YMMV / Mission: Impossible II

• Americans Hate Tingle: Spanish viewers were often unable to see past the film's portrayal of Holy Week, finding the whole film impossible to take seriously. Sevillanos in particular were reportedly divided among those offended at the disaster and those who instead laughed their arses off.
• Awesome Music:
  • Limp Bizkit's Take A Look Around and Metallica's I Disappear
  • The Flamenco-influenced "Nyah", which nearly two decades later was the basis for a skating routine.
  • Injection, composed by the one and only Hans Zimmer (who works once again with Lisa Gerrard).
• Catharsis Factor: Seeing the villains who took out the plane full of civilians in the opening sequence, including Stamp, Wallis and Ambrose, get offed by Ethan in increasingly-ridiculous ways (shot to death by his boss, had their vehicle plowed through by a speeding lorry, and beaten up/shot multiple times when he thought he'd won) is sure to cause this for viewers.
• Contested Sequel: It's either a good film, a bad film, or a good action film but a bad Mission Impossible film. When the film first came out it was fairly popular for, above all else, being a fun and intense action movie with all the John Woo trademarks and had a bigger box office take than the first film. It did receive criticism for departing even further from the Mission: Impossible formula, especially ignoring the team dynamics. About the time MI: III came out, reasserting teamwork and espionage, this film came to be seen as the weakest entry in the series.
• Faux Symbolism: Ethan is so awesome that he rock climbs in Monument Valley without rope, slips and ends up hanging from the rock in a Crucified Hero Shot. Lots of white doves fly in slow motion through the movie... and that's it. What does it all mean? Is Ethan such a good spy because he is of divine origin or something? Then why was nothing of that in the first movie?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Ethan's rock-climbing prowess, which only shows up in the opening sequence (and whose purpose is to establish Hunt as being hyper-aware, in tandem with giving him a Crucified Hero Shot) was seen by many as being largely pointless to the rest of the film. Several years later, it becomes a Chekhov's Skill that becomes plot-relevant in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Mission: Impossible – Fallout, as his free-climbing ability is utilized multiple times at key moments in each film's plot.
• Like You Would Really Do It: At a climactic moment, a beaten Hunt (with what appears to be a broken jaw) is hauled in front of Ambrose by Stamp. After Ambrose thanks the latter, he mocks and shoots Hunt in the leg before pulling a Blofeld Ploy on McClory and then emptying an entire magazine into Hunt, killing him... and then it's revealed seconds later that Ambrose killed Stamp, who was wearing a facemask of Hunt, while the real one is running off with the remaining vials of Bellerophon.
• Money-Making Shot: Hunt blasting through the fiery wreckage of a burning automobile (that was just blown off a bridge by Luther), sporting an all-black ensemble and riding a black motorcycle (in slow-mo, no less) played a large part of the marketing campaign. (It helps that it's a John Woo trademark.)
• Moral Event Horizon: Supervirus be damned, Ambrose has his about five minutes into the movie when he crashes a plane full of innocent people into a cliff.
• Narm:
  • Some portions of the motorcycle stuntwork are so 90s with excessive slow-mo that they can be hard to take seriously.
  • Ambrose shooting Stamp disguised as Ethan would be a pretty shocking moment... if not for the completely overblown chorus wailing over the scene. His reaction after he realizes his mistake (looks like a Big "NO!") is also unintentionally hilarious.
  • The bit where Ethan tosses the antidote to Luther, kicks the gun up into his hand, spins around and drops to the ground and shoots Ambrose starts out awesome, but gets so over-the-top that it turns ridiculous.
  • Ambrose grabbing Nyah's scarf as it's about to fly away, which is given the full John Woo slow motion treatment for literally no reason at all. It doesn't help that the scene makes Ambrose look like a whipped ex-boyfriend who's willing to do anything to impress his ex-girlfriend.
• Never Live It Down: The portrayal of the Spanish Holy Week, which mixed it up with the Falles and the Sanfermines, made the film unintentionally hilarious in Spain, to the point it marred the perception of the entire franchise there. Even worse, Cruise would suffer almost exactly the same research failure in his later film Knight and Day, which showed an outlandish San Fermín taking place in Seville.
• Sophomore Slump: It is considered to be the weakest in the franchise, especially that the following films are (so far) all more well-received than this one.
• Signature Scene:
  • Ethan throwing off his Cool Shades just before they explode.
  • The most remembered stunt of the film is the knife drop stopping right before it hits Ethan's eye, made all the more impressive by it being a real knife and Tom Cruise doing the stunt himself.
• Strangled by the Red String: Ethan and Nyah basically had a one-night-stand, yet the movie decides to lead us to believe that they were made for each other. The film's detractors were quite pleased that the series proceeded to drop her with no explanation, even starting off the very next film with him engaged to someone else.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Often considered to be the worst in the Mission: Impossible film series due to being too similar to a James Bond film. In particular, the villain Sean Ambrose has more than a few similarities to GoldenEye Big Bad Alec Trevelyan, both being essentially a Rogue Agent Evil Counterpart to the main hero (though Trevelyan is a former friend of Bond's while Ambrose and Hunt always disliked each other); their respective actors even look somewhat alike.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The rock version of the Leitmotif was done by Limp Bizkit (the song itself plays during the end credits), a band that became Condemned by History practically the day after the film's premiere.
  • Most of the technology used in this movie was cutting edge... for the year 2000. From the Oakley sunglasses to the Kodak digital camera (with a massive 1.6 megapixel resolution!), most of the Product Placement really dated the movie.
• Vindicated by History: Despite being seen as the weakest entry in the M:I franchise for many years, it's developed a somewhat more positive reputation in recent years due to increased acclaim for John Woo's work as a whole and even those not as into it praising it for having a unique style and feeling like a Woo film in comparison to the more standardized style of later films in the series.

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