Mission: Impossible – Fallout / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- The real John Lark's motivation. While it's easy to dismiss that he's just a typical anarchical extremist not unlike villains Kurt Hendricks and Solomon Lane, there are hints that he has a far more personal reason behind his actions. When Lark tries to frame Ethan by convincing Sloane that Ethan is Lark, he gets unusually aggressive when he starts talking about how Ethan had been betrayed and disavowed several times by his own government, and that there will be a point where he will have had enough of it and goes rogue. Was he speaking about Ethan? Or about himself? Considering that Walker is basically a younger, more brutal Ethan Hunt, who has surely gone through some pretty rough assignments of his own under Sloane's command, it's possible that he's faced betrayal from the government he trusted like Ethan had gone through, and this fueled his disillusionment of those in control and he finally snapped, becoming the very person he's trying to frame Ethan as.
- Sloane acts cocky and confident whenever she's dealing with the IMF, but during her private meeting in Paris with Walker, she acts a lot more like any normal woman with a high-stress, high-stakes job. How much of her normal behavior is a facade?
Award Snub: Despite receiving unanimous acclaim from critics for its superbly well-shot and edited action sequences, it didn't receive any nominations for Best Editing, Cinematography, or any of the other technical categories at either the Golden Globes or the Oscars.
Awesome Music: Can be seen here.
Captain Obvious Reveal: It's pretty easy to guess that Walker is John Lark once he accuses Ethan of being Lark. His assertion isn't entirely unreasonable, but it relies a lot on what-ifs with clearly fake evidence and comes off more as him trying to cast blame on a patsy.
Catharsis Factor: In addition to Ethan being able to hurl Walker/Lark into the fiery helicopter at the bottom of the mountain, Lane after being recaptured being transferred back to MI6 ala placed in the trunk of a car—with the vast implication being we'll never see him again for obvious reasons.
Complete Monster: Solomon Lane returns. See the main series page for details.
Creepy Awesome: Solomon Lane has degenerated into this, he's now become a psychotic Death Seeker who speaks in a low, raspy voice, and is prepared to do anything, even lose his own life, just to inflict as much pain on Ethan and his team as possible. He's both very menacing and incredibly entertaining to watch as a result.
Crosses the Line Twice: Ilsa saves Ethan from Lark by shooting him in the head. Unfortunately, Ethan needed to make a mask based on Lark's face, which they don't have yet, prompting this exchange:
Walker: Can you make a mask?
Ethan: I need a face to make a mask.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- "Lark", due to the famous bathroom fight scene and the fact that he manages to nearly kill both Hunt and Walker. Had Ilsa not shot him when he was looking away, she probably would have been killed as well, which is saying something. Amusingly enough, the stuntman who plays him is the same one who portrayed previous darkhorses Nines and a member of Snoke's Praetorian Guard.
- The White Widow, played by the stunning Vanessa Kirby, a mysterious woman in white who's as dangerous as she's beautiful, capable of holding her own in a fight and charms Ethan into doing her bidding.^note The fact that she's related to Max, an important side character from the first film, and is actually working with the good guys in apprehending Lane only fuels her popularity.
Even Better Sequel: The film is largely considered as this to Rogue Nation. Some are even saying not only is it one of the best installments in the series, but one of the best action films of the decade, right up there with similar darlings like Skyfall and Mad Max: Fury Road. It currently sits at a very impressive 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, topping Rogue Nation's 93%. It also has the highest Metacritic score (86) and the best Cinemascore rating of the series. Not bad for a sixth film in a long-lived franchise.
Critics' consensus: Fast, sleek, and fun, Mission: Impossible - Fallout lives up to the "impossible" part of its name by setting yet another high mark for insane set pieces in a franchise full of them.
Evil Is Cool: Despite being more evil than ever, some people feel this way towards Solomon Lane, due to how utterly passionate he is about ruining Hunt's life. It becomes even better as his main associate, John Lark, is revealed to be way more unstable and insane than what is previously shown in the film, and Lane is the Diabolical Mastermind to Lark's The Brute.
Fan Nickname: Walker's two air punches◊ before continuing the bathroom fight against a Mook became known as the "Arm Reload."
Friendly Fandoms: With The Crown due to Vanessa Kirby (who plays Princess Margaret) having a prominent role in this film.
