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Post by serin on Dec 10, 2011 4:15:38 GMT -5
SPOILY REVIEW:
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL Review: Tom Cruise’s Best Mission Yet!
December 10, 2011 8:58 am Shaun Munro
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
It is fair to say that, on paper, the fourth entry in the frustratingly inconsistent Mission: Impossible series has plenty of potential for failure, what with the director’s chair shifting once again, this time to inexperienced live-action helmer Brad Bird, whose credentials rest solely with three – admittedly highly-acclaimed – animated films (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille). Combine this with apparent studio apprehension at Tom Cruise’s commercial appeal after last year’s disappointing returns on his Summer vehicle Knight and Day – thus the cast’s beefing out with rising The Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner – and you have plenty of ingredients for a well-intentioned misfire. That Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, is the best film of the bunch, then, comes as an especially joyous seasonal surprise, ticking all of the boxes that the previous films have at one time or another seemed to miss.
When IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is carrying out a mission to retrieve Russian nuclear launch codes from the Kremlin, not only are the codes intercepted by crazed fundamentalist Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), but he also decimates the building with a bomb, framing the IMF for it and causing the Russian government to treat it as an act of war. The IMF is promptly disavowed entirely, and it’s now up to Hunt, along with foppish techie Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), gorgeous and determined Jane Carter (Paula Patton), and mysterious analyst William Brandt (Renner) to prevent all-out nuclear warfare between Russia and the U.S.
The term “thrill ride” is loftily thrown around to especially describe a lot of disposable Summer fare, but no film in recent memory is as aptly described this way as Ghost Protocol, and that’s meant in the most complimentary way possible. Essentially a series of conjoined suspense sequences and loopy set-pieces – interspersed with the occasional breath for exposition – Brad Bird has crafted a kinetic and nerve-wracking spectacle which puts to shame the previous efforts of far more experienced directors such as Brian De Palma and John Woo. It’s all too apt that Ghost Protocol plays out with a faintly cartoonish action aesthetic – larger than life but never distractingly over-the-top, ala Woo’s effort – and it seems that Bird’s training in animated mayhem prepped him well for his work here.
Divided into three perfectly-paced thirds – the set-up, the botched job, and the showdown – it might surprise some that Ghost Protocol isn’t in a hurry to tell its story, opening with a lengthy sequence in which Hunt is pulled out of deep cover in a Russian prison, analogous to the meat of the story but hardly a necessary entry point. In fact, 40 minutes pass before Jeremy Renner shows up and the Kremlin explosion happens, but the build-up is so relentlessly entertaining, with its ludicrous gadgets and giddy stealth set-pieces, that you won’t even notice. Especially impressive is a scene in which Hunt and Dunn infiltrate the Kremlin using a special screen which can mimic a background, and match it to the perspective of anyone whose field of vision it can perceive, thus allowing them to sneak by undetected (it makes more sense in the film and has a hilarious payoff too).
So keen is the film to satisfy, in fact, that some might describe it as an exhausting experience; downtime is hard to come by, something liable to irk older audience members, but the core audience – that is, decidedly younger – are likely to get a huge kick out of this no-nonsense approach. Impressively, despite rarely slowing down to explain the impending threat, this still plays as the most intelligent and remotely plausible of the four films, perhaps because the latter two acts see our heroes largely stripped of their zany gadgets and field backup – with a few amusing technological exceptions – such that the action is more hard-edged and Hunt especially seems more vulnerable. The film’s best scene – an attempt by Hunt to scale the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, using special magnetic gloves – might leave your palms sweating as it did mine; we know Hunt isn’t going to fall, but the vertiginous photography – best viewed in IMAX for maximum discomfort – combined with Cruise’s gutsy commitment to doing a lot of the stunt work himself, makes it a stomach-knotting experience. It’s also gives Simon Pegg a few ripe one-liners to play around with, and overall, with this much stronger script, he is a far more effective comedy sidekick than he was the last time around.
