Hormone deficiencies? 61-year-old Tom and the heroine are difficult to chemically react, and the box office of "Disc 7" is weak

Hollywood's annual hope "Mission Impossible 7" this year will be released in North America on July 12 and land in the mainland on July 14.

Douban score 8.0, IMDb score 8.2, Rotten Tomatoes freshness 96%, popcorn index 95%, almost dreamy start.

But the cost of up to $290 million seems to have become a heavy burden, and its five-day box office in North America was $78 million, well below the expectation of $90 million.

On the first day of release in the mainland, "Disc 7" received 25.4% of the film volume, but the attendance rate in prime time was only 9.3%, and the box office was 53.337 million yuan in a single day;

So far, "Disc 7" has received a box office of 240 million, and the attendance rate has continued to decline, after "In the Octagon Cage", which has been released for 14 days, and "Chang'an 30,000 Li", which has been released for 12 days, so as a newly released movie, its box office weakness is still obvious.

There is a peculiar phenomenon in theaters this year, that is, the audience does not seem to like watching Hollywood movies. Even the "Mission Impossible" series, which has always had a solid reputation, even if it gets a high score of 8.0, it seems that it is difficult to cause the audience to go to the theater to watch the boom.

Compared with "Manjiang Hong" with a box office of 4.544 billion yuan, "The Wandering Earth 2" with 4.029 billion yuan, and "Disappearing Her", which has now exceeded 3.3 billion yuan, several Hollywood movies this year have "failed" one after another, confirming that the box office myth of "Hollywood blockbusters" no longer exists.

It's not that everyone doesn't like to watch big-budget action movies, but in Hollywood's "IP-raising" movie mode, sequel movies like serial dramas have long lost their freshness. You know, no matter how delicious durian is, it will be greasy, no matter how good the shooting is, we are tired of watching it, and "Disc 7" has obviously become a so-called blockbuster mass-produced in this "old bottle of new wine" mode.

First, Tom insists on real shooting, and the action scenes created by playing with life are all familiar.

In 2020, in the Helsetkopen mountain in Norway, Tom rode a motorcycle over a cliff, and then opened a parachute bag to skydive video on the global hot search, and also made the best publicity for the movie. Once upon a time, zero stand-in live-action stunts became the standard in the "Mission Impossible" series, and each sequel took this as its biggest selling point.

Let's turn back the clock to 1996, when Tom, who is in his early 30s, met the most classic movie IP of his life. In "Mission Impossible", when filming the scene of blasting the fish tank, because it was impossible to guarantee that the face of the stand-in would not be captured by the camera, at the request of Tom, the director promised to let him go into battle himself.

This "operation" seems to have opened Tom's desire for performance, and in every action scene in the sequel since then, he refused to use a stand-in and personally completed the stunt shots, for which Tom became a motorcyclist whose technical level is not lower than that of a professional god;

Rock climbing;

Hold your breath underwater for a 6-minute dive.

In the 7 works launched in the "Mission Impossible" series so far, the stunt shots are constantly escalating, and Tom's "Ethan Hunt" has gradually become an omnipotent Hollywood-style superhero.

As Sammo Hung said, when someone jumps from the second floor, you jump from the third floor. This kind of increasingly difficult film creation is tiring, no matter how good ideas there is a dry day, finally came to "Disc 7", let us see the "donkey skills are exhausted" and the decline is fully displayed.

Take the highlight of the film, "The Wild Car Chase on the Streets of Rome".

Hunter (Tom) and the heroine Grace (Hayley Atwell) drive a Fiat 500 little yellow car, this modified car is not only unstable chassis, but also extremely fast, and the hands of the two are also handcuffed together, which increases the technical difficulty and makes the drag racing process dangerous.

But this car chase scene is difficult to impress the audience, why?

Because for the "Mission Impossible" series, this kind of car chase scene has been filmed many and countless times; And this year's "Fast and Furious 10" and "Indiana Jones 5" have similar and no less ornamental car chase scenes, compared to "Disc 7" is no advantage.

Besides, the battle on the final train is unfortunately played by "Indiana Jones 5", and there was a similar train scene in "Mission Impossible" as early as 1996.

