Timing an action sequence to music is normal - timing the prison breakout scene to source music was unusual.  That's the characters timing their actions as opposed to the filmmakers.  The only precedent I can think of is Hudson Hawk.

It's fixed. Sorry about that.

I reckon the opening to Mission Impossible II (forget about the rest of the movie) is still up there with anything else in the series...

Check out the jump & slip at 1m:23s

I will go on record as defending MI-2 to an extent. On a rewatch, it's got an hour of nothingness in the middle, and John Woo is held-back by the PG-13, but it's got a really memorable goofy personality and style (and a really awesome Hans Zimmer score). I still prefer MI-2 to MI-3, which may be more "competent", but is completely forgettable, and suffers from a lot of Abrams tropes I really dislike (the flashforward, stupid unexplained mcguffin, everyone crying all the time instead of actual character development, shaky camera-work).  MI-2 at least has the distinction of going completely for broke, between the car chase ballet, constant slo-motion, and the nutso motorcycle chase at the end. It's one of the worse Woo movies, but he's still one of the all time greats at staging a setpiece.

I'm surprised at all the bashing of the original Mission Impossible, as I think it's by far the best in the series. It takes a much grittier approach and feels more like a real hardcore spy movie, versus a dumb blockbuster. Ghost Protocol is good, but it has a basically non-existent villain, and everything after Dubai is really disappointing (MI-3 has a similar problem after the bridge sequence).

I will say, I really like that the series changes up directors and aesthetics with every movie, as it keeps it fresh each time out. MI-1 is super de-palma with all the extended suspense and paranoia. MI-2 is a hard-turn into a crazy melodramatic slo-motion bullet opera, MI-3 is basically a feature version of Alias, and Ghost Protocol is super bouncy and light almost adventure-comedy.

So your favorite will probably just end up being whichever one's aesthetic genre appeals to you the most.

Last edited by bullet3 (2013-09-17 23:55:07)

That remains actually one of my most wished for director's cuts. Allegedly, Woo's original cut of the film was 3.5 hours long and R-rated, the studio took it away from him, cut the action scenes way down, and chopped it into 2 hours and got that PG-13.

the run that ends with "...the amount of semen in the chest cavity..." would be my pick.

And then sharks.

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/doce … a-sequence

I think this was the episode where you guys talked about the awful video game scene in some TV show. I know it was a recent one. Anyway, this is it. Enjoy.