The final act is admittedly a little more on the generic side, as the gang unleash their inner-James Bond at a party, though Paula Patton barely staying in an absurdly revealing dress and some surprisingly unflinching, brutal violence – for which it should probably recieve consideration for the Sound Editing and Sound Mixing Academy Awards – will keep most interested. More interesting is what follows; once it is all said and done, the emotional set-ups established earlier are resolved in a manner which actually moves the characters forward – particularly Renner’s Brandt – and dare I say, makes one look forward to another Mission, which is surely already in the pipeline. It’s just a shame Ving Rhames is relegated to a 2-minute cameo at the film’s conclusion, yet one thinks maybe the script would require a detrimental overhaul for him to keep up with everything his younger comrades are doing. And for those wondering whether Cruise’s wife (played by Michelle Monaghan in the last film) is disregarded with a lame one-liner, don’t worry; it’s satisfyingly resolved to say the last, without giving anything away.
Retaining the series’ innate goofiness while taking the action and emotional stakes to new highs, this is the best Mission: Impossible yet.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is released exclusively on IMAX from Friday Dec 16th in the U.S. before going wide a week later. In the UK, the IMAX screenings are Dec 21st, going wide on Dec 26th.
Whatculture
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Post by architect on Dec 10, 2011 20:38:50 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 11, 2011 23:12:03 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 12, 2011 22:25:59 GMT -5
THE BURJ KHALIFA Located in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai is visually striking. “It’s cinematic from the get-go,” notes Bird. “A lot of the architecture is very imaginative and seems so futuristic. The fact that it’s surrounded by desert is such a surreal sight because it’s just dunes and flatness, and then there’s this city rising up like Oz.” The city had never truly been photographed for a motion picture portraying itself before. Filmmakers had not yet taken advantage of the vertical scale of the Dubai until GHOST PROTOCOL.
The producers had suggested using the Burj Khalifa for something to the writers, Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec. “It’s one of the first things you look at,” says Bird. “It’s this gleaming, really quite beautiful building that sticks up like a needle touching space.” The Burj had also been on Tom Cruise’s radar who had seen the structure under construction. “I’m always looking at different structures, thinking, ‘How can I climb that? How can I jump out of that?’” he says.
Recalls Nemec, “We were talking about the building sequence and we thought, ‘What’s the scariest, most bad-ass thing we could imagine?’ Well, the answer was, ‘Let’s make him climb the outside of that building, in the interest of keeping the mission alive.’ Tom loved the idea.” In the film, Ethan must climb the exterior of the Burj – the tallest building in the world, topping out at 2,716.5 feet (828 meters) to reach an upper floor security control area without being detected.
The building, which has three uses – a hotel, corporate suites and condominium residences – was scouted several times by stunt coordinator Gregg Smrz and his team who bravely examined the structure’s exterior themselves to figure out how to safely get Cruise out on the outside of the building for the various stunts called for in the script. The production team began planning the obvious way to implement the scene: build a set on a soundstage representing a piece of the building, and have Cruise climb that, under controlled conditions. “We were going to build this set, have Ethan climb it, and then digitally extend all the shots to show the rest of the building,” explains Visual Effects Producer Tom C. Peitzman. “We sat around in meetings, went through previz and storyboards and spent lots of time designing all these shots. Then we sat down with Tom and, of course, he wanted to climb the real building. That put a whole new spin on things.”
The rehearsals and training took months, with Cruise practicing his moves enough times that, by the time he would reach the actual building surface, they would be routine. Scaffolding was constructed around the practice set on which lights were placed to heat up its surface to temperatures Cruise would encounter on the real Burj in Dubai. “We had taken measurements of the temperature of the building,” Smrz says. “Tom was very adamant about that. We heated the glass until it was 100 degrees.”
The crew was given access to the 123rd floor, which was still unfinished, to bring in camera rigs, cranes and other gear necessary to film Cruise’s moves outside the building. To gain access to the outside of the building, between 15 and 20 windows were removed from the façade on a number of floors, through which camera jib arms and other gear could be extended outwards. It was determined that, during the day, the glass exterior of the building became so hot that it wasn’t possible to work in direct sunlight. “You couldn’t even touch the glass,” Smrz says. The team found one area – fortuitously just above one of the building’s several public observation decks –out of direct sunlight that allowed Smrz to set stunt rigging and still allowed director of photography, Robert Elswit, adequate lighting for principal photography. “When we arrived on set, we had rehearsed it so much, it felt like we had been there 100 times,” Smrz explains. “We just walked in, and climbed the building. It felt like a military operation.”
