TheShadowKnows
The movie's nonlinear story telling is the worst part of the film. Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing was a good place to anchor the movie, but it did not even attempt to set up its antagonist until the last quarter of the movie. Why should it have been a ah-ha moment that Strauss was against Oppenheimer. A better editor would have more effectively placed all of the scenes into a coherent narrative.
The sex scene was just bad. "Christopher, how do intelligent people have sex?" "Well, they can only be aroused by reading ancient languages that foreshadow their grandiose future achievements."
When Oppenheimer, allegedly poisoned Blackett's apple, it should have been a scene about his mental health issues at the time. Rather than a completely fabricated suspense scene. People who were aware of the incident questioned if it ever really happened. It would have been more impactful to have a scene where Oppenheimer meets with his analyst from that period. The movie decides to simply say that it happened and for some reason interjected Bohr.
The portrayals of characters was a highlight of the film. Most of the acting was great. It was, however, overly stuffed with high profile actors, which turned the film into a distracting cameo bingo game.
The physical and psychological aftermath of the atomic booms dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not adequately portrayed. It did not show well enough the psychological toll it took on the scientists on the project or portray the horrific physical toll it inflicted on the Japanese people. The slide reel scene not showing a single image of the attack was a poor choice. It demonstrates that Hollywood is completely ok with an R rating for showing nudity, but not for confronting people with the horrors of human cruelty.
I knew there was a television show, but hadn't watched it. Its surprising that it was a continuation of the series.
I very much wish that a movie would come along in the same vein as the original MI movie. It is drastically different in tone and execution than any of the following films. I think a proper Tom Clancy Splinter Cell movie could do it. Movies now unnecessarily revolve around a world ending threat. The NOC list in Mi1 was a great motivating force for the characters to be striving to protect or steal. Now Ethan Hunt is constantly trying to save the world. Stakes which should never be left up to one person.
I got a hotdropped hardrive with Archer on it while launching jets aboard a carrier in the gulf in that same timeframe. Every season that aired while I was on deployment was a great treat in the heat. A friend of mine had a background in flash animation, (blast from the past) and he wanted to create a show with me in the same vein as archer and Sealab 2021, but about Navy pilots on a carrier. So I wrote a few scripts and he began on some scenes. We never made anything of it, because we didn't have the voice actors (neither of us were vocally inclined). Regardless Archers stellar writing and style got me through a long stretch of extensions in the middle east.