Awesome / Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Trailers:

High-octane nightmare fuel for insurance agents everywhere.

• The trailer is pure edge-of-the-seat-of-your-pants action in under three minutes.
  • See that picture to the right? That helicopter is hundreds of feet in the air. And the trailer shows him flying the damn thing, too. This is what Tom Cruise has been training for, for two years. The only way they're topping this in the next movie is if that crazy bastard jumps off the ISS with nothing but a pony bottle.^note DON'T GIVE HIM ANY IDEAS!!!
  • Tom Cruise apparently remembers his Collateral quick-draw.
  • The trailer shows the moment Cruise snapped his ankle jumping between buildings.^note It was actually intentional that Ethan not completely make the jump and have to pull himself up, and Cruise just had the misfortune of his foot connecting with the wall at a bad angle. (There is also footage of him hauling himself up and finishing the damn shot running on a busted ankle^note A more detailed discussion happened when the cast turned up on The Graham Norton Show. This very same shot actually makes it to the final cut of the film.) Obligatory reminder: Tom Cruise was fifty-five goddamn years old at the time of filming. Doesn't look like he's gonna slow down any time soon.
  • August Walker 1,2-punching some asshole into a wall and flinging him through a mirror, all set to the beat of a M:I Theme / Imagine Dragons's Friction mash-up. Hunt is no slouch either, smashing said asshole through a pillar, taking a few urinals out along the way.
  • Ilsa is back with her pistol and her motorcycle. Hell yeah.
    • Ilsa threateningly tells Ethan that whatever he's up to, he'll have to go through her. Cue Ethan putting pedal to the metal and driving into Ilsa.^note She's fine. Bruised, but fine. You didn't think Ethan would ever seriously hurt her, did you?
• The second trailer adds even more of these.
  • Solomon Lane has managed to escape custody via a calculated attack on the convoy that was transporting him. Judging by his monologues, he's going for all-out revenge against Ethan.
    • Going by the scenes we have from both trailers, that is, Hunt using a transport to ram another transport into the river, and Lane's transport being submerged and him broken out by SCUBA divers — either Lane's ability to read people like a book has bitten Hunt squarely in the ass, or Hunt has gone rogue to ensure his people get to Lane first...
  • A few more shots of Hunt and Walker teaming up against the thug in the bathroom, who is strong enough to pull piping out of a wall and brandish it like a club.
  • Walker was brought in specifically as an assassin authorized to kill Hunt if he goes rogue. Judging by the brief glimpse we see of their meeting, Walker manages to temporarily capture Hunt, Benji, and Luther.
  • Ethan on a motorcycle being chased by the French police, against traffic, circling the Arc de Triomphe roundabout. Anyone who's driven that roundabout knows how crazy and dangerous traffic there can get.
  • The knife fight at what appears to be a hotel or casino, including a female agent who carries her blade in a stylish garter belt holster, and takes out one thug with a single slash...earning a surprised look from Hunt, who's in the middle of his own fight in the background.
  • Hunt doing some kind of high altitude jump,^note Oh great, he heard that quip earlier on about jumping off of the ISS. and fighting someone on the way down.
    • Obligatory 'yup, he really did this'.^note There's this too, but be prepared for spoilers.
  • Hunt and Walker having a brutal, messy fistfight near the edge of a very high cliff. No weapons, vehicles, or overt choreography; just two secret agents trying to beat each other to death.
    • And then we see Hunt losing his grip on the cliff edge and falling...
  • Ilsa taking down a large mook, later revealed to be Lane, who was a highly-skilled MI6 agent before becoming the head of a vicious, insidious terror organization with her signature 'leg-pinning' move.
  • "What's done is done... when we say it's done." Cue iconic theme power-up.
• The Superbowl spot also gave us a glimpse of Ethan Hunt flat-out booking it across the roof of Blackfriars train station.