Cruise himself was rigged with a form-fitting – and somewhat painful – harness attached to a cable system, which was attached at their “pick points.” A special cable the size of a piano wire ran along the face of the building that whole length, attached to Cruise’s harness through a miniature pulley (called a “belly sheave”) to control how tightly he was held against the building façade. That cable was attached to the building structure at various points along its length, where small windows had been removed just for that purpose. “That’s what held him against the building,” Smrz explains. “Our pull had to be choreographed with Tom’s action. We tried marionetting him, but the best thing turned out to be a combination of his energy and us assisting him.” To make sure things went smoothly, Smrz brought in veteran rock climber Dave Schultz, known for his work on other climb-related films, such as “Cliffhanger” and “Vertical Limit.” “Dave worked with Tom to make sure that the climbing was all accurate to how a climber would climb the building,” Brad Bird explains.
For Cruise’s “drop shot” – where, after losing a tool, he also loses his grip and drops 30 feet before catching himself – even seasoned veterans were blown away. “We dropped him several stories and he was willing to do that several times,” Bird recalls. “When he did his four-story free fall,” recalls production designer Jim Bissell, “it was pretty astonishing watching him do it.”
Another shot Cruise accomplished with finesse involved a move called an Australian Rappel (or just “Aussie Rappel”), as Ethan, unable to return to the floor where his fellow agents are the way he originally came, is forced to essentially run across the face of the building to launch himself back into an open window. “You’re basically running face down the building, running towards the ground,” Smrz explains. “It’s quite unique and terrifying.”
What was originally planned as a two-day shoot on the surface of the building, followed by eight days on a mock-up set, turned into four days on the outside of the building. Recalls Jeffrey Chernov, “As we got more comfortable in the building and started rehearsing, Bob Elwsit, Gregg Smrz and Tom came up to me and said, ‘Jeffrey, we can get more done here, we want to shoot more days here.’ “We ended up taking 13 shots that were going to be done on our set and moved them to the actual Burj. So we were able to get all the really intricate storytelling and closeups on our building.”
The shoot also left a great impression on Paula Patton. “We were shooting a scene where Brandt catches Ethan’s leg, and then I catch Brandt, and we’re pulling him back in through the window. I saw Tom hanging there, outside the Burj Khalifa, and he just looked at me and said calmly, ‘Hey, Paula,’ and I’m, like, ‘Hi.’ I looked down and realized I had inched my way outside the window somehow. It was astounding to be looking out that building. In many ways, you are overcome by the beauty of the city. I couldn’t believe I was doing it.”
Proving yet again his lack of fear of heights, sometime during the shoot, Cruise, Smrz and a photographer took a trip up to the very top of the Burj Khalifa for a photo shoot. “You have to take multiple elevators and even more flights of stairs before you reach the top,” Bryan Burk describes. “Then you go inside this tube, where the spire is, and climb a single ladder. It took Tom 20 minutes to climb that, which means it would have taken me 45 minutes.”
At the very top is a submarine-style hatch, to keep wind from entering the building. Once at the top, Cruise was unable to resist, and asked Smrz to lower him down by a rope 15 feet over the edge – to autograph the building. “The only person who will ever see that is the guy that paints the building years down the road,” Smrz says.
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Post by architect on Dec 12, 2011 22:27:58 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 13, 2011 11:34:34 GMT -5
MIGP - The Sandstorm Chase WARNING! You will be watching 4 complete minutes of the film.