Although the use of some real-life shots this time not only increases the difficulty of shooting, but also greatly improves the ornamentation, the action design is too simple, and the lengthy fight makes people tired to watch.

Some people say that the motorcycle skydiving in the Helsetkopen Mountains in Norway is not said, that is really a joke.

Indeed, this action scene shows full sincerity, and Tom is said to have done 13,000 cross-country motorcycle jumps and more than 500 parachute dives for this purpose, and only after repeated test jumps did he determine the best speed and the best flight angle, creating a classic scene in the movie.

But not to mention the authenticity of the 13,000 and 500 data, we naturally believe that Tom is very hard, but the problem is that no matter how much investment is made, the visual impact brought to the audience by the few seconds presented in the movie is not as strong as the previous "rock climbing" Burj Khalifa, pickpocket plane, and skydiving real shot.

Second, the film was forcibly split into upper and lower parts, but it was self-defeating, resulting in bloated duration and slow pace

The movie "Disc 7" actually started as early as 2020, but in February of that year, the crew suspended filming in Italy. After that, the crew traveled to Venice and Rome, and then went to the UK to shoot the rest of the scenes, which were not successfully completed until May this year.

Because Tom decided to use this as the end of the series, its story was too large, and after discussions with director Christopher McQuarry, it was decided to split it into two parts.

Following "Fast and Furious 10" and "Spider-Man: Across the Universe", this is the third film to split the upper and lower parts this year, and historical experience tells us that although this operation can "make" money twice, it is not wise.

No one likes to watch a movie with an incomplete story, and if you don't get it, you have to lose money, you must know that there are not many success stories like "Avengers 3: Infinity War". 2018's "Avengers 3" gathers almost all superhero characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with a solid story, fast-paced, and successfully portrays one of the most powerful villains in the history of superhero movies.

"Disc 7" does not have the advantages of "Avengers 3", its pace slows down, making the story long and boring, and the plot progresses slowly, making the audience feel like pins and needles.

This look is a bit like "Mission Impossible 2" in 2000, when director John Woo became popular in Hollywood with "Changing Face", Tom also admired him and sincerely invited him to direct this movie. John Woo was in a mood at that time, stuffing his set of slow-motion shootouts and white pigeons into the movie, and made a spy war movie into a Hong Kong-style gunfight movie.

But this style change is completely incompatible with the temperament of the "Mission Impossible" series, and after years of precipitation, "Disc 2" has become the lowest reputation in the series.

This year's "Disc 7" has to follow in the footsteps of "Disc 2", in addition to the bloated duration and slow pace, the most fatal flaw of the movie is that the story is not told well.

The soul of spy war movies is to tell the suspenseful open and dark battle between agents in the context of an era that is somewhat related to reality, and every previous work of this IP is the protagonist facing a strong high-IQ opponent.

But this time, Ethan Hunt is no longer facing a human opponent, but an artificial intelligence AI called "The Entity".

Developed in Russia, this AI system can hack into and manipulate global networks, but inadvertently awakens self-awareness and becomes no longer controlled.

At the beginning of the film, a Russian submarine is attacked in the deep sea, and a torpedo fired from the submarine inexplicably turns to sink the submarine itself, and all the crew members of the submarine are killed. The submarine is loaded with a computer mainframe that can control the intelligent body, and a key to start the main engine that can be split in half.

Agent Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) gets half of the keys and joins Hunter. Hunter's task is to find a way to get the other half of the key; It is also necessary to figure out how to use the keys so that the mind and body can be controlled and the crisis facing the global network must be resolved.

But who gets the key means being able to control the intellect and thus the global network, so Hunter and his team (IMF), who own half of the keys, have become targets for all forces.

The film spends a lot of time talking about the function of sensible body, and the story line becomes clear, but in this way, the characters in the film are clearly divided and the sense of suspense is gone.

Not only that, the film added the role of Agent Briggs (Shay Whibham), and the appearance of this character was actually to add comedy elements to the movie.

Briggs' goal is to capture Hunter, but his business ability is too poor, and the whole film is running with Hunter all over the world, and he is tricked by Hunter.

