a to b
get in the car, we are having a collective experience
A few weeks ago I found myself in an AMC watching Tom Cruise negotiate with an international arms dealer who looked like a live-action Elsa. By “found myself” I mean that I actively suggested this plan, looked up the showtimes, and spent my own money to see the latest Mission: Impossible movie. Dead Reckoning Part 1 is not the best of the series, but the Mission: Impossible franchise is a best-in-class form of entertainment. They are silly, but serious— in on the joke but completely earnest. The films are funny because they are so self-serious, self-important to the point of parody. After eight movies, the cast knows they are ridiculous, ripping rubber mask after rubber mask off their faces. To say that Mission Impossible is high camp feels like low hanging fruit, but I will say it anyways— they are outlandishness for the sake of outlandishness, presented with full sincerity. Tom Cruise has more comedic chops than we give him credit for but he plays everything straight. Mission: Impossible is not The Hurt Locker or even The Bourne Ultimatum, but it never winks to the camera, never acknowledges that these movies are closer to The Pink Panther than they are to Shawshank Redemption.
Mission: Impossible— Dead Reckoning Part 1 is ostensibly about the threat of sentient AI, but it is actually about transportation. Every movie is a flipbook of vehicles, an illustration of every possible way to get from point A to B. Submarines, commercial jets, comically tiny European cars, military grade vehicles. Ethan Hunt rides a horse through a windswept desert, races a black sports car with no doors through Italy. In the final act of Dead Reckoning Tom Cruise drives a motorcycle off the edge of a cliff while deploying a parachute in order to land on the top of a moving train car. In Mission: Impossible we are always in transit— to arrive at the destination is to move on to a new one. The filmmakers would probably say that is because transportation represents freedom, represents adventure, but what they are actually doing is making a movie that is two and half hours of transition. Transition is more dynamic than meditating on the motivations or consequences of one’s actions. Arriving is not the point, the point is getting there. What happens to Ethan Hunt after the credits roll? I literally do not give a fuck; I only want to see him drive a car down an ancient Venetian staircase.
In a way, I am being guided from point A to B by the movie itself. By watching Tom Cruise navigate between a dozen glamorous locales by any means necessary, I am being transported from the beginning to the end of the movie. Maybe Mission Impossible is a cruise ship, a moving array of meaningless distractions until you look out the window and realize you are docked in a new country. A boat moving through time.
Good art provides parameters for the viewer to have a personal experience within. Great entertainment creates parameters rigid enough to determine the audience’s experience for them. Whereas art leaves room for individual interpretation— the alchemy of where artist intention meets the audience’s perspective— entertainment offers an all-inclusive experience for consumption. If you want to ask a question into the void you are making art. If you want to tell a specific story in a specific way, welcome to the entertainment business, baby.