#janik vinter

1. i really wish that brandt’s whole ‘fake out betrayal’ was foreshadowed better. like we have luther with his whole ‘i don’t trust you brandt, you chose to stick with henley’ (there must be some cut scenes further fleshing their relationship out because of these loose ends)

2. the ENDINGGGGG omg i love the way the ending reflects the beginning. we start and end the film with a man trapping his nemesis in a glass box, in london, and then pumping it with a mysterious white gas until the other passes out

3. the fact that the place where ethan first meets lane in london is called ‘the vinyl offer’ (y’know like ‘final offer’ since this is ethan was supposed to be turned to lane’s cause via ilsa’s torture before janik got in the way, lane’s final offer to ethan before he kills him)

4. the benthan energy in this film is off the charts, like yes, “of course ethan can hold his breath for three minutes” benji dunn and his husband “fifty million to let benji go” ethan hunt have my entire heart - @rebeccasteventaylor i see what you’re saying about benthan fulfilling your every shipping desire lol

now for my a long take

5. i really don’t like the main action set piece of this film: the torus break-in followed by the car chase leading into the motorcycle chase.

i have reasons for this. i promise. i know it’s all good in terms of cinematography and acting and all the technical details but how it impacts the plot is where i have issues.

the whole ‘let’s swap the id cards WHILST benji is walking in’ makes no sense, since there’s very little sense of time pressure being built up so far (like, say that lane was about to do some evil thingTM and without what ethan & Co. think is the syndicate evidence to spur the CIA and other agencies into action millions would die or something, leading to them having to do everything very quickly - that would have made more sense to me. just have ethan explain to benji at some point in Vienna about something that ethan thinks lane’s going to target/ use for his own twisted ends and that’s why he brings benji in because say in this hypothetical the ‘emergency UN meeting’ happens in like 5 days or something. there, just added some more tension and pressure into your film mcquarrie.)

and, why didn’t ethan and ilsa simply break in the night before?? (probably would have been less techies in the power plant so less chance of their whole ‘turning off the water schtick’ being noticed like it is in the film.)

also: why didn’t they label the correct id card in an obvious way for ethan and the audience’s benefit?? like making it a different colour (if ilsa/ benji has the tech to make one they can probably change the colour. just feels like a lazy way to add tension, with ethan getting them confused in the torus.)

(i don’t want to get into: how did they make the id card, how did they manage to record benji for the gait analysis in so short an amount of time, what were ilsa and ethan skydiving from?? and how did they get access to that?? how did they perfectly manage to aim that metal dart perfectly on tue camera whilst they parachuted down??? that stuff seems to be hand-wavy action set piece stuff that can be explained away by tech)

but in my opinion whole chase feels hollow when you realise that benji made a copy of the drive the whole time!! ethan didn’t need to chase after ilsa, he just needed to ask benji if he made a spare (i get ethan was kinda … out of it post literally dying but im sure benji could have just told him that he made a copy after ilsa ran off.)

in the same vein, why did ilsa not make a copy of the drive before giving it to atlee!! is it just to highlight her naïveté and her blind spot being how she trusts her agency?? even then, it feels like common sense to the audience since benji did it earlier.

yeah, might have more thoughts later but i’m done ranting now.

(i do have to commend tom to actually fucking drowning on camera tho)

edit: misconception on my part, cruise didn’t actually drown, he just held his breath for six minutes and filmed the entire scene in one take (which is actually fucking insane, and if you ask me more unbelievable than the idea that he drowned). i kinda assumed he kinda did because of the way we see him behaving here

A scene where Jens was running and someone (Might be McQ, not sure) kept telling him to go faster so after they stopped the take he went up to Tom and said "this is how fast this character runs" and Tom's like "I buy that, I buy that"

To follow up on this, during the after party after the premiere of Rogue Nation (which was hosted in i THINK is the same opera as they filmed parts of the movie in, they put an IMAX screen up and all) Jens was like about to leave and wanted to like tell Tom "hey it was a pleasure working with you we might not see each other again" and Tom saw him leave and people are like crowded around Tom and Tom like introduces Jens to the crowd and drags the entire "this is how my character runs" story for them and laughs as he usually does.

Tom also did yell at a group of people small talking in a corner on set which you know, fair. I guess it's a big production, but eh. But Jens really like talked about Tom being very focused when he was fliming, and when he was on set as a producer, he was much more chill. Jens assumed the reason he was more tense when he was fliming is cause that Tom maybe felt a lot of pressure and was maybe a bit nervous?

Also when Jens was being cast for his role as Janik Vinter, he got an email back from his agent which only sends him like "yes"es back usually cause she's a kinda busy lady and when he got the role he got an email that was like "YESSSSS TC loves you!" And Jens was like, "Who's TC? The movie company?" And his agent had to tell him that TC means Tom Cruise.

Another story was when Jens was taking off his ring in the scene where Ethan is captured. So his ring was too tight and so he like licked it off of his middle finger and after they finished that take McQ was like "that's fucking brilliant" and tom was like "that's so nasty, that's amazing"

Jens also asked Tom about his fascination with stunts, and Tom was like, "I love it, i love it!" And Jens is like "why though?" And Tom replies, "cause I can."