How the hell did this movie get made?

Rating: 2/10 (20 June 2001)

(This is a corrected version of the review already submitted)
I wonder if John Woo or Tom Cruise, or anybody associated with this film is actually proud of the product they created? Do you think they were all tied to some contract and had to make it, or some guys from the studio would come and cut off their thumbs or something? I'm really at a loss on this one. This was just about the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. Now I'll admit, I haven't gotten around to seeing Battlefield Earth yet, so that distinction may change, but for now, yes, the worst. This movie embodies all the things that are wrong with big budget action movies in Hollywood. To start, it was nothing more than a vanity project on behalf of Tom Cruise. Like a lot of highly-paid leading men, his contract clearly stipulated that he not be in the film unless his character is the ultimate bad-ass of all time. Forget the fact that there was no character to play, he doesn't even need a name, Ethan Hunt, forget it, just call him "hero". That's all there is to it. And wasn't the "romance" of the film so well done as well? I mean, he did know this woman for a whole weekend before he was madly in love and willing to risk his life for her, so it all works.
Then there's our bad guy played by Dougray Scott, who, like our hero, is so generic and predictable he can just be called "villain", nothing more. Like all action movie bad-guys, he's only interested in money, and he'll just keep on blowing up busloads of nuns and clubbing baby seals until he gets it. And he looks just like Tom Cruise when he's wearing a Tom Cruise mask, even though he, like most men, is a half a foot taller than Tom Cruise! But hey, its an action movie, it doesn't have to make sense. Oh but there's more... The plot of MI2 was so weak and subordinate to the action scenes that most reviewers at the time simply described it as "having something to do with a virus". Yes that is definitely the way to put it, there's nothing more than that. But since they had to pay $20 million for Tom Cruise's salary, they couldn't afford to hire anyone who knows anything about viruses as a consultant. So we get a movie that's on par with Armageddon where realism is concerned.
I could write a book about why this movie sucked, so let me just try and wrap it all up:
The plot was almost non-existent, the characters were derivative, one-dimensional, and uninteresting, the action was over-the-top, ridiculous, and generally an insult to the audience's intelligence (particularly at the very end). Oh yes, and I almost forgot, occasionally brilliant actor Anthony Hopkins was in a couple of minutes of the film, further revealing to us that he'll act in absolutely anything, just so long as the check clears.
To put it mildly, all people associated with the production of Mission Impossible II should be deported to third-world countries that do not yet possess the technology to make motion pictures so they can't waste 125 million dollars on s**t like this again.