Mission Impossible 7

Image credit IMDB

We went to see Mission Impossible 7 tonight. It was action-packed and so fun! A really intelligent story and definitely worth seeing. But there was one part that I really didn't love and I'm dying to talk to someone about it! 

I'm going to put a few of my thoughts here, but it is a major spoiler so if you haven't seen the movie DO NOT read further.

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Don't do it. Don't spoil yourself! LOL

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Turn away! Last chance!

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In the last two Mission Impossible movies, they've given us a love interest for Ethan in Ilsa Faust. She is his match in every way, she understands his lifestyle, she lives it herself, and she is smart and capable--an action heroine we can admire. Ilsa has great chemistry with Ethan and we've been given little hints of feelings between them, with Luther's little speech on how Ethan's only cared for two women in his life and one was his wife and the other was Ilsa. I really was expecting to see more of that in the new Mission Impossible, but instead, Ilsa's role was greatly reduced, and then she was given a death scene that wasn't worthy of the character she had become. 

I really have a hard time when writers just kill off a love interest to add more pain to the hero and I expected better. It's really just lazy writing. And Ethan could barely mourn her before he was back with the new girl, coddling her through the mission. It was suggested to me that Grace, the new girl, is the replacement love interest, but I just don't see it. He seemed like more of a mentor to her and I personally didn't see any romantic sparks there at all. She looked too young for him, in my opinion, and the fact that he asked her over and over if she was okay because she kept doing dumb things, was pretty much the extent of how well she matched Ethan. Sigh. 

I'm so sad about Ilsa, but I'm mostly sad about the lost potential her character had. I get that the show is always trying to show how Ethan loses the women in his life, but I really thought the writers had a chance to do something different and give us a female heroine worth rooting for that was someone Ethan could count on in his life. So, a great action movie, but I can't get past the bungling of the Ilsa storyline and what a huge loss this truly is for the franchise.