This was awful overall. Tone is out of place for MI, too overstilized, too much slo-mo, too much cheesiness and also sexist nonsense.
Thankfully the series got revitalized with MI3. This film was like some romance starting Tom Cruise.
I still wish DePalma had stayed, I love his style.
shareThen again, people would have probably written it off as not being as suspenseful as the first film. Having Woo direct a wildly different film was so that people couldn't see it as a pale imitation.
Robert Galotti (a weapons specialist who worked on Woo's Hollywood films) said the following about MI2: "The studios and Cruise went overboard. They told John that they wanted “bigger than anything ever done” and he tried to give them that. The 2nd unit was longer than the first units of most movies. Cruise and his producers would watch scenes cut together then go have John shoot more stuff until they liked what they had. The budget was basically a blank check because the biggest star in the world was calling the shots. The “official” schedule will never reflect it, but this film shot more days than most movies in history. In my honest opinion, M:I-2 was a result of Hollywood people trying to make a H.K. film. Instead of just sitting back and letting John give them whatever, they tried to make their version of a H.K. picture."
MI1 is a piece of art compared to the rest of the films. Has that timeless quality and is so well directed.
shareMI:2 is my favorite in the series. Imho Woo best to date.
MI:3 is the worst in the series and the film to hold the least up when you watch them back to back.
It is bonkers. Too much slo-mo, scenes mostly taking place in closed locations, too much silence, too much echo. It is almost dreamy in places. 30 minutes in and you are still wondering where the meat is. Unnecessary love affair, unrequited gay love between the bland villain and his henchman. Everybody is bland. Even Cruise is untypically relaxed. The plot is a joke.
I bashed the first one for being too anachronistic, but now I see how much better it is.
Best of the MI films. Awful overall describes the first MI by DePalma.
shareAccording to Terence Chang's memoir, Cruise wanted Woo to direct III but Woo turned it down. In fact, Woo was so frustrated with Cruise being a control freak that he almost quit II halfway through filming.
shareCruise chose John Woo because he wanted a straight up action movie as opposed to the original which was mostly a spy thriller. Woo was hot shit coming off of the overrated Face/Off, and Cruise thought MI needed to be like that.
Unfortunatly, what Cruise didn't realise was that Woo's style over substance doesn't work for the MI series. You need storyline and characterization as well as Woo's trademark slow-mo and pigeons.
Cruise made the right choice by getting jj abrams for MIII, which was a vast improvement over II, and every movie since has been decent.