Harsher in Hindsight
- Seeing Luther with a gun to his head in the opening scene can become extremely uncomfortable when one learns that Ving Rhames was held at gunpoint in his own home by police, a story which Rhames came forward with during Fallout's opening weekend.
- A scene has Hunley quip about his gun not being loaded is this in the wake of an incident during the filming of Rust where Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun that accidentally injured the director and killed a crew member.
He Really Can Act: Henry Cavill recieved an enormous amount of praise for his menacing, charismatic, and badass performance as August Walker, especially since this is the first time he's played a major bad guy. Some people even joked that his performance was good enough to make up for the infamous moustache debacle.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Spectre was chided by critics and viewers for having a climax eerily similar to that of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Then Fallout launched a publicity campaign that emphasizes somber themes and cold desolate mountains like the trailers for Spectre. Furthermore, Henry Cavill was once in the running to play James Bond. Now, here he is in MI6.
- Jeremy Renner didn't come back for this film because he had to leave to work on Avengers: Endgame, another film that also features a foreign spy with blonde hair and "(color) Widow" as a codename.
- The sole fact that Angela Bassett played Amanda Waller several years before. She starred in the 2011 film adaptation of Green Lantern and met to have played the role onwards, with that film being the launch of a DC cinematic universe. It didn't, but that movie's Waller ended up interacting with the DC Extended Universe Superman.
- Stuntman Liang Yang (the "John Lark" decoy) has a habit of dealing with traitors, as Stormtrooper "Nines" in The Force Awakens (the traitor being Finn), as one of Snoke's praetorian guards in The Last Jedi (the traitor being Kylo Ren) and in MI: Fallout (the traitor being August Walker).
- Lorne Balfe's score for this film is heavily inspired by his own mentor Hans Zimmer's works and it's very well received by fans, arguably even more than the score that Zimmer himself composed for Mission: Impossible II years ago.
I Knew It!: Give yourself a medal if you figured out Walker was the real "John Lark" all of three minutes into his introduction. You're not alone.
Like You Would Really Do It:
- Did anyone actually expect Luther to die in the opening scene at the hands of some random arms dealer?
- Like they would really nuke the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca within the opening of the movie.
- When Luther and Benji cut the fuses on the bombs, we immediately cut to a silent white frame, as if the bombs detonated. But, no, it's just glare from the sun rising on Ethan's ridge.
Magnificent Bitch: The "White Widow"—real name Alanna Mitsopolis—is Max's grown daughter who took very well to arms dealing herself. Being a charitable individual while conducting her criminal activities as her mother also did, White Widow makes a deal with radical "John Lark"—August Walker—to deliver him the poisonous toxin orbs needed for his scheme to balance the world while also planning to help him spring the monstrous Solomon Lane from imprisonment too. When Ethan, pretending to be Lark, warns her that men are after her, White Widow trusts him to protect her while also taking out two of them herself with a blade as well. Expecting the collateral damage of cops while Lane is sprung as he's being transferred, White Widow calmly accepts the deaths of her own men as that instead while also clearly still caring too and insists Ethan deal with Ilsa Faust so she's not a problem. Revealed to have been an informant with full immunity for the American government all along, White Widow then helps to ensure a deal that has Lane-once recaptured and defeated—go back to face karma at the hands of MI6 for all he's done.
Memetic Mutation:
- As soon as the film's title was revealed, there were many people who made Fallout jokes, such as quipping "War. War never changes." in comments sections. The near identical text font doesn't help either.
- The aforementioned mustache◊, once again, carrying over from Justice League.
- Another mean spirited dig at Justice League is to make a claim that Fallout manages to make Henry Cavill feel more viscerally superhuman than Justice League does, a joke that comes up in multiple reviews, discussions, and parody videos, not to mention plain ol' internet posting.
- August Walker cocking his fists and loosening his shirt before he prepares to beat up the mook in the bathroom; this scene was shown in the trailer, overlaid with the sound of a gun being cocked which came across as Walker "reloading his arms".
- When Walker gets half his face burned up with helicopter fuel, people joked that Superman had become Two-Face.
- The Imagine Dragons' Friction / M:I Theme mash-up featured in the first trailer is wildly popular, so much so that people are editing it into other trailers for awesome results:
  - Licence to Kill
  - The Winter Soldier
  - Spectre
  - and, of all things... Paddington 2 !
