Tips for IMF

When John Woo wanted to introduce Ethan Hunt's romantic interest in M:i2 he contrived this ridiculous scene where the two lovers locked lusty eyes while their sport cars were spinning out of control at 50 mph on the edge of a cliff. As I think any person would agree, to call this ridiculous is offensive to people who believe that NASA faked the moon landing...it's beyond ridiculous.

The Message: Unless you've had a relationship start in this manner, you shouldn't expect anything else in this movie to be any more realistic than what you'd see in a Star Trek movie...heck, not only do the laws of relationships not apply, the laws of physics don't even apply to this world where you can accurately spin on the front wheel of a motorcycle.

Conversely, JJ Abrams decided to introduce Ethan Hunt's romantic interest in M:i:III by framing a scene in a kitchen. Ethan's fiancé isn't a superspy...heck she's as normal of a white collar gal as they come. In fact, everything about that scene was normal, except for Ethan's amazing ability to read lips.

The Message: Ethan Hunt lives in your world with real people who do real things. If you thought Ethan was some guy who lived in a world where the normal laws of relationships and physics do apply, you thought wrong. This is a man with whom you can identify.

That is where Abrams went wrong. I didn't realize it until I saw M:i:III, but there's a reason why you don't see a character study on James Bond; it's because once you make your superspy more realistic you lose your ability to transition to the hyper-nonrealistic world of action adventure that drives your film. Abrams tried to do a character study on James Bond, and in so doing he raised the bar for required believability high pretty high. He then ignored it when he did action sequences and had scene which, although more believable than M:i2's, are still pretty far from reasonable.

So, in that vein, with some help from Ann, I've come up with some suggestions for Abram's IMF team:

• Don't bother flying low. If your enemy is smart enough to be a threat to you, he's probably smart enough to fly above the threatening windmill blades and shoot at you from above. Fortunately, your enemy in this case wasn't any smarter than you were.
• Don't jeopardize my life to save your wife's. If your team is talented enough to extract a supervillan from the Vatican, they're smart enough to extract the team leader's wife from the hands of the same supervillan without actually handing the deadly virus over to a crazed maniac.
• Don't make things more complex than they are. When you need to replicate spilled wine, here's a tip: spill some wine. Don't bother with red spray paint. The launching baseballs is a perfect example of how everything doesn't need to be high-tech in order for it to be the best solution.
• Don't be a slut. You're a beautiful woman trying to spy on someone at an everyone-wears-black reception in the holy Vatican; here's a tip: don't wear a slutty red dress. That alluring outfit will guarantee that every non-gay man at the party (priest or otherwise) will be staring at you all night...and since it's red, you'll be easy to spot. But then again, when you're a superspy, I guess you gotta do stuff like that or it's just too easy.
• Drop your cell carrier. You're in the middle of a metropolitan area of over 10 million people...there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to pick up a signal.
• Don't miss an episode of Lost. When you're husband is lying dead it's always best to proceed exactly as a successful hero on tv did...in this case Julia channeled Jack's resuscitation of Charlie from a season 1 episode of Lost. Had I not seen Lost, I would have never thought to have pounded on the guys chest with careless abandon after four cycles of CPR...but luckily Jules had seen that episode too.
• You don't have time. When you've just been told that you have less than two hours to develop, collect resources for, and carry out a complex plan, you don't have time for long dramatic pauses before you answer questions...especially questions you didn't have to think about before answering!
• Voices are easier to fake then actual people. If your villian is able to fake you out with a mask, having the villian put the person on the phone for you shouldn't give you any more assurance of their well-being than what you have without that phone call...they just torchered sensive information out of you; do you think they can't get information out of a non-spy?
  

I concede that a similar list for M:i2 would be four times as long...but John Woo didn't pretend that his movie took place in the real world.