Mission Impossible IV…Not Impossible?

cruiseabrams.JPGStar Trek XI honcho JJ Abrams got the notice of Paramount after his deft work on Mission Impossible III. Although it made $400M a sequel seemed highly unlikely after Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone very publicly booted Tom Cruise off the Paramount lot last week. However, in an interview with Newsweek, Paramount chief Brad Grey offers an olive branch. “I still admire Tom Cruise, he is a huge movie star and a great actor and I’m sure we’ll work together in the future,” said Grey. Even stranger, the Cruise camp seems open to working with Paramount and even an ‘MI4’. Cruise’s producing partner Paula Wagner tells Newsweek “If it’s the right script why not?…we created that franchise”. If this ever happens one could assume that all parties would want Abrams back in the big chair, Cruise himself delayed MI3 for over a year to wait until Abrams was ready for his big debut. Let’s just hope that any MI4 project does not bump into Star Trek XI…that other little Paramount franchise Abrams is working on.

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Why would Tom Cruise do a M.I.4 ? Look at the grosses of M.I. 2 & M.I.3.See a trend?Why would Cruise eat humble pie and come back to Redstone’s Paramount only to prove that Redstone was right about Cruise’s loss of box office appeal when M.I. 4 will make less than M.I. 3 ?Besides Abrams is making Trek xi ,right?Unless He’s thinking of bailing out on Trek and heading off with Cruise to work on something else.

No, I think the Tom Cruise story was just a publicity gag, because everyone knows for years that he`s part of scientology…Or does anyone believe that he was fired because of “the wrath of Brooke Shields”!? ;-)

PS:
I liked her series “Suddenly Susan”!

Bad publicity.And he’s getting it everywere.Did you see the Emmys?Even the local newspapers are ragging on the poor guy.He just must have pissed off some powerful people who usually sheild their cash cows from bad publicity or spin it in some postive angle.Maybe Scientology wanted more money from him.By the way , He was right.Pyschiatric meds are turning everyone with a”syndrome”into zombies.

Well it’s not the right place to discuss about psychiatrical issues, but it’s a stereotyped imagination that “zombies” are created. depressions for example, are related to organic/ chemical changes in the body, thats what medical science found out. You couldn’t heal such “syndromes” by saying to someone that everything is ok and will be ok in the future and that you will be there to support this or that person emotionally. That wouldn’t be enough. Off course the psychological part is as important as the physical part of the therapy. Therefore it’s totally wrong and dangerous to deny one of those important parts by using vitamines instead of established scientific methods. Following esoteric literature vitamines should help against cancer, against multiple sclerosis against anything! I can’t understand why intelligent people prefer to follow unscientific methods and doubtfull words of some strange gurus. Star Trek tells us that man has a brain to reflect about his environment and himself. And information by using these “tools” is the only way to make a difference and to understand some links.

Your right Trekmaster,sorry,not the place to discuss psychiatric issues.I got off point.But since it’s already ‘out there’ let me offer a more compassionate explaination of theoffhanded statement I made…Alot of people are afraid of their emotions,inarticulated stored emotions not dealt with re-surface as feelings which are powerful to influence behavior (pathologies,attention deficit,some behavioral ticks,and addictions).The problem with some meds is that they suppress the emotions and give a false sense of well-being.The stored emotions then remain in the person.The person falls into a pattern of behavior of not dealing with issues and tends to seek more meds ,further compounding the problem.which may manifest as pyscho-somatic illness. I guess that’s where my zombie shorthand comment came from.My apologies to anyone who’s having a hard time dealing with complex emotional trauma that requires the temporary use of psychiatric meds.Please speak to your doctor about being judiciously removed from them in conjunction with therapy so as not to create a dependency

Non-addictive homeopathic products with smallest possible side effects are being used more and more. And generally the dose depends on the degree of mental illness, that reveals zombie-like-symptoms anyway, if it was untreated. And at some point homeopathic meds might not be as effectice as chemical meds in order to heal emotional disturbances in combination with a therapy. Surely sometimes a simple therapy might be enough, but it can only support the fight against the pathological and empirical proved chemical changes in the physiology of the human brain.

With mission 1 De Palma was given a dog of a script and made the film more interesting then it should have been. The premise just doesn’t ring true with the first movie. There is no way CIA would implicate Ethan as the mole and assassin of his IMF team without recovering all the dead bodies first. The only two dead bodies not recovered were that of Jim Phelps and his wife Claire. Unless CIA had Jims body on a morgue slab there is no way Ethan would be implicated. The IMF sting operations in the 3 movies a downright boring and predictable. The villians in the 3 movies are cutboard cutout characters. They are badly drawn villians from within IMF. By taking Peter Graves character Jim Phelps in mission 1 and turning him into a post-cold war villian is paying disgusting disrespect to fans of the tv show. Mission 2 may have slick flamboyant visuals from John Woo but turns out to be a hollow empty IMF sting operation. Cruise had Olver Stone set to direct 2 only to go with John Woo’s empty experience. On mission 3 Cruise had a script by writer/director Frank Darabont to have been directed by David Fincher to only go with J J Abrams teenage movie. I didn’t mind Abrams coming on board thinking he might bring the complex mythology of ALIAS and LOST. Abrams was just reworking the weak formula of mission 1. Fishburne was reworking the Kitteridge role where Crudup was reworking the Jim Phelps role. Hoffman was a more violent version of the Redgrave role, and once again we get Ethan on the run from the agency. The only diference in 3 is we get louder blander bombastic action set-pices. The spy mythology created in the 3 movies is pretty lame. When one see’s the mythology created in the Jason Bourne movies the mission movies have to be dismissed as failures. One has to look at the masterful Casino Royale and it’s sequel Quantum Of Solace to see how a satisfying spy narrative is put together. If mission 4 goes ahead bring back Brian De Palma and give him a truly visual mindbending IMF sting operation then the crap he was given with mission 1. No one assemble shots and moves the camera better then De Palma. The villians in the film are downright boring. Why not get a villian such as Forest Whitiaker’s performance at Idi Amin from The Last King Of Scotland? Or a performance such as the Joker from The Dark Knight? The villians in the 3 movies have no backbone and substance. The mission movies were always going to make money, but if we got truly strong stories similar to the tv show they would have been more succesfull. Adults want to watch these genres also but not when they pander to undemanding teenagers with boring stories. THE DARK KNIGHT and CASINO ROYALE respected audience intelligence and everything else is box-ffice history.