STACK New Zealand December Issue 69

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By offering a new installment
every four to five years, the
Mission: Impossible series not
only manages to avoid franchise
fatigue, it gets progressively
better with age. Ghost Protocol
remains the series’ best to
date, but Rogue Nation comes
in a close second. IMF agent
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has
been tracking a shadowy terrorist network known as
the Syndicate for over a year, but is still no closer to
apprehending the ringleader. After the IMF is shut down
(again), Hunt and Benji (Simon Pegg) become rogue
operatives in the search for the Syndicate leader, with
the help of a mystery woman (Rebecca Ferguson) who
appears to be working for both sides. Rogue Nation’s
action set-pieces rank among the series’ best; there’s
a tense assassination sequence at the Vienna opera,
a plunge into the coolant system of a submerged
computer mainframe, and a high speed motorcycle chase
accentuated by aerial and POV shots. In a year where
everything old at the movies is new again, Mission:
Impossible – Rogue Nation proves this formula still works
remarkably well, even if its star is getting on in years.
Once again it’s mission accomplished.
Syndicated action
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION
When we last left Thomas
(Dylan O’Brien) and his fellow
Gladers, they’d successfully
completed the maze trials and
discovered that the Earth has
been scorched by a solar flare
that also unleashed a deadly
virus, to which they are all
immune. And that WCKD – the
World Catastrophe Killzone
Department – is every bit
as sinister as its acronym.
Transferred to a way station,
Thomas discovers the true
nature of WCKD’s possible cure and what it means
for his group (it’s not good), necessitating an escape
into the “Scorch”, where they must negotiate a desert
wasteland and the ruins of civilisation in order to reach
the mountains and a revolutionary group opposed to
WCKD. The Scorch Trials is a bigger and more visually
grand film than its predecessor, swapping the maze
trials for a journey across a blasted landscape overrun
by hordes of zombie-like infected. The Maze Runner
raised more questions than it answered – The Scorch
Trials provides those answers.
Scorching second chapter of the YA saga
MAZE RUNNER: THE SCORCH TRIALS
DVD & BD
Commentary by Tom Cruise
and director/screenwriter
Christopher McQuarrie
Cruise Control
BD ONLY
Lighting the Fuse
Heroes
Cruising Altitude
Mission: Immersible
Sand Theft Auto
The Missions Continue
JB HI-FI EXCLUSIVE
Limited Edition 2-Disc Blu-ray
with over two hours of bonus
content
Mission: Impossible -
Ghost Protocol
EXTRAS
FURTHER VIEWING
Release Date: 09/12/15
Format:
DVD & BD
Deleted and Extended Scenes
Concept Art and Storyboard Image
Galleries
Gag Reel
BD ONLY
Audio Commentary with Director
Wes Ball, Screewriter T.S. Nowlin,
Producer Joe Hartwick, Jr. and
Editor Dan Zimmerman
Secrets of the Scorch – 6-part
Documentary
Janson’s Report – Classified
Debriefing Videos
Visual Effects Reel
JB HI-FI EXCLUSIVE
Blu-ray Collector’s Edition with
24-page prequel comic book and
two hours of extra features inc.
deleted scenes
The Divergent Series
EXTRAS
FURTHER VIEWING
Release Date: 16/12/15
Format: TOP
HITS
TOP
HITS
visit REVIEWS DVD&BD
The Syndicate, the evil organisation
which features in the film, was the
regular antagonist in the original
Mission: Impossible (1966) TV series
DID YOU KNOW...
36 DECEMBER 2015