the ultimate product

Rating: 4/10 (6 May 2006)

MI 3 is good at what it does, namely, selling tickets. We see flashy trailers, Tom Cruise, helpless pretty women, dramatic music, and it looks interesting, for a 30-second trailer. Now imagine that same trailer 126 minutes long and you'll get the essence of MI 3.
Every art medium needs a sound economic foundation to have the flexibility to explore and further itself, but when economic exploitation overbears every artistic limitation, it can no longer be called anything else but a product. And as such, it serves nothing but the selfish few who have conceived it for pure profit.
I've read that Tom Cruise had a trailer even before the production began, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. MI 3 follows advertising principles first, artistic merit second, if any such thing can be found. No matter what anyone says, generally speaking, Hollywood films like you to respond to them, they are not passive experiences. Unlike films with substance which push you to respond to that substance in your own way, Hollywood likes to observe these responses, and then, bunching them in chunks, to re-compile them in a way which will attract the largest possible audience. Choose your multiple choice response to a prerecorded question, its not difficult  in fact, it's designed for everyone to get it right in the first try. Go ahead children, get it right, so we can move on to the next question. Go, ahead. Oh wait, let's circle around that one again, someone might have missed it. And so on the film continues.
MI 3 is so mathematical in its calculation of human responses that one wonders if the producers have hired Ph D psychologists and mathematicians to calculate how many laughs or tears they will get at each turn of the story. Just need to balance them out right.
Whereas first MI had the same "whodunit" plot, it was intertwined deep within the narrative; MI 3 throws this straight into your face in the opening sequence, which isn't always a terribly bad thing. Such an open construction can work say in character studies like Citizen Kane or Carlito's Way because the narrative there is not as important as the exploration of the character. In the MI series, however, plot is the most entertaining piece of the film and revealing it prematurely (without a substantial payoff) is a mistake that will defeat the film on credentials of its own genre alone.
In the end, MI 3's only purpose is like that of a collection agency, only in theater you give up your money voluntarily. You are not a person to the producers (certainly not to the studio), you are a mass, without individual goals or interests, you are a target audience  so, go ahead, pay that 8-dollar ticket like some of the reviews will tell you, buy that pop corn, cut Tom Cruise another 70-million-dollar paycheck.
Think about the movies you vote for with your dollars. Ask for substance. Proclaim your needs as an individual. Stop being a statistic.