We all know that the "Mission Impossible" series has always had a grim tone of pathos, and although there are occasional flashes of comedy seasoning, it does not affect this atmosphere.

And the story of "Disc 7" itself is not well told, and too many comedy elements have been added to it, making the entire movie reduced to an action movie similar to the "Fast Furious" series, and is no longer a high-profile spy movie.

Third, lack of creativity, hormone exhaustion? Hollywood's "old bottle, new wine" model has long been out of play

Creative exhaustion, aging IP, and the "old bottle, new wine" model have long been out of play, which is also the biggest problem facing Hollywood movies.

This year, Lucasfilm's masterpiece "Indiana Jones 5: Wheel of Destiny" invested as much as $295 million, because the starring Harrison Ford is 81 years old, the film team did not hesitate to spend a lot of money to reduce his age with CG special effects.

Although Tom is not as old as Fubo, he is already 61 years old, and in our country, he has long reached retirement age. Long-term exercise and maintenance make Tom's physical strength still at the peak level, but it is also difficult to cover up the marks left by the "pig-killing knife" on the face of the years, and wrinkles are clearly visible under the lens.

In fact, as early as 2011's "Mission Impossible 4", the film side Paramount Pictures considered changing the role. Since Tom couldn't spare the schedule at first, Paramount decided to replace Hunter with Brand, played by Jeremy Renner, as the protagonist of the movie. But only after Tom's return did the film revise the script and eventually grossed $694 million worldwide, making Paramount realize his irreplaceability.

Tom has really done everything for the "Mission Impossible" series, and he does his best every performance, especially insisting on action shots without stand-ins, which has long been the industry benchmark.

After the maturity of IMAX technology, each work in the series is displayed in IMAX quality, in Tom's own words, to bring the best audiovisual effect and viewing experience to the global audience.

There is a joke on the Internet, saying: "69-year-old Jackie Chan can no longer be moved, but 61-year-old Tom is still playing with his life." ”

This sentence also shows Tom's intentions for the movie. But even if Brother Tom, who is "old and strong", is still in the year of fighting, he can't stand the aging on his face, and he shows fatigue as soon as he arrives at the literary drama.

Last year's "Top Gun 2: The Lone Ranger", director Joseph Kosinski has discovered this problem, so he found 53-year-old Jennifer Connery to play the heroine, and the two will not be embarrassed to talk about love in the film.

In this film, Hayley Atwell, who plays the heroine, is 41 years old, 20 years younger than Tom.

With such a large age difference, it is obviously two generations, so the emotional scenes of the two protagonists in the plot cannot be arranged.

Although in many action scenes in the film, the director arranged a lot of rivalry scenes for the two, Hunter was "sitting still" like Megumi Yanagita throughout the process, and there was almost no emotional communication, which made people laugh and look at each other.

Therefore, even if Marvel's "Captain Carter" is invited as the heroine, she and Tom cannot have a good chemical reaction in the film, and the lack of CP sense between the two has greatly affected the audience's viewing experience.

Fourth, today's Hollywood is "devastated", and the launch time of "Under Disc 7" cannot be determined,

In fact, the "Mission Impossible" series cannot do without Tom, but Tom is already old. We can't ask for a change of protagonist, but we have to ask why this 27-year-old IP is still making a sequel? Why hasn't the day come to an end?

Looking at today's Hollywood, it has long been devastated, and new films and sequel movies are launched every year.

Those classic IPs of the 80s and 90s are still launching sequels, "Jurassic Park" and "Terminator" have 6 works; In addition to the 9 main sequels, "Star Wars" and spin-offs are also constantly launched...

And these have witnessed the decline of Hollywood movies. Even if it is released simultaneously in the summer, in the face of more down-to-earth domestic films, "Disc 7", which has high hopes, is difficult to stir up splashes.

According to reports, "On Disc 7" and "Under Disc 7" were originally filmed back-to-back, but due to the serious slowdown of the progress in the early stage, when "Disc 7" was released, it caught up with the Hollywood screenwriters' strike, and the filming of "Disc 7" was also forced to be interrupted.

I don't know when we will see "Under Disc 7", but I still hope that the last work in this series can bring a successful end to this 27-year-old IP.

(Movie Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Office: Blood Dan Xin)