Movie

Mission Impossible 8 (Paramount+, 2025)

This has mild spoilers to the plot, such as it was.

OK, yes, the actual subtitle is The Final Reckoning, words which the villain mentions TWICE in the movie in some foreboding villain-speak . I read an interesting article with director Christopher McQuarrie where he states that he doesn’t care if you can follow all the points of the plot in an MI movie! He just wants you to get the gist. Well, there was just enough recap to get us to the action scenes.

Because, let’s face it, these movies are about what ridiculous thing Tom Cruise does next. It’s not enough that he is credited as one of the stunt fliers on the movie but he has to become the craziest wing-walker EVER, earning a Guinness world-record for flaming parachute jumps.

He has raised practical stunts to such a level that I was actually a little disappointed at the end of the ‘escape from the submarine’ as they conveniently skipped over how the former pickpocket (love Hayley Atwell though) successfully mushed a dog team by herself and found and retrieved Ethan Hunt from under all that ice when he literally stripped himself of all of his gear. But, hey, I kept snacking and watching.

The AI bogeyman villain never made much sense but it did provide several scenes where everyone could look tense and do things exactly right that they had no clue about so that humans could defeat the AI.

At least there were several scenes with Tom Cruise running, which has to be a drinking game out there. If it’s not, it should be–a great way for college kids to get drunk very fast and stay that way.

It will be interesting to see what Tom Cruise does next.

Superman Over the Years

This post covers two items I just got for Christmas. The first, Superman: Welcome to Metropolis by David Lewman (who doesn’t even get his name on the cover) was released in 2025 as the only tie-in book to the tentpole movie for DC Studios. It’s a “Junior Novel” which the publisher says is for ages 6-9. As such, only a geek like me would want it to see what it says. Turns out it’s a fun bit of backstory (not canon to the film universe) about Clark Kent coming to the big city for his reporter job. It’s absolutely appropriate for your kids or grandkids! The only quibble I had with the book is that, even at this age they are no longer “superheroes” but “metahumans”, even those like Green Lantern who just has a cool ring.

As I lamented when I read & posted about the Wonder Woman ’84 ‘junior novel’ it’s a shame that there is no perceived market for more adult tellings of superhero/metahuman stories.

That brings me to the collection of the Max Fleischer Studio collection of theatrical shorts. This collection is from 2023 and represents a new remastering of the 17 cartoons. It is an amazing transfer in both sight and sound. I owned a previous edition on DVD which is now obsolete, as this gift from my son means this is the go-to edition to watch.

These cartoons are of their time so you get “Japoteurs” produced in the middle of World War II. This is Superman before all of the elements of his origin story and universe are all there, as it was only four years after his first story in the comics!

I wish they had embedded a “skip” function for the introductions as they are basically all the same–and his theme music is reused a lot.

This cartoons are held up as some of the finest cartoon art ever done. Even if you’re not a huge Superman fan it’s worth watching a few of them. You can find them on YouTube but they won’t look or sound as good.

Starship Troopers 25th Anniversary Edition [4K] (2022)

I’ve owned almost every edition of Starship Troopers that’s been released since 1997. I just got the 25th Anniversary Steelbook case edition as I only recently bought a 4K television.

Apparently the scan to 4K was done from the original print in 2017 for the 20th Anniversary and this new anniversary edition has a latest kind of Dolby soundtrack. All I know is: it looks absolutely gorgeous. The sound was good enough that it unfortunately bothered the dog and I had to keep lowering it.

I admit I have not rewatched this film in many years. It’s a ‘third-rail’ for fans of Robert A. Heinlein and it deviates from Heinlein’s plot and world-building in several significant ways. I think that it’s a very good “B-movie” as long as you forget about Heinlein’s source material while watching. The CGI/special effects are better than I remembered.

There’s always much talk about director Paul Verhoeven’s intent with the film, but there are really two views within the film. The first is the close telling of the characters. Watching this is the closest you get to Heinlein’s source, even though there are many deviations. The second view is the one that I think many people misread. The FedNet broadcasts/Menu choices are a filtered/propaganda view that reads like a fascist society trying to control its population. Sadly, by not having the Powered Armor of the MI, Verhoeven doomed the movie to overwhelmingly be about a bunch of amazingly stupid military tactics that don’t make any sense and I think that weights the propaganda side more than it should.

It’s OK to enjoy this amazing-looking edition. Just go and read Heinlein’s book, too.