Cinema Notes: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Being a longtime admirer of director Brad Bird’s work (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles), I will be the first to admit that I probably didn’t leave the man enough room for acceptable error. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is Bird’s first foray into live action cinema. You could set a metronome to the film’s pacing and the elaborate action sequences are exciting and airtight. However, almost everything else lacks a certain solidity—especially when compared to the last entry in the series, directed by J.J. Abrams.
The Mission Impossible films have always been winking action spectacles, but with Ghost Protocol, Bird flirts a bit too heavily with camp. I can’t say if this was a conscious decision, a lack of confidence, or if Bird hasn’t quite shaken his animation roots. Regardless, when the film is not set to 11, it plays like a cartoon melodrama. So many wonderful tensions are diffused by clunky dialogue, a score that forces levity upon every danger, and thinly drawn characters that have been saddled with unfortunate back stories and/or motivations. Take, for example, the character of Brandt (played by Jeremy Renner), one of the new additions to Tom Cruise’s IMF team. Brandt is strategically placed as something of a mysterious wildcard, but the character’s arc is doomed to failure by a surprising number of miscalculations, including the film’s ad campaign and Renner’s biceps—not to mention the film’s wrongheaded title sequence, which spoils at least two more plot points in a clumsy attempt to emulate what the original show and first Mission director Brian de Palma pulled off so coolly.
I’m being too hard on the film. It’s still a thrilling action picture that accomplishes what is ultimately required of a Mission Impossible adventure. Things explode, the chases are breathless, Cruise scales the tallest building in the world, and even if the film left me a bit cranky, I still whistled the theme music as a left the cinema.
A note about IMAX: Ghost Protocol is the first IMAX film I’ve seen in years. I’d all but sworn off the format, considering it only slightly more acceptable than 3D. However, as more filmmakers have actually begun shooting with IMAX cameras, I now feel a nagging obligation to see the films as they were intended. I’m not sure the few added oohs and aahs are worth the IMAX premium, but there were some very cool sequences. Yes, the shifting aspect ratios (the film shifts from the scope ratio of 2.35:1 to the IMAX ratio of something like 1.44:1 throughout) is annoying, but it’s not as distracting as it was in, say, The Dark Knight. However, the experience left me extremely irritated, but not for the reasons you might expect.
First of all, many of the cinemas branded as IMAX are actually much smaller than traditional IMAX auditoriums. I saw Ghost Protocol on one of these “IMAX lite” screens. The difference is that the smaller IMAX screens are mostly digital while the larger ones operate with 70mm prints. Here’s a diagram to illustrate the difference in size:
Even more upsetting was the astounding clarity and brightness of the picture—and I’m referring to the non-IMAX segments. This is extremely frustrating when you consider how shoddy and dark most digital and 35mm prints look on most “regular” screens. Some of this might be due to the 3D lens that must be removed (but is often not) for 2D presentations. I’ll let Ebert explain that one. Whatever the reason, I felt like I was paying a premium to see a film in what should be the standard. I don’t expect every screen to be a 70-footer, but I do expect a modicum of respect for what is being projected. Having a decent home theatre has spoiled me. I forgot how beautiful movies in the cinema could be.
