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Hi everyone!
I'm taking a little time off from my Justice League project. It's nearly done, but I've been working on it a lot and it's still not quite where I want it to be. I'm taking a little break so I can look at it down the road with fresh eyes.
So my project I've decided to work on is one I've been thinking about for a while. Mission Impossible is my favorite franchise, I've enjoyed every film in the series so far. However, I always found Mi-2 to stand out from the group a bit. I really enjoy the story of the film and some of the action beats are great, but it feels incredibly dated. It sticks out so much because it's the only film in the series that is so clearly from the time it was made. It's full of late 90's/ early 2000's rock music, Matrix-y slow motion, and other "cool for the time" elements that haven't aged well at all.
But! I think there's a really good movie in there. The script, by the legendary Robert Towne, is a solid Hitchcock esque caper full of twists, turns, backstabs and reveals. The performances overall are great, with Tom Cruise giving a charming turn as a softer and more romantic Ethan, a deliciously dirtbag villain, and one of the best female leads the series has had. Also, though they lay the "John Woo-ness" on a little too thick at times, the action is well staged and choreographed.
So the goal here is to remove the dated elements of MI-2, pick up the pace, and bring it more in line with the other films in the seires.
Overall goals:
- Replace the majority of the music with music from other films in the series.
- Up the pace. This movie has a weird structure in that there really isn't a big action scene till almost halfway through the film, and then it's just non-stop action for the second half. The middle third of the film needs some serious trims to get the film moving.
- Remove a lot of the over the top John Woo moments. I love John Woo, and I definitely still want it to feel like a John Woo film, but they go so hard on some of his trademarks that it ventures into parody. Slow motion scenes that drag on or show the same shot from 5 different angles will be trimmed. Some of the slow-mo will be trimmed just for action pacing.
Here's a more detailed cutlist of what I've done so far, I'll update it as I get further in.
- Remove the opening sequence that explains Chimera, as it gets reiterated multiple times later on. The film now starts on the plane.
- Remove Ethan climbing the mountain. It's cool but useless. It's mentioned that he was on vacation later, which gives enough set up and gets the movie moving.
- We now transition from the plane crashing to an all new title sequence that's more in keeping with the later films.
- We and Naya do not see Ethan until he pops up behind her in the bathtub. This gives a more intriguing start.
- Trimmed some of the car crash ballet so it doesn't feel like they're staring at each other for 3 minutes straight.
- Trimmed a little of the bedroom scene when Ethan and Naya wake up for pacing.
- Trimmed Hopkins' line to just "She's a woman, she's got all the training she needs." Same effect, slightly less creepy.
- Trimmed the EXTREME introducion of Luther and Billy. I also cut the majority of Luther's references to his expensive clothes. I did keep "punk put a hole in my Versace" because it's actually funny and we need a joke at that point.
- Cut that really silly "reflection in Ethan's sunglasses" bit.
- Trimmed the "Oh no the satellite isn't working!" stuff out when Naya reaches Ambrose. They're just spying on her as normal.
- Cut the finger cutting scene. It's not necessary, that dude's finger can just be busted as a character thing. It doesn't need a back story and Ambrose ignores him anyway.
- Retained the majority of the betting track scene. It's the most Hitchcock the movie gets and I'm here for it.
- Trimmed down some of the Brendan Gleeson interrogation/exposition scene. Some of the dialogue in there is... not good. And it slows down the movie tremendously.
- Made Ethan's trip through Biocyte to destroy the Chimera samples a little faster. We know Ambrose is coming for him, so unless they're in the worlds slowest elevator, it shouldn't take that long for the bad guys to arrive.
- Cut up a lot of the big Biocyte shoot out to remove some silly shots and slow-mo. Also, I'm not sure why there's like 4 establishing shots to show that Ambrose is there, but I decided one would suffice.
- Cut up a lot of Ehtan's raid on the Chimera sale for action pacing.
- Cut up the rest of the movie for action pacing.
- Reworked Ambrose's death for impact. The shot order they used for that made absolutely no sense. Why do we see Ambrose get shot, then Ethan continues firing, then Ambrose is still just still slowly rolling over? It could be a cool moment but as edited it's really strange.
The music replacement on this one will take some time. Certain scenes have a pretty clean center channel, while others have part of the music on it. Some sound FX will need to be replaced.
