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starladyI really enjoyed this movie, and I recommend it to fans of Mission: Impossible, action movies, and practical filmmaking. But I'm also convinced it's lying to me.
I saw it for the second time yesterday and here is a list of questions I still have:
- Who is the second voice that speaks at the beginning of the submarine monologue? (Tentative answer: the entity.)
- Can it really be possible that the entity doesn't know the Sebastopol's exact location when it's scuttled? (I think, particularly if you compare the ending of The Hunt for Red October, it seems quite clear that this was a scuttling rather than an explosion. It's not even clear the torpedo warhead detonated. How else to preserve the bodies and the bulk of the ship forward of the propeller room?)
- Despite the captain saying they're navigating by dead reckoning, they do seem to clearly know their position. Is dead reckoning a metaphor? (Probably?)
- Is there any significance to it being February 29? A date that in some senses doesn't really exist? Unclear, but it does pretty clearly situate it in 2020. Meaning the main action is 2021 or more likely 2022, though in a 2022 without covid. Fine.
- Who got the keys off the bodies in the ice? Who would have known to look for them and how were they separated? How did Alana get the red key?
- How did the bounty hunters know Ilsa was hiding in the Empty Quarter?
- Is the monologue at the end another mission briefing from Kittridge? It really seems so! (I love Kittridge. He's exactly the right blend of government ambiguity.)
I actually left the second screening even less convinced that Ilsa is actually dead than the first time, having timed my pee break better in this viewing. I thought both times that the visuals in the party meeting are strongly priming us to think that the entity is listening, and Gabriel even tells Grace that she's entered a world of lies. I don't think we can trust that Ethan doesn't know what he's saying is being overheard, and it seems pretty notable that Ilsa doesn't do what he tells her! She does not run as far away as fast as she can! More trustworthy, I think, is Ethan telling her that she's dead and she needs to stay dead in the Empty Quarter. Maybe it's not just James Bond whose business is resurrection! And frankly it also looks like the knife isn't even in the same position when Gabriel stabs her versus when Ethan finds her. It's not even the first time in the movie that they fake her death, and it wouldn't be the first time in the franchise where they faked a woman's death for multiple movies and then revealed she's still alive. Paris's fate at the end also augurs against Ilsa's death, to my mind -- she also is stabbed by Gabriel, but is able to help pull Ethan and Grace to safety, talk to Ethan, and then at the end we're told she's still got a pulse.
Anyway, I really do think that the team is thinking like the entity from that conversation onward where we're told we can only trust what's in this room. Notably Luther doesn't tell Ethan that Ilsa is dead before he leaves, though I think he does use that phrase to Grace, who is still on the outside at that point. He does reiterate that the entity's win conditions are Ethan dying or killing Gabriel on the train, neither of which happens, and they do ultimately stick to the plan. On some level, looking at all the unexplained events, I have to wonder whether the entity is playing against itself (shades of Anaander Mianai) or whether it just wants to die, or knows it shouldn't exist -- and knows that Ethan Hunt is the only person alive who's willing to kill it. But I do still sort of think that Ethan is going to die in the next one.
I saw it for the second time yesterday and here is a list of questions I still have:
- Who is the second voice that speaks at the beginning of the submarine monologue? (Tentative answer: the entity.)
- Can it really be possible that the entity doesn't know the Sebastopol's exact location when it's scuttled? (I think, particularly if you compare the ending of The Hunt for Red October, it seems quite clear that this was a scuttling rather than an explosion. It's not even clear the torpedo warhead detonated. How else to preserve the bodies and the bulk of the ship forward of the propeller room?)
- Despite the captain saying they're navigating by dead reckoning, they do seem to clearly know their position. Is dead reckoning a metaphor? (Probably?)
- Is there any significance to it being February 29? A date that in some senses doesn't really exist? Unclear, but it does pretty clearly situate it in 2020. Meaning the main action is 2021 or more likely 2022, though in a 2022 without covid. Fine.
- Who got the keys off the bodies in the ice? Who would have known to look for them and how were they separated? How did Alana get the red key?
- How did the bounty hunters know Ilsa was hiding in the Empty Quarter?
- Is the monologue at the end another mission briefing from Kittridge? It really seems so! (I love Kittridge. He's exactly the right blend of government ambiguity.)
I actually left the second screening even less convinced that Ilsa is actually dead than the first time, having timed my pee break better in this viewing. I thought both times that the visuals in the party meeting are strongly priming us to think that the entity is listening, and Gabriel even tells Grace that she's entered a world of lies. I don't think we can trust that Ethan doesn't know what he's saying is being overheard, and it seems pretty notable that Ilsa doesn't do what he tells her! She does not run as far away as fast as she can! More trustworthy, I think, is Ethan telling her that she's dead and she needs to stay dead in the Empty Quarter. Maybe it's not just James Bond whose business is resurrection! And frankly it also looks like the knife isn't even in the same position when Gabriel stabs her versus when Ethan finds her. It's not even the first time in the movie that they fake her death, and it wouldn't be the first time in the franchise where they faked a woman's death for multiple movies and then revealed she's still alive. Paris's fate at the end also augurs against Ilsa's death, to my mind -- she also is stabbed by Gabriel, but is able to help pull Ethan and Grace to safety, talk to Ethan, and then at the end we're told she's still got a pulse.
Anyway, I really do think that the team is thinking like the entity from that conversation onward where we're told we can only trust what's in this room. Notably Luther doesn't tell Ethan that Ilsa is dead before he leaves, though I think he does use that phrase to Grace, who is still on the outside at that point. He does reiterate that the entity's win conditions are Ethan dying or killing Gabriel on the train, neither of which happens, and they do ultimately stick to the plan. On some level, looking at all the unexplained events, I have to wonder whether the entity is playing against itself (shades of Anaander Mianai) or whether it just wants to die, or knows it shouldn't exist -- and knows that Ethan Hunt is the only person alive who's willing to kill it. But I do still sort of think that Ethan is going to die in the next one.