#mi:2

mi2!ethan as the fallen angel

Yesterday I ran across the Suspension Bridge Effect while randomly browsing the web.

In short: under the right circumstances, the physical symptoms of anxiety (pounding heart, sweaty palms, etc.) can be confused and entangled with romantic attraction. Your body feels like it does because it's scared, but you think it feels that way because you're suddenly falling in love (with the person you just saw while on the rickety suspension bridge).

That was yesterday. Today I watched the first part of Mission Impossible 2 for the first time in twenty years.

Ethan Hunt is actively using the Suspension Bridge Effect to recruit Thandie Newton's character...like overtly. First he inserts himself into her hi-stakes heist and gets flirty while she's already anxious...then ups the stress level himself by triggering the security alarm (all while in extremely close proximity).Then, after a cooling down period, he gets her into a car race along windy, cliff-side roads that ends with her dangling from her car door over a steep drop (that last bit might not have been intended). Once Hunt pulls her up, cue the music and the kissing and the falling into bed together.

At first glance, it looks like just another Bond Girl trope. With the Suspension Bridge Effect freshly in mind, it looks like blatant psychological manipulation.

The flirting in the bathtub I find really fun and sexy, but the film then immediately dumps them into a "relationship" that moves them away from the fun banter and into a "love triangle." What I think the film should have done is kept the dynamic between Nyah and Ethan more light and allowed the affection to develop over the course of the film. I also think that Nyah should have proactively negotiated with Ethan on what she would get from the IMF for helping them. This would have given her a much bigger stake in the mission that was more on her own terms.

The other issue I have is that a lot of the action sequences are dull because I'm not as invested in Ethan. Again, maybe that's down to the fact that I know that the events of this film do not play as strongly into his character, given what we will get later with MI:3 and the importance of Julia. But I also think the issue has to do with the fact that Ethan, as a character, does not fit with this type of action movie and neither does Tom Cruise. Now he might have done it if he was playing a different character, but Tom Cruise's performance as Ethan is rather flat in this film. In fact, all the performances feel dull, and the dialogue is stilted. The only time Tom Cruise shines is when he's playing Sean's version of Ethan.