This franchise has from the very beginning felt the need to try to justify the need for Ethan Hunt and his team's spycraft, and it's always only partly succeeded. But it's generally been a very fun ride.

Some of its attempts to be timely misfire a little (it would play different had Harris won the election), but others hit home (the idea we're all living in a rapidly deteriorating social climate driven partly by unregulated AI).

You can tell the US military got their marketing wing involved, but you can also tell that many people who are great at the craft of filmmaking gave it their absolute all.

Cruise channels Buster Keaton, but there's also a Fred Astaire rotating set moment, and scenes that recall Dr. Strangelove, and plenty of other homages. It earns your attention and rewards the price of your ticket.

And Thirsty Sword Lesbians - very much my favorite Powered By The Apocalypse game these days. They were all living in a post scarcity anarchist utopia and volunteered to defend it from invading space pirates.

CBR + PNK: PRDTR - a Forged In The Dark game where they were trying to escape a biosphere on Ganymede while being chased by an unstoppable invisible apex predator.

A D&D 5.5 Eberron game where everyone was a Paladin.

Kill Vlad - a Powered by the Apocalypse style game I'm designing with Doug, about raising a mob to depose a tyrant.

Egger's Nosferatu was also sexy, but managed to be a critique of hierarchy and capitalism and patriarchy.

The least interesting question we could ask about Dracula is whether he got his poor fragile heart broken by his ded wife and is really just waiting for her doppelganger to be born and heal his sad feelings.