Introduction: Their is a film critic known as Movie Bob who I actually respect and I think he is a very rational man, though he does tend to be blind to certain things, just like the rest of us. A while ago he wrote a little piece about the similarities between Sherlock Holmes 2 and Mission Impossible 4 and how they are both bad movies. This kinda gave me the urge to see neither movie though I did end up seeing Sherlock Holmes 2. Recently though I saw Mission Impossible 4 and guess what folks? It was good. In fact, it was better then Sherlock Holmes 2. I shall now break down why it was better and why it was a good film in general.
1. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Actor: In both films their is an actor from the original Swedish film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The "girl" is in SH 2 as a gypsy that's flatter then Mr Game & Watch but it far less interesting. After being introduced she literally walks off screen and no one notices. WHAAAAA??? In MI 4 the "detective" is the main villain and actually portrays him as a very good Bond villain. See Bond villains are crazy geniuses who believe that no matter how crazy their idea it is objectively right. Like Lex Luthor. Which leads me to...
2. Villain: In the Sherlock Holmes stories Professor Moriarty played a very small role and was only in 2 stories. He was a plot device created as a means to kill off Holmes, not necessarily an arch-nemesis. He basically was a mafia godfather who watched over half the crime in London in exchange for respect and money. In the movie he quickly goes from Vito Corleone to Dr. Evil. His plan is to make a lot of money... Ummm, ok? In MI 4, we have a crazy genius mastermind who wants to start nuclear war in order to speed up our evolution. This same type of character was Sebastian Shaw from X-Men: First Class, a film Movie Bob actually liked, except in X-Men it was f*cking stupid since Sebastian was a scientist and thus should have known what the f*ck evolution is (i.e. adaption, selection, migration, and mutation), not nuking everything.
3. Tone: Even though both films have a similar running plot they have very different tones. Yes, they are both action flicks with some slight comedy, but they both have different tones. The tone in SH 2 is a buddy cop comedy except in Old London. And it's one of the reasons people like it so much. The two leads have great chemistry and watching them talk back and forth in this world is kinda refreshing. Especially after watching Cop Out... *cricket, cricket* But MI 4 is a bank heist type movie in that it's about a team of people trying to use their wit and whatever they got lying around to solve a problem. It's about the team, NOT TOM CRUISE. You got a great sense of this when the opening of the movie shows a team working to get Tom out of jail and Tom is trying to get someone else out. But it also had it's light comedic moments thanks to Simon Pegg. Gawd, I love Simon Pegg.
4. Gimmick: Both of these films have a f*cking gimmick. In SH 2 it's the slow motion sequences that show Sherlock's intelligence. This immediately becomes boring and retreading over sh*t we've already seen. Thankfully, at the end of SH 2 the film uses this to it's advantage by showing Sherlock's thought process about a final battle ending with him finding another solution, thus saving the audience from watching the same sh*t again. In MI 4 I think the gimmick is the amazing set pieces, though I've heard some say it's the high tech sh*t malfunctioning, but that only happens twice so I don't know what the f*ck those people are talking about. Anyways, these set pieces are f*cking exhilarating and make the movie realllllly entertaining. This is best seen when Tom Cruise scales the side of the tallest building in the world. You look down and you immediately feel what the character is feeling; scared sh*tless fear.
Conclusion: If I had to put these movies on a scale from 0 to 5 SH 2 would be a 3 and MI 4 would be a 3.5. Neither of them are great movies, but they were both fun and entertained me. They didn't insult my intelligence, they didn't piss me off, they were just exactly what I expected them to be. But the main reason, I think, that MI 4 did a better job is the director, Brad Bird. If you don't know who Brad Bird is let me tell you about some movies he directed: The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. Yupp, Brad Bird does animated films. So to see his journey into live action be this f*cking entertaining I can't wait for more movies with his name on it. And to watch Hollywood ruin them -__-
