It was only a matter of time before the newest ‘Mission: Impossible‘ installment got the Honest Trailers treatment, and for such a ludicrous (and ludicrously fun) action blockbuster franchise, it seems like they held some punches on this one.
Perhaps unexpectedly for one of the best reviewed action films of the year (it’s good, but that good?), “Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s” Honest Trailer sounds more like it’s slyly praising the blockbuster more than cynically picking and tearing it to shreds like most Honest Trailers do.
In fact, they sound downright grateful towards Tom Cruise and his death-defying stunts (as great as they are). There’s plenty of love for this action franchise here, with an insightful amount of throw-backs to characters old and new (including Ving Rhames’ character, who they just call Ving Rhames), as well as some love-hate towards its overuse of admittedly satisfying tropes (face mask reveals…a lot of face mask reveals).
Honestly (see what we did there?), Honest Trailers could’ve gone for some more precise jabs at the film rather than inadvertently jabbing at others, notably Henry Cavill’s other blockbuster ‘Justice League‘ (and its mustache complications). They also decide to crap on the awesome sky-diving sequence (the best of its kind since ‘Iron Man 3‘) just because the other Bad Robot productions ‘Star Trek‘ and its sequel ‘Into Darkness‘ used them – yeah, but ‘M:I’ clearly has the advantage of contextualizing such a stunt through more realism (just a bit more).
But not all of their humor works or feels like it even belongs in this decade. Elsewhere in the Honest Trailer, there’s some below-the-belt jokes, as they don’t shy away from using the plutonium cores as insinuations to “balls,” though it does garner a bit of a chuckle, just because you don’t realize how much of the film revolves around the…err, balls.
Given that director Christopher McQuarrie (the only director to helm two ‘M:I’ films, which are clearly the best of the bunch) was so overwhelmed by the film’s positive reception he isn’t sure about trying his luck with directing the next installment, it’s just one of many examples of how much praise the film received as a classic action-espionage for the ages and something of a franchise high-point – it seems its relatively kind treatment from the Honest Trailers crew is yet another rather unprecedented appraisal.