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Post by architect on Dec 14, 2011 1:14:51 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 15, 2011 0:05:49 GMT -5
STUNTING FOR ACTION In another action packed scene, Ethan slips out of a fourth-story window and, while Russian operatives wait for him to give up, grabs his belt, leaps from the building ledge, slides down a nearby power line to the roof of a moving van and rolls off safely onto the street. “That was actually one of the most challenging stunts of the whole movie, as far as difficulty goes,” says stunt coordinator Gregg Smrz. “We rehearsed that on stage over and over and over, until it was just old hat, and then went and put it into place. Tom nailed it in just a few takes.” The key word here is: “Tom.” That stunt – only a sign of things to come for the audience as they watch the rest of the film – was performed by Cruise himself as was the case throughout the movie. “Tom wants to do everything,” says Smrz, “even when he doesn’t have to. There are shots where the producers were really getting nervous, and he wanted to take it further and further. I told him, ‘Tom, nobody is going to know it’s not you. There’s no reason for you to do this – your double could do it and you can watch.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘But I’m having fun.” Bird concurs: “I agree with Tom that when the real guy is there, you get something extra, and the audience can feel it. It’s not just that you’re seeing the actor’s face, but somebody like Tom adds intensity to it because he’s an actor. When he falls, he shows you the fear of somebody who’s suddenly being dropped. It’s a performance and I think people can tell the difference.” Cruise is intimately involved with every step of the stunt process. “He loves action films, and he takes them very seriously and does his homework,” says Bird. “He’s a stunt coordinator’s dream because he invests himself completely. He wants to understand every aspect of how you execute a stunt, how it’s planned. By the time the day arrives to do the stunt, he’s completely prepared. He’s made to order for this kind of movie.” Adds Paula Patton, “It’s why he’s the perfect Ethan Hunt. He’s fearless. He lives for danger and excitement and doing the impossible, which he’s done his whole career.” The rest of the cast followed Cruise’s example, both in work ethic and in the desire for a realistic experience for the audience, performing many of their own stunts as well, particularly in the fight arena. Cast members trained for four months, every day, with trainer and fight coordinator Rob Alonzo. Alonzo’s approach focused mainly on making certain the actors knew all the moves, so they could drop in and create a realistic-looking fight. “He trained us to learn all the moves that would be helpful to you in a fight, not an actual choreographed fight,” explains Paula Patton. “Then, as you get close to shooting the fight, you start to create some choreography, so when you go in to shoot the scene, you’re not thinking about it, you’re just making it look as real as possible.” The training came to the proof for both Patton and actress Léa Seydoux in a fight when Jane finally confronts Moreau. “We wanted to do a fight that had a fast, vicious, slightly out-of-control feel to it,” says director Bird. “Léa originally was only supposed to do a few close-ups and then we would have a stunt woman do the rest, but she got into the spirit and said she wanted to do this stuff.” The two worked together with Smrz and Alonzo for months to perfect the scene. Another intensely complicated stunt sequence in the film, involving one of the most complex sets ever built for an action movie, appears as Ethan fights with Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) to recover the cheget, the Russian nuclear launch briefcase, to prevent the start of a nuclear holocaust. The two battle it out in an old-fashioned fistfight in a 3D automated parking garage with machinery and automobiles constantly on the move. “That went along with our desire for this movie to not fire a lot of guns and unleash a ton of ordinance,” André Nemec explains. “Josh and I talked about setting an old school fistfight in a crazy environment. I recalled a conversation I had with an architect friend, who told me about these automated parking garages. So, Josh and I went online and found one that VW had. We were looking at pictures of it and thought ‘This literally could be the most insane environment for a brawl,’ then pepper in playing hot potato with a nuclear briefcase - wild.” Special Effects Supervisor Mike Meinardus and his crew then spent the next six months building the set, which was fully operable. The structure held the 35,000 pound, 78 foot tall center column, supporting two 23 feet paddles, each of which weighed over three tons. The completed set held about 70 cars, 18 on each level, which were best set in place using the machinery Meinardus had built to use shooting the scenes – the paddles themselves. The action for the incredibly complex sequence was mapped out by Brad Bird in an animatic; a simplified animation used to plan each step of the sequence. “It’s an extraordinary exercise in three-dimensional thought,” says Bissell. “It’s a tremendous testament to Brad’s ability to introduce the geography of the set,” co-producer Tom Peitzman adds. That trait, no doubt, comes from the director’s keen ability to visualize the way he would in animation, producing the kind of fantastical shots Bird is known for. But for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, the director took the kind of approach necessary for live action stunts. “He didn’t want things just to be magical,” says Burk. “He wanted everything to feel authentic and real.” For that, Bird wisely turned to his visual effects supervisor and stunt coordinator for advice, both of whom were eager to pull off what Bird envisioned, while still helping him stay in the realm of reality. The two would negotiate with Bird to hit the mark. The shots were rehearsed with Cruise’s stunt double, to plan out camera moves and program the operation of the paddles, but filmed, of course, with Cruise and Nyqvist doing their own work in every shot. An immense amount of care was taken to protect the actors in the dangerous maneuvers with the operating paddles and the minimal deck surface to stand on between cars. “Each paddle weighs 6700 pounds and there’s only about ½ inch clearance between the paddle and the decks, so it’s like a giant sheer,” says Meinardus. “When it was running, we’d have sirens and safety meetings, to make sure that nobody was rappelling between there.” Adds Bird, “It was a great tribute to the whole team to pull that off because it takes incredibly precise coordination.” The pair of actors were suspended from cables, picked to the ceiling of the warehouse, as well as to the ends of the paddles to prevent accidental falls between vehicle platforms and to guide planned jumps. Cruise, at one point, makes a three-story leap from a deck level into a car on a moving paddle, slowed at the end of his fall by a decelerator. “It was very challenging work, coordinating their moves and finding safe places to set the cameras,” says 2nd unit director Dan Bradley, who shot the sequence.