Here's the new opening WIP:
I'm taking a little time off from my Justice League project. It's nearly done, but I've been working on it a lot and it's still not quite where I want it to be. I'm taking a little break so I can look at it down the road with fresh eyes.
So my project I've decided to work on is one I've been thinking about for a while. Mission Impossible is my favorite franchise, I've enjoyed every film in the series so far. However, I always found Mi-2 to stand out from the group a bit. I really enjoy the story of the film and some of the action beats are great, but it feels incredibly dated. It sticks out so much because it's the only film in the series that is so clearly from the time it was made. It's full of late 90's/ early 2000's rock music, Matrix-y slow motion, and other "cool for the time" elements that haven't aged well at all.
But! I think there's a really good movie in there. The script, by the legendary Robert Towne, is a solid Hitchcock esque caper full of twists, turns, backstabs and reveals. The performances overall are great, with Tom Cruise giving a charming turn as a softer and more romantic Ethan, a deliciously dirtbag villain, and one of the best female leads the series has had. Also, though they lay the "John Woo-ness" on a little too thick at times, the action is well staged and choreographed.
So the goal here is to remove the dated elements of MI-2, pick up the pace, and bring it more in line with the other films in the seires.
Overall goals:
- Replace the majority of the music with music from other films in the series.
- Up the pace. This movie has a weird structure in that there really isn't a big action scene till almost halfway through the film, and then it's just non-stop action for the second half. The middle third of the film needs some serious trims to get the film moving.
- Remove a lot of the over the top John Woo moments. I love John Woo, and I definitely still want it to feel like a John Woo film, but they go so hard on some of his trademarks that it ventures into parody. Slow motion scenes that drag on or show the same shot from 5 different angles will be trimmed. Some of the slow-mo will be trimmed just for action pacing.
Here's a more detailed cutlist of what I've done so far, I'll update it as I get further in.
- Remove the opening sequence that explains Chimera, as it gets reiterated multiple times later on. The film now starts on the plane.
- Remove Ethan climbing the mountain. It's cool but useless. It's mentioned that he was on vacation later, which gives enough set up and gets the movie moving.
- We now transition from the plane crashing to an all new title sequence that's more in keeping with the later films.
- We and Naya do not see Ethan until he pops up behind her in the bathtub. This gives a more intriguing start.
- Trimmed some of the car crash ballet so it doesn't feel like they're staring at each other for 3 minutes straight.
- Trimmed a little of the bedroom scene when Ethan and Naya wake up for pacing.
- Trimmed Hopkins' line to just "She's a woman, she's got all the training she needs." Same effect, slightly less creepy.
- Trimmed the EXTREME introducion of Luther and Billy. I also cut the majority of Luther's references to his expensive clothes. I did keep "punk put a hole in my Versace" because it's actually funny and we need a joke at that point.
- Cut that really silly "reflection in Ethan's sunglasses" bit.
- Trimmed the "Oh no the satellite isn't working!" stuff out when Naya reaches Ambrose. They're just spying on her as normal.
- Cut the finger cutting scene. It's not necessary, that dude's finger can just be busted as a character thing. It doesn't need a back story and Ambrose ignores him anyway.
- Retained the majority of the betting track scene. It's the most Hitchcock the movie gets and I'm here for it.
- Trimmed down some of the Brendan Gleeson interrogation/exposition scene. Some of the dialogue in there is... not good. And it slows down the movie tremendously.
- Made Ethan's trip through Biocyte to destroy the Chimera samples a little faster. We know Ambrose is coming for him, so unless they're in the worlds slowest elevator, it shouldn't take that long for the bad guys to arrive.
- Cut up a lot of the big Biocyte shoot out to remove some silly shots and slow-mo. Also, I'm not sure why there's like 4 establishing shots to show that Ambrose is there, but I decided one would suffice.
- Cut up a lot of Ehtan's raid on the Chimera sale for action pacing.
- Cut up the rest of the movie for action pacing.
- Reworked Ambrose's death for impact. The shot order they used for that made absolutely no sense. Why do we see Ambrose get shot, then Ethan continues firing, then Ambrose is still just still slowly rolling over? It could be a cool moment but as edited it's really strange.
The music replacement on this one will take some time. Certain scenes have a pretty clean center channel, while others have part of the music on it. Some sound FX will need to be replaced.
Here's the new opening WIP:
Also, since we're at it and since you are doing score replacement to begin with, let me add another suggestion for that scene:
