Mission Impossible Fallout: The Best Pulp Movie of 2018

by

Scott D. Parker

(As we begin the Summer 2025 movie season with Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning next weekend, I thought I'd repost a piece I wrote back in 2018 about that year's new MI movie.)

First of all, Mission Impossible: Fallout is a phenomenal movie. I absolutely loved it. The action scenes are as you’d expect: awesome, over-the-top, and genuinely thrilling, especially when you know and see with your own eyes that Tom Cruise is doing practically all of them. Can you believe Cruise all but started doing these action movies around the age of forty, the age where many actors stop? The man knows how to craft a film.

I sat through most of the action scenes with a big goofy grin plastered on my face, loving practically every minute of film. I even jumped a few times, as did my wife who also thoroughly enjoyed the film. Heck, even my boy, seeing only his second Cruise movie and first MI film enjoyed it. Avengers: Infinity War was fantastic for what it did, The Incredibles 2 was gloriously fun, but MI: Fallout is hands down the best thrill ride of the summer.

One of my favorite hallmarks of these movies are the scenes where something appears to happen…only to learn later that another thing also happened that set everything into motion. It’s very much like a movie serial from the 1940s where you see Captain America appears to perish in a car explosion that caromed off a cliff…only to see that he jumped off at the last minute. Can’t get enough of that kind of thing.

Lester Dent’s plan for writing a pulp story also ran through my mind during certain scenes. Naturally, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt gets into trouble, and then more trouble, and yet more trouble. Then he must face choices that veer from bad to terrible. Just like Dent tells us writers. Oh, and that very end sequence, in Dent’s tales or MI films? Always there and always satisfying.

Speaking of satisfying, Henry Cavill is wonderful in this. He’s a big brute of a man, and those fighting scenes in the bathroom (they’re in the trailer) is brutal and vicious. Rebecca Ferguson returns and she is as bad ass as she was in the last movie. Simon Pegg is always a breath of levity in movies like this, especially this one which had much more humor than you’d expect.

Seriously, go now to a theater and buy your ticket to Mission Impossible: Fallout. It’s a living pulp story. You will enjoy it. Tom Cruise guarantees it and I wholeheartedly agree.

Fandom as We Get Older

By

Scott D. Parker

 

Being a fan of something is different when you’re younger.

A fellow Gen-Xer and I have discussion about fandom: what it was like as a kid or a young adult and what it’s like as we continue to get older. Recently he sent me a text and I’ve been reflecting on it.

I think my new take is that something has to touch my life in reality for my mind to naturally lock onto it the way it did before. For example, a TV show doesn't actually touch my life. I'm not part of the creation of it, distribution, marketing, etc. My role is the very last step, and it's simply consuming it. So, I just can't get into that when I naturally think much harder and longer about my career, family health, financial concerns.

I think we dismiss those as boring adult things, but they're real. As a teen, the happenings of my favorite band felt real. As an adult, I know I'm just their customer.

I think my friend’s point of view has some merit. When we’re teenagers, our lives center on fewer things: school, trying to get girls or guys to notice us, and all the stuff we consume. Our parents paid the bills, kept the lights on, and made sure we had food. Health care? Mom took us to the doctor. Oil bust threatening dad’s job? In my house, those conversations happened beyond my ears. All I had to do was do kid things.

And content filled those mental gaps.

The Beauty of Fewer Choices

Part of it is discovery. When I watched Star Wars, a whole new world opened up. My mind expanded in ways my young brain could barely comprehend. I needed to know EVERYthing about Star Wars and I consumed it all. This avid and active fandom kept going, to music, movies, TV shows, comic books, and books. Point of fact: I can still recite the trash compactor number from the first Star Wars movie. Every new discovery—from a new-to-be band to a new movie or TV show—meant I dove in deep and learned all I could about them.

Another part is volume. As a young lad, from 1977-1980, there was only one Star Wars movie. Yes, I didn’t have a VHS copy of it, but I saw every re-release, read the book and comics, and listened to the soundtrack and The Story of Star Wars LP endlessly. Plus, without all those adult things to worry about, all I did was consume. With Star Trek, only the 79 episodes existed. Novels came out annually from your favorite authors. You had time to read them, especially with only three network channels, PBS, and your local UHF station. 

The Volume Ramps Up

Yet in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the volume increased. More TV networks. Cable TV. More Star Trek and, after Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire proved there was an appetite for Star Wars, dozens of books, often multiple books published per year. Very soon, the volume began to be overwhelming. You just couldn’t keep up.

And we’re growing up. For me, that meant grad school and all that I needed to do to earn that degree. New book by Stephen King and it’s about 700 pages? Eeesh. Well, I’ll get to it after I finish my paper. New TV show on Thursdays? Well, since that’s when I have to work to cover rent, I’ll just have to tape it and hope I don’t forget. 

Now, one thing I’ve always done is make the time for movie premieres. If there’s a movie I want to see, I’ll be there opening day. I’ve always done that, but often, as soon as it’s over, I’m heading back home to sleep, study (grad school days), or take care of the kid (parenthood).

Streaming (and Real Life) Increases the Volume

After Netflix showed the world the future of television, the content became a tidal wave. In these past fifteen or so years, there’s just so much content. I’ve often had discussions with folks where I ask if they’ve seen TV Show A. They say no and then ask if I’ve seen TV Show B. I say no and then we proceed to explain why our show is good. Granted, I’ve been introduced to some good shows this way, but wasn’t it always nice when everyone tuned in on Thursdays to see what the friends were up to this week?