Film: WARNING UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD

• Setting up the Norwegian scientist that made the bomb by making him believe the nuclear attack already happened and he has been in a coma for two weeks, all just so he can reveal who has purchased the bomb.
• The entire HALO skydiving sequence. Especially every edge-of-your-seat moment after the pair nearly get flash-fried by a lightning bolt, and Ethan has only a handful of seconds to locate and rescue Walker from a grisly sudden-impact death while free falling towards Paris at terminal velocity. When the lightning strikes, the soundtrack abruptly cuts off, replaced with Shell-Shock Silence.
• The fight with the fake John Lark in the bathroom. Ethan and Walker team up against the guy, but he almost manages to beat both of them despite Ethan and Walker's efforts. Then Ilsa arrives and shoots the guy in the head.
  • In a moment that would impress Jackie Chan, Walker tries to do a judo throw on Lark, who manages to land on his feet and use the momentum to throw Walker instead! It's over in a second and you're left wondering, "Did I really see that?"
• Ethan's entire escape from Parisian police after freeing Lane. He leads them on a wild ride through the city on a motorcycle, before crashing into a car. He stumbles up, cop cars fast approaching, pulling out a knife. He then dives behind some bushes. Cops run up, guns out, only to find a net over a tunnel into the river cut open. Cut to Ethan, smiling and safe, on Luther and Benji's boat.
• Ethan shooting four of the White Widow's mercenaries in a lightning fast manner when they wound and are about to finish off a French female police officer, saving her. It brings to mind Tom Cruise's own Collateral.
• The trap they set up to catch the real John Lark, aka August Walker, on every level.
  • At their London safehouse, Hunley shows up to tell the team that the mission is scrubbed since they have evidence that Ethan is John Lark. In response to this, Ethan "stuns" Hunley and asks Walker if he's still with them on the mission. Walker agrees to finish it, and they create a mask of Lane for Benji to wear to impersonate him, while the real Lane is locked up in the safe house. When Ethan's team leaves, Walker, who was assigned to guard Lane, starts to talk to the latter, revealing that they're working together, only for "Lane" to turn out to be Benji in disguise; Ethan took the real Lane.
  • Just as Walker's about to beat Benji up, Hunley steps out and puts a gun to his head. Walker quickly disarms Hunley and attempts to fire several shots at him from a hair further away, only for him to find that the gun is unloaded. Hunley rubs it in his face a bit, then draws another gun, this time too far away for Walker to grab.
    Hunley: Oh, and you were doing so well until then!
  • They step out, and Walker see's Ethan and Luther, holding the real Lane. As he begins to process this and tries to say that CIA Director Sloane will bail him out, Hunley reveals his phone, showing that Sloane was watching the whole time.
  • Walker then counters with his own, villainous CMOA when it turns out that he had prepared for this, and actually had men working for him in the CIA team sent to detain him and the crew.
  • Except, it turns out that Luther had tagged both Walker and Lane with microwave tracking chips, allowing the team to follow them.
  • Hunley, who is a bureaucrat in his 50s at least, not only helps with the plan, but he manages to slow down Walker — the CIA's top assassin — in a fistfight enough that the man two decades younger has to just stab him.
• The obligatory "Tom Cruise running" scene, with Ethan booking it across what feels like half of London to catch up with Walker, complete with Roof Hopping (which broke Cruise's foot in the process) and Ethan sprinting across the roof of Blackfriars train station. And when he notices his target getting away in an elevator, Ethan simply grabs onto the bottom of the elevator as it rises up.
• Julia finds Luther in her medical camp attempting to disarm a nuclear bomb. Her only response? "How can I help?"
• Ilsa and Benji show some spectacular teamwork when they fight Lane in the finale, despite each being handicapped for most of the fight, dealing some well deserved Laser-Guided Karma to the man who was responsible for a lot of stress and suffering to both of them in the previous movie. Ilsa starts the fight gagged and tied to a chair, having been jumped by Lane earlier. Unable to speak, Ilsa struggles to warn Benji of Lane. Although Benji puts up a good fight, the more-experienced Lane managed to get a noose around his neck and begin hanging him. In desperation, Ilsa breaks her chair against a table, frees herself, and begins beating the stuffing out of Lane. She even manages to kick a box under Benji to give him something to stand on, swiftly followed by her smashing a bottle over Lane's head and giving it to Benji to cut his rope. When Lane gets the upper hand on her, Benji (still being hung) kicks him off, sacrificing his box in the process. Finally, Ilsa manages to choke Lane into unconsciousness and cut Benji down at the last second.
  • An additional one for Lane. Ilsa tries her signature finishing move of jumping up on his shoulders to try and snap his neck, but it's a No-Sell as he blocks her blow and instead throws her through a cabinet.
• The helicopter chase. It starts out with Ethan doing another one of his crazy stunts as he climbs on the helicopter while in flight, hijacks it, and forces Walker's double to shoot the pilot before throwing both the double and the dead pilot out of the chopper to pursue Walker. It eventually culminates in Ethan ramming his chopper into Walker's.
• The final fight between Ethan and Walker. Despite the two having just survived a helicopter crash and are worn out, both of them manage a brutal fight atop a high cliff as they attempt to reach for the detonator. Ethan finishes off Walker by throwing the helicopter's hook straight into Walker's face, which is attached to a cable that drags Walker down into a helicopter explosion, just before disarming the detonator.

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