Summer Movies

This has been the weekend for summer blockbusters. Sunday, I took A & Z to see X-Men: The Last Stand. You could tell Bryan Singer wasn't at the helm for this one, because it just didn't have the character development like 1 & 2. Also, I despise Halle Berry because she, from what I heard, bucked for more screen time for her character, Storm. Storm happens to be my least favorite character in the franchise, so thanks Halle. Yea, you look good in a leather suit, but your character is lame.

Today, I went to see Mission Impossible 3. The following paragraph will contain discussion about scenes from the movie, not spoilers, I will sanitize it so I don't give anything away. But if you don't want to know anything about the movie, don't read anymore.


I have yet to see MI:2, but I don't think anything carried over. Let's face it, these aren't exactly Lord of the Rings. Anyway, the movie itself was pretty good, very action packed. One thing I didn't like was, even though we are following the hero (Ethan Hunt), there were several action sequences when we don't know his objective. One second, he's deciding to go to city X, then it cuts to him running through a factory planting bombs. It was pretty easy to figure out what he was after, but how bout a little setup? Also, I'm fine with suspension of disbelief. I believe I have written on here before about it being okay to change the rules of the universe, but you must follow the rules the movie sets up. I can believe there really is a gov't agency called IMF that has highly trained agents. I can believe that Ethan Hunt can do these awesome stunts and not get hurt. But if you are going to use real world objects, don't change the rules just to build dramatic affect. A defibrillator that takes 30 seconds to charge? How useful would that be? These things are meant to save a person's life in an emergency, you can't tell me they take 30 seconds to turn on. My laptop boots faster than that. I may be wrong, it just seems they did it to build drama. Another thing I'm sick of seeing: someone getting shot and flying backwards. There's this annoying little thing we have called physics. In fact, in one scene Ethan is doing some calculations as a nod to physics, so why do they have to have one scene (no one else who is shot in the movie flys backwards) where someone gets shot and they go flying out the window behind them? There's that little law about equal and opposite reactions. Basically, in order for a bullet to strike someone with that much force, it would have to expend the same amount of force in the opposite direction, blowing the shooter back the same way the shootee was. Another nitpick, why cut down the time left to accomplish the mission to a point where it becomes unbelievable? At one point, they have 2 hours left til their objective and they are just now planning it. They come up w/ a lot of specialized equipment within 1.5 hours, plus apparently do more planning since things happen that we didn't see them talking about. We're talking stuff you don't go pick up at the corner Walgreens. My point is, it would have been more dramatic to say they had 6 hours left, then they pull it off at the last minute; instead of having this totally unbelievable time remaining.