No freewrite again tonight. I suppose I am not quite there, but moreover I just exited Mission Impossible (6?) and find myself wanting to write about it. Specifically, I was thinking of an article I perused by a writer who praised the film while simultaneously calling himself a Fast and Furious fan. He compared the two series, which I’d never done up until that point and the comparison was apt: unreal and near magical stuff happening to people who are so skilled and powerful as to be characters from the comic books. However, I found a kernel difference in the two, which when you look closely, begins to unravel the entire comparison to the point where you realize that one is a shoddily crafted version of the other.
Let’s start with the big one: Stunts. We all know that Tom Cruise does his own stunt work. We know it so well that when going to the movie it is instantly a question of ‘what kind of nonsense is this man about to do?’ The answer in this film involves (no spoiler because it is legit in the adds and the opening credits) rides off a mountain with a parachute on his back. However, that isn’t the only bit of aerial nonsense he’s on about in this one. Contrary to Cruise’s sixty year old ass jumping off and out of things every movie, Vin Diesel doesn’t do his own stunts. Instead he develops scenes where the car is doing most of the stunting. Sadly, this lacks the impact that Mission Impossible does.
The impact continues to fade when you consider both the plots and context. Ethan Hunt is saving the world and preserving his family. Dom Toretto is largely protecting his family and occasionally helping governmental entities with ‘impossible missions’. There is a linkage there, and while both series are fun and both have some very clear similarities (note the party sequences in each film–because they’re there. They are very much the same), Mission comes off as a better written and acted bit of silliness in which you can at least hold on to the illusion of possibility. I think the Fast series left that behind right about… here: