By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout

If you, like me, are heading to movie theaters to cool off and to check out the latest blockbusters, you may want to keep in mind that next summer, big-budget movies might be hard to find.

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4 Comments

  1. Movie of the Week: Dead Reckoning Part One … correction … Tom Cruise turned 61 years old on July 3rd and is not 63 years old.

    I was disappointed by the movie. For a three hour movie only the last 30 minutes on the train was sufficiently engaging. The first half of the movie is basically way too much dialog, ” … be afraid of the AI. the entity, everyone else wants to control the AI, only Ethan Hunt (Cruise) wants to kill it.” Too abstract not enough of an emotional connection. The HERO of any movie is only as good as the VILLIAN, and this villain was a big yawn for me.

    I teach computer science, the only reason to be afraid of AI is the PEOPLE who are using AI … not the AI itself. None of the dialog, gave any sense of who was behind the AI.

    The other major errors in the plot were the demise of Ilsa Faust (played by Rebecca Ferguson). The car chase scene through the streets of Rome, was based on two women drivers … this seemed to be a desperate attempt to get women to be interested in car chases … it did not work. Like all car chases, I just wanted it to end, resigned to the idea that this part of the movie mainly appeals to men. Same experience of no emotional engagement, at any level … not even when Ethan Hunt responds to the demise of Faust.

    I became a fan of Tom Cruise (and Chris McQuarrie) for the first time last year, with Top Gun Maverick. I saw the film 25 times … in theatres. I bought a 4K HD screen just to watch the HD DVD even more times. I admit, I was desperate for big screen movies … having been locked out for two years by COVID19 restrictions. I made a point of watching the entire canon of Cruise’s work just to figure out why Top Gun Maverick was such a draw for me. In the end, I decided that it was the dialog of McQuarrie, the directing of Kosinski and the editing of the movie … Cruise simply allowed himself be emotionally engaging, for a change … no doubt because he has been signing the paraphernalia of Top Gun fans for 36 years. Also, the plot line of Maverick is a thinly veiled version of the 1986 movie.

    And so I conclude, emotional engagement with anything Cruise does is going to be a hit or miss affair. If the combined budget is in fact $491 million, i doubt very much that it will make a profit this year. The movie simply does not have the same level of engagement that Top Gun Maverick had. I will not be watching this film a second time, and will probably have to force myself to watch Part Two next year, if only to see how badly Hollywood ef’d up their understanding of AI.

    1. Thanks for the reviews. Presumably, the message is that AI is one more thing we should be afraid of.
      Me (a man 😉 just watched the trailer, and finds the car chase a total turn-off. This stuff makes even the (no doubt) “real” parts of the shoot feel fake. Go outside. Fresh air and real life can be so exhilarating, and is so much better.

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