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Post by architect on Dec 15, 2011 0:08:22 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 15, 2011 23:21:46 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 16, 2011 21:01:14 GMT -5
THE GADGETS “These movies are a prop master’s dream come true,” says property master Kristopher E. Peck, who held the same position on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II.
One of the biggest gadgets, the IMF train, is one of Bird’s favorite sets. Designed by Jim Bissell and built on a soundstage in Vancouver, the set appears bombproof inside. “It’s oval-shaped and designed to look like it’s prepared to take a huge concussive shock, and be a good command center for any situation. It’s just loaded with all the special gadgets they could need.” says Bird. “It was full of all sorts of gimmicks,” Bissell explains. “Sliding trays for weapons, televisions that you pulled out of the wall and then slid down with hydraulic stands that pop up and allow you to swivel them anywhere you wanted to.”
Among the most important pieces of equipment is, of course, the indispensable MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE mask making machine, designed in part with the makeup effects department. “That’s one of the really great props from the TV series,” notes Peck. “Benji’s quite obsessed with the mask machine,” says Simon Pegg. “I think he harbors a secret desire to wear one. It’s so funny, because when you go through makeup, you know how long it takes to put on a prosthetic and how much work it takes to make someone look like someone else. I love that idea that they have this machine where you just push a button and you’re someone else.”
Peck also came up with the design for the Gecko Gloves, which Ethan uses to climb the outside of the Burj Khalifa. “Kris really came up with the technology and the backstory behind those gloves,” says Tom Peitzman. “They’re one of the most amazing props in the movie. Those were something Tom Cruise had ideas and concepts for at my very first meeting. He actually recognized what the issues would be, about the gloves slipping or of not sticking, not fitting properly as well as for lights that come on to determine proper adhesion to the surface.”
Peck and his team also created the cool communications device Ethan wears while he’s climbing the Burj. “It’s supposed to appear as if he’s using it to communicate with the IMF team, but we realized we were actually going to need a way to communicate with him while he was going to be on the outside of the building. So, we collaborated with the sound department to make it truly functional – he’s actually online with the director and stunt coordinator while he’s doing his climb.”
Another interesting prop was the cheget – a briefcase meant to look like a slightly older version of a nuclear football. “It’s got all this solid state analog technology that looks like it’s fail-safe,” Peck says. There was little research the designer could do to replicate one – there aren’t a lot of them around. “The first thing we did was reach out to people that are in the know in that world. We contacted Sandia Labs, who have a really great museum with nuclear briefcases dating back to the 1960s. We took that concept and built on it for modern day.” The IMF Rolling Safe House, a secret hideout located in what appears to be a decrepit railroad car stored in a Russian rail yard, protected the team’s gadgets. “On the outside, it looks like something a blues musician would live in,” laughs Simon Pegg. The inside, however, is a veritable one-stop shopping experience for IMF agents who need a change of identity, to refresh their weapons cache or make repairs.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL offers up the kind of entertainment experience action fans crave, as MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films have from the very first in 1996. “It’s the epitome of what a popcorn movie is,” says Tom Cruise.
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Post by architect on Dec 16, 2011 21:02:08 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 17, 2011 23:26:37 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 19, 2011 10:20:46 GMT -5
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Post by architect on Dec 20, 2011 2:37:16 GMT -5
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