

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: I could be real funny and say JJ Abrams, whose handful of movies I watched used to fall under the "mindless summer fun" category, but I think this would be Rey. She stopped being interesting after the TLJ/TROS fiasco and I just don't care enough to pay attention about her future. How do I know Disney Lusasfilm isn't going to waste it like they wasted so many other characters' futures?

The character I would totally smooch: Din Djarin but only because I just need to tap his helmet. No kissing involved, success!

The character I’d want to be like: Cinta. maybe. Her clarity of purpose is inspiring.

The character I’d slap: Sure does come down to between the mass murderer and his mass murdering grandson. I got two hands.

A pairing that I love: Finn/Poe by a country mile and then some.

A pairing that I despise: Reylo.

And now for The Mandalorian/Mandoverse edition.

The first character I first fell in love with: lol. lmao. rofl. roflmao. roflcopter. it's Din Djarin btw.

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Luke Skywalker actually. yes, he's Mister Star Wars, but The Mandalorian was the show that actually made me sit and think about his post-ROTJ life. we don't talk about the ST.

The character everyone else loves that I don’t: Post-S2 Bo-Katan and every single character that showed up in the Ahsoka show. I didn't see TCW/Rebels and while it would've been nice to watch them, I shouldn't have to in order to understand who these people are in the live-action sequel to Rebels. And what I saw did not make me interested in going back to watch.

The character I love that everyone else hates: Cara. I loved what she represented as a burned out veteran living in the lawless Outer Rim. Fucking shame her actor turned out to be a trash fire. What a shame Cara was just written out instead of recast. Disney Lucasfilm is full of COWARDS.

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Peli. She got overused and I got tired.

The character I would totally smooch: *points to the Star Wars version* But I would also smooch Grogu on the forehead, my Force baby gremlin child.

The character I’d want to be like: Fennec 100%

The character I’d slap: Gideon, because his S3 endgame is ridiculous. Sir, what the fuck was that? I expected so much better from you.

A pairing that I love: lol. lmao. rofl. roflmao. roflcopter. it's Din/Luke btw.

A pairing that I despise: Din/Bo

Play ask games, win ask prizes!

#shirozora awkwardly responds to asks #i feel my responses shouldn't be as long as they are BUT I'VE SAT ON A LOT OF FUCKING THOUGHTS SINCE AHSOKA ENDED #I JUST NEEDED TO GET THEM OUT SOMEWHERE

[disregardcanon]

i think that it’s important to note that i don’t like the last jedi for many of the reasons that i like the knives out franchise. rian johnson is a very good director, i think. he takes well-tread narratives and contorts them into shapes that say something completely different than what they original did, and that’s insightful and interesting.

i didn’t WANT that from star wars, and it especially did not work with what force awakens set up. there is something very important about someone who’s willing to take chances and shake things up in a genre. being inventive is GOOD, but it’s not always what’s called for.

also: it isn’t rian johnson’s fault that the company started a trilogy of movies with no clear idea of what they wanted to do and shifted directors. maybe he could have tried to play more nicely with what was already set up, but jj abrams clearly didn’t have any idea of what he wanted to do with the setup either.

#personal ranting

[mykingdomforasong]

Sending a fandom: Star Wars. And Percy Jackson too if you want

[send me a fandom]

Thanks for sending an ask!!

Star Wars:

The first character I first fell in love with:  Both Princess Leia and Queen Amidala, because when I was little I didn't understand the concept of a prequel. I thought that, because the OT were the old movies, that Princess Leia grew up to be Padme. But I honestly wasn't a huge Star Wars fan until I was older and the ST was coming out, so honestly probably Finn and Rey is a more honest answer.

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Han Solo. Thought my compulsive need to avoid ever becoming my father would prevent this one. But to be fair, I think I like Han in a very different way than my father does.

The character everyone else loves that I don’t:  Anakin/Vader. Sorry baby, it's nothing personal, I just don't vibe.

The character I love that everyone else hates:  I mean, any of the ST women, but esp. Rose Tico. I will fight to the death for Rose Tico. JJ Abrams, count your fucking days btw.

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Padme I guess on a technicality. To be clear, as a little kid, I didn't like the PT, my dad just always had them on, and I was like "the princess/queen is my favorite because she's a princess."

The character I would totally smooch:  I would like to kiss Din Djarin thank you

The character I’d want to be like:  Luke and or Leia

The character I’d slap: Anakin. Hey man, try not killing babies for once

A pairing that I love: Skymandolo

A pairing that I despise: Rose Tico/Hux - honestly I don't have big thoughts or feelings on this one, it's just giving "we heard you liked reylo so we put some reylo in your reylo"

Percy Jackson

The first character I first fell in love with:  I mean, Percy of course. The love for Clarisse developed shortly after, as did the love for Nico.

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:  I mean, I used to wish death on Rachel Elizabeth Dare, and I no longer do that, so

The character everyone else loves that I don’t:  Leo. I liked him for a while, but the writing went down hill

The character I love that everyone else hates:  I don't think anyone really hates Clarisse, but very few love her as much as I do

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Probably Nico, not because anything changed, more like. I outgrew Nico. Which is honestly lovely! It means his character helped me get to a place where I was secure and happy on my own, and there's more and better queer rep now, AND queer teens are still finding new and meaningful connections to him! So we still love and respect Nico here. He's just like ... my equivalent of Bing Bong from Inside Out

The character I’d want to be like:  Probably Percy or Grover

The character I’d slap:  Luke. Baby, get it together. You are 23, you should be at the club not killing children.

A pairing that I love: Percabeth 5eva

A pairing that I despise: Leo and Calypso. Hey. What was that about.