Oh, and now that we’re in our thirties, forties, and fifties, all those “boring adult things” take the pole position. Keep your job. Raise your kids. Tend to your house. Take care of relatives. Go to church. Ferry the kids to their myriads of activities. Watch their programming over and over while you miss the stuff you really want to watch. 

It can be overwhelming.

Remember how I mentioned I could still recite the trash compactor number from a movie I first saw in 1977? Well, when it came time to prepare for Andor season 2, I had to watch a few recaps to remind myself what happened in season 1. And try hard to remember character names (other than Andor and Mon Mothma), many of which I didn’t. 

It’s different being a fan when you get older, isn’t it? At least at the same level of intensity. Yes, there are tons of fans who retain their youthlike zeal for various franchises and sporting teams and other things we use to fill out time. For those fans, I applaud you. Bravo for making time to maintain that level of fandom. Sometimes I actually envy y’all.

But for me, to circle back to what my friend wrote, I don’t mind being a consumer. I enjoy all the things I consume when I consume them. And some are quite good and make me thing about them long afterwards. 

I’m really happy that all this content is out there and available for me to enjoy. I get to pick and choose what I want, enjoy it for a time, and then put it back on the shelf and replace it with the next thing. I often wonder what it would be like for my middle-aged self to go back in time and tell my younger self “There’s going to be so much Star Wars content out there that not only will you not be able to keep up with it all, you also won’t mind that you miss stuff.”

It would blow his young mind. But then again, he’s young, and has all the time in the world.

More Reading (and Watching) into the Dark

By

Scott D. Parker

(This is a rerun from 2023, but I still do this. Granted, this month's "reading into the dark" book is Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. I pushed play on the audio on a morning commute to work and it took me less than ten minutes for me to stop the audio and read the description. By the time I got to the office, I had to jump on the internet to try and get a handle on what's going on. 

So reading into the dark does have its drawbacks. It applies to movies and TV as well, like I mentioned a few weeks ago with how I came to the new Daredevil TV series. I didn't want to do the background "homework" of watching multiple seasons of TV. I just wanted to watch the new thing. I did it again yesterday when I watched Thunderbolts. I had a vague idea of the characters (other than The Winter Soldier) and let the movie filled in the gaps. It did, but the themes of Thunderbolts are universal. I enjoyed the new Marvel movie, the first one I've seen since...Spider-Man: No Way Home. I went in to watch the movie...in the dark.)

At least nine times a year, I start a book with zero knowledge about it. And it’s wonderful

We’re all readers here, right? How do you usually pick that next book to read? If we’re in a brick-and-mortar store, we look at the cover, we note the author, read that all-so-important description, and then maybe a few pages of chapter one. If we’re online, all of that is still present, but we get the added bonus of that preview. We can actually read the entire preview before we make that purchase decision. Oh, and then there are the reviews—from professionals as well as amateurs.

In every step of this process, we constantly build on what we think the book is going to be about, especially if you’ve got a good book description.

When’s the last time you started a book without any of that? Okay, you can throw in the author, title, and book cover because you actually have to pick it up or download it, but nothing else.

For me, three out of every four months, I get to do that.

I’m in a four-guy science fiction book club that has lasted now over twelve years. We take turns picking the book, we read it during the month, and then gather on the first Tuesday of the next month to discuss. It is at the meeting where we offer our grade and then the Picker gets to explain why he picked the book. When it’s my turn to assign a book, I’ve already gone through every step mentioned above.

Sometime in 2021 (or maybe 2020), I started going into the books picked by the other guys cold. Nearly every selection is on audio so the day the new book is picked, I download it (via Libby and my local library or Audible) and start playing. In this manner, I experience pure story. Sure, I’ve seen the cover and read the title and author, but that’s it.

I love it. With so much of our lives dictated by a myriad of decisions—including the books we read—it’s great to have that choice offload three out of every four months.

What I really love is when there’s a book by an author I don’t know. It happened with this month’s selection: Dead Silence by S. A. Barnes. Knew nothing about it and it is the book to beat for 2023. It’s a rare trick when a book’s spooky nature and a narrator’s excellent performance literally gives me chills and compels me to turn around on my nightly walks to make sure I’m alone.

I find having a book picked for me quite fun. It also happens every month with my cozy mystery subscription through Houston’s Murder by the Book. I do read those book descriptions because I think they are among the best, pun-filled descriptions out there.

With the monthly SF book and the cozy book already picked for me, it frees me up to make my own selection with more care. After all, even with audiobooks, there is only so many story hours in a month.

Note: since there are so many hours in a month to read or listen to stories, if the book is bad or isn’t capturing me, I pull the rip cord and stop. I do not feel compelled to finish. The other guys in the club used to question me and my response remained constant: Life’s too short to read bad books or books you don’t enjoy. Thus, when I give it a grade—officially an I for Incomplete—I’ll explain why the book failed me.

So, have you ever read a book without even reading the book description or reviews or anything? You should try it sometime. Get into a book club, but if that’s not an option, have a spouse or friend select your next book and just read.

Photo: Mo Eid via Pexels.com