Money-Making Shot: As with the Burj Khalifa and plane sequence from the previous two films' trailers, the climax of Fallout shows Ethan Hunt dangling precariously off a chopper in flight then piloting it for real (after taking piloting lessons just for this), reminding the audience that once again Tom Cruise will happily laugh in the face of danger with practical, crazy stunts for your summer enjoyment.
Moral Event Horizon: If Solomon Lane hadn't crossed it in Rogue Nation, he definitely does when he plans on setting off two nukes to contaminate the water supply of Pakistan, India, and China, affecting a third of the world's population. Unlike Walker, Lane has given up all pretense of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist and is only focused on getting revenge on Ethan, to the point where he's willing to die to ensure it comes to fruition. Lane even takes the ludicrously petty step of causing a smallpox outbreak in the area, just so he could set up a medical camp for Ethan's ex-wife to work at and have her killed in the blast, all so Ethan can spend the rest of his life rotting in a cell, framed for Walker's crimes, with the full knowledge that he's lost everyone he cared about.
Narm:
- Ethan and Walker's rivalry seems like it's supposed to be an "old school vs. young up-and-comer" deal, which bumps up very jarringly against Tom Cruise's ongoing refusal to act like he's a day over 30 and just makes it come off as a big Conflict Ball with how Ethan has never been averse to violence himself. This could be justified in that this is not the movie's main focus and Walker had no reason to take the rivalry that seriously.
- The movie has one of the more complicated plots in the series, and gives just enough information for explanation that it trusts its audience to follow along with what's going on. That makes it all the more absurd when the movie pauses a few times for characters to explain Ethan Hunt to each other or to Ethan himself in a rather on the nose fashion as if he was a complex character.
- One scene featured heavily in the trailers features Walker hiking up his sleeves during the bathroom fight. While intended to make him look like a cool, brutal brawler, many fans joked that it simply looked like he was "reloading" his fists.
- Alec Baldwin did the best he could, but his attempt to fight Lark is pretty rough to look at since it comes off as exactly what it is: An old man trying to keep up with a well-built man in his prime. It's made even worse when the fight actually tries to make it look like he has Lark cornered at first as it's blatant that Cavill is deliberately not moving.
Narm Charm:
- On the other hand, Walker and Hunt's rivalry can still be considered cool, as they are the opposites to each other yet both are still fighting for good, and Walker's coldness adds to the interest of the character, comparing to the slightly hotheaded Hunt.
- And while scenes with people explaining Ethan Hunt could've been executed better, they did their job in developing Ethan's character to be more than 'Action Movie Hero/Super Spy' he's portrayed as in previous films, showing that Ethan does have flaws and weaknesses like any other person. This is especially evident in the scene with Luther explaining to Ilsa about Ethan's conflicted obligation to his married life with Julia, protecting his friends and the innocent caught in the crossfire, saving the world, and how all of them is a heavy burden to his psyche is pulled off rather emotionally in a realistic deconstruction of the Chronic Hero Syndrome.
Nausea Fuel: Some people winced when they saw the infamous shot where Tom Cruise broke his ankle.
Obvious Judas: It's so blatant that Walker is Lark that even the movie itself hardly treats it as The Reveal, instead setting up a firm Big Bad Duumvirate with him and Lane about halfway through.
One-Scene Wonder:
- 'John Lark', the Asian hitman that Ethan and Walker fight in the toilet (played by professional stuntman, martial artist, and fight choreographer Liang Yang). He manages to take both of them on at the same time despite getting knocked out earlier, and he actually wins the fight. If Ilsa didn't arrive and put a bullet in his head when he was off-guard, Ethan's brains would've been decorating the floor instead.
- And in the exact same scene, the "Rowdy Frenchmen" who knock on the toilet door while Walker and Hunt are making a mask of his face, who mock them due to it looking like they are having a gay orgy.
- To a lesser extent, Nils Debruuk due to his utterly annoying yet somewhat lovable laughter.
Signature Scene: The first trailer has at least three:
- The shot of Ethan jumping between two buildings, due to the moment where Tom Cruise is shown breaking his ankle;
- Hunt and Walker teaming up to fight a Mook in a bathroom, due to the effective synchronisation with the Mission: Impossible theme. It also became infamous for Walker's iconic "arm reloading" where he throws a few air punches to ready himself before continuing the fight.
- Hunt dangling from the chopper.
Watch It for the Meme: There was a joke about some people just wanting to watch the movie to see if Henry Cavill's mustache was worth the troubles Justice League went through.^note

YMMV / Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Edit Locked