My God, It's Raining

Before I start, I want to mention one thing.  I think this film is almost as bad as Charlie’s Angels was for really blatant product placement.  It’s really quite distracting, it’s so badly done.  I appreciate the costs of a modern film make it almost necessary but come on.

Anyway.

Normally, the changeover from a numbered sequel to a genre-specific title signals a disavowal of the previous instalments in a series.  For Mission: Impossible, this would seem like the obvious route to take.  After the original outing, the series took a sharp downward turn with the second instalment – what the dire tie-in pseudo-metal soundtrack and ridiculous continuity didn’t manage to kill stone dead, the dust-dry chemistry and writing finished off – and the third suffered as a result.  I don’t doubt it made a reasonable return – here we are after all with number four in our laps, writhing away for all it’s worth –  but I doubt many can actually remember the plot of MI:III.

So, it was a bit of surprise that Ghost Protocol leans heavily on the back of MI:III, with Ethan all moody and stoic, and everyone else treading on eggshells around him over the fact that he’s no longer with his wife.  In fact, it ends up the movie’s greatest flaw.  Because the third instalment was so ethereal, there’s no impact to the various revelations about Julia (his wife), and Ethan’s responses to that.  The coda at the end especially falls flat, an oddly detached few minutes of dialogue and apparently significant cameo action that floats free of the rest of the film, untethered and unconnected.

Even without this major, major issue hampering the story, the rest of it feels too anachronistic to actually make sense.  The point of impetus – a team of US black ops specialists is disavowed in a brutal and public fashion is fair enough, but it’s quite a generic jumping-off point.  RED did much the same, with much better results, and the inclusion of a GI: Joe – Retaliation trailer before the film did nothing to help matters.  What follows after, though, is just so irrelevant that it almost feels like a joke.

Rogue nuclear strategist wants to set off a Global Nuclear conflict that will “touch the lives of every human being on the planet” by firing a single nuclear missile from a USS- I mean, uh, Sovi-, ummm wait, Russian submarine?  It’s like Reagan never had a second term and the INF never happened.  If that wasn’t mind-boggling enough, a Serbian hit squad – plucked from the early 90′s presumably – is muddled into things to try and pad out the obvious lack of content.

It’s like the writers aren’t even trying.  There’s the usual mentions of terrorism, and a vague threat about how the US will pin a crime on Hunt’s head, but there isn’t a lot of tension to derive from that.  The only person actually chasing the IMF agents is a Russian from some undisclosed law enforcement agency – since there’s no KGB now, it’s apparently left to the viewer’s imagination to actually come up with a name or a motivation for the pursuer – and he is so lacking in manpower and resource that his few appearances do little to add anything approaching tension.

Even disavowed, the IMF seems to have infinite reach and resources, ignores all boundaries and jurisdictions, and has zero accountability.  They live in a magical fairy land where the international reputation of the US isn’t being ceaselessly eroded by the kind of black-bag hijinks the agents get up to.  The mission dialogue at the very end of the movie is worthy of a special mention, as the cool, robotic voice informs Ethan that persons unknown are hacking into US unmanned drones – presumably the tip-off was a  sudden drop in the number of awkward questions Hilary Clinton had to ignore about civilian deaths in Pakistan?

So, yeah.  Between the blithe assumption that the viewing audience has no greater grasp of world affairs other than the cast-off historical assumption that the Red Menace is still lurking out there somewhere and a necessary reliance on the events of a largely forgettable precursor, Mission: Impossible isn’t worth the cinema queue.

Of course, I would write my first ‘blog post for ages and forget to actually include worthwhile content.

Well, friends, fear not because I will make it up now by delivering up a recommendation of incredible value to you.

You may or may not remember Jennifer Williams (@sennydreadful) who hosted the Halloween Shorts on her ‘blog a few months ago.  Rings a bell, no? No?

Well, if you need a reminder, go read her very literal take on Faulkner’s advice to “Kill your darlings”, Wendigo.  It’s free and won’t take five minutes.  Off you go.

Just before Christmas, Jennifer released the first part of her Fantasy serial, The Copper Promise.  It’s available for Kindle download through Amazon and costs less than a pint for damn near two hour’s worth of reading pleasure.  It’s a well-tooled chunk of dungeon-crawl adventure fiction, with fun characters and fights and tentacles and torture and other whatnot.  Buy it and give it a shot, if that sounds like your sort of thing.

Wow. Long time, no post.

Anyway.

I get tired of the internet sometimes.  Mind you, I get tired of real life, too.  Today, for instance, I stumbled in the street and accidentally bumped into someone.  He turned as I righted myself, I apologised, then walked on.  I got maybe ten steps when he suddenly bellowed “DO THAT AGAIN AND I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” at the top of his voice.

I let it slide.  I feel like I let everything slide – in real life and in internet land – if only because it feels like the alternate options are more trouble than they are worth.  I read stuff in ‘blogs, articles, comments, and tweets that I want to respond to almost every day, but I know it would just be a trip round the normal downwards spiral that all internet arguments seem to take.  Hell, I’ve agreed with people only for them to take umbrage at a misinterpreted reading of my agreement.

So, I stay out of it.  And I don’t turn round to pre-empt my would-be murderer with a goal kick to the groin, because it’s much the same thing albeit in a different place.  It’s territorial posturing, self-validation rather than intent, and to take it as anything else is almost certainly a waste of effort.

Rant – over.  Barking at the boundary of my little corner of the internet – done.

Just before Christmas I wrote out a mission statement for 2012.  A Letter to the Universe, or Aims & Goal list – whatever you want to call it.  I wrote it down on the first page of a new notebook, and then started planning for the year ahead.

It didn’t seem like a lot when I set it down, but I’m glad I stuck to the idea of a few solid and achievable goals.  Thinking further on them, I’m going to be doing a lot of work, and asking for quite a bit of help from others.

A new novel is first in the works.  It has a title (of sorts), a plot (after a fashion), and an arc (ragged, but there).

There are some short stories as well.  A lot less well-formed, I’m going to be working through at least one a month with a view to finding homes for them all.

And there’s a germ of an idea involving some audio work.  I’d like to give some reading a try, see how it goes.  That might be a whole other story idea, conceived in the car on the drive back down; something that suits my ridiculous, deadpan voice.