DAC Episode 416 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

what is going on with ethan’s hair in this movie? It’s not the crewcut-adjacent trims of 1,3,5 and 7. it’s not the gorgeous flop of 2,4 and 6. this shaggy deal looks like it’s trying to integrate both sides of the hunthair persona. pick a lane, hunt. a solomon lane.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is unhinged. It insists that it’s a separate entity from Dead Reckoning Part One but spends most of its runtime answering the questions posed in its predecessor. It wants to be a genuine finale to the franchise but leaves the door wide open for more installments. Its prologue is a full 30 minutes’ worth of flashbacks within flashbacks that serve to explain things that are also happening in the prologue? The pacing is an absolute mess, the dialogue is agonizingly self-serious, and the final aerial action sequence is upstaged by an underwater action sequence from earlier in the film.

But here’s the thing: if you watch this with Dead Reckoning (Part One!) fresh in your memory, it’s good. It’s good, actually! I never thought I’d type those words. But here we are. Also, the underwater action sequence with Cruise swimming through an abandoned submarine? One of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in a movie. Seriously.

DAC Episode 415 - Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (lol) (2023)

woah fellas, let’s not bother hayley atwell, she’s blameless here

The best thing about the seventh installment of the Mission: Impossible is its strange status as ‘Part One’ of a one-part story. The eighth movie, when it eventually arrived, had grown a protective shell around itself during the many delays in its production, leaving part one wriggling and vulnerable, a larva of pure setup crawling blindly in circles in search of payoff.

In Dead Reckoning Part One Of One, Ethan Hunt finally encounters an enemy that poses a challenge to his bottomless well of will and resourcefulness: a superbeing called The Entity. It’s an AI that wants… wait, what does it want? Why is it doing all the weird stuff that it’s doing? Why is anything at all happening as it does? I guess we’ll find out in Part Two! Womp-womp. Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 414 - Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

footloose, footloose, kick off your sunday shoes

Children, gather ‘round, and I will tell you of a time before plagues and strikes, before LLMs crawled over our data like soul-eating spiders, back when greedy corporations made honest blockbusters, the kind you could see in an actual movie theatre. The very last of those films was called Mission: Impossible - Fallout, and it starred a man who fell from planes and ran on roofs and wrestled men in bathrooms. His name is lost to history, but people knew him as ‘Mr. Movies’. They say he ate a dozen buckets of popcorn per day. Some say he is still alive, having transcended his physical body and existing as a beam of light that shows a constantly repeating image of a train arriving at a station.

DAC Episode 413 - Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

when your trying to survive a high-speed chase but your knee is soooo itchy.

Has superspy ETHAN HUNT finally met his MATCH in nasally toned apostate SOLOMON LANE???

No.

DAC Episode 412 - Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

ethan hunt struggling with ethan hunt for ethan hunt supremacy.

More like GOAT Protocol, amirite? The last MI installment before the McQuarrie half of the franchise, Ghost Protocol is a banger of a blockbuster. A blocker of a bustbanger? A buster of a bangblocker? Whatever, it’s great.

Let me outline the greatness for you: Tom Cruise has let his hair grow out again. This is always a win. The action sequences and stunt setpieces are clean and delightful. The story only appears to revolve around world-ending stakes, but in truth, Ghost Protocol is driven by a competition between Ethan Hunt and Ethan Hunt. Can he outrun and outperform the tiny superego figure that commands him to climb towers and chase villains? Yes. Yes he can.

Enough talking up this movie. Go watch it. Or listen to Adam and Aidan dissect it for a bit. Find us on your podclimber of choice or do that thing where you listen below.

DAC Episode 411 - Mission: Impossible III (2006)

“Threes! They’re absolutely impossible!” is a thing no one in Mission: Impossible III says at any point. Instead, characters say things like “Copy” and “Roger that” and “I’m going to die unless you kill me”.

M:I 3 is a bit of a paradox: both the platonic ideal of a Mission Impossible film and a frozen remnant of the Abrams era, it ends up in an unsatisfying middle zone. The stunts are inspired but shot and edited too awkwardly to leave an impression, the love story drives the plot but seems to signal the end of Tom Cruise’s participation, and the movie makes the smart choice of putting Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of the villain but giving him not much to do. The result is a film that feels like someone relating a later and better Mission Impossible installment from memory.

Also, Tom Cruise reverts to his shorter haircut for the third movie, which is always a mistake. That man has serious flop to his locks.

If you want to hear insights like that and more from Adam and Aidan, find us on your podspewer of choice, or listen below. Remember, we’re going to die unless you kill us!

DAC Episode 410 - Mission: Impossible II (2000)

tom cruise looking like he’s just lost a battle with his bowels at a crucial moment.

Mission: Impossible II. Is it the best movie in the franchise? The most coherent? The coolest? The most enjoyable? The one entry that isn’t openly misogynistic? The one that didn’t decide on Dougray Scott as a plausible villain?

No! But it may be the most significant entry in the franchise for its introduction of the Tom Cruise Hair Length Toggle. This is the one that established the pattern that would more or less hold for the entire series: odd entries provide a short-haired Cruise with a clean-cut look; even entries give glorious mane. For this reason alone, Mission: Impossible II deserves your unbelieving eyeballs. Listen below or find us on your podgroomer of choice.

DAC Episode 409 - Mission: Impossible (1996)

not flying but hovering

Has Tom Cruise ever been younger than he was in the first Mission: Impossible movie? In the literal sense, yes. But in the very specific rhetorical sense that I’m asking you to accept here, no. He has never looked more baby-faced and callow than he does in the first installment of this improbably long franchise. Are there really 29 years between this film and M:I - Dead Reckoning? It seems impossible to even conceive of such a thing.

It’s also the start of our series, in which Adam and Aidan watch - in some cases for the first time - every goddamn one of these things. Yay! Listen below for our take on DePalma’s take on Mission: Impossible’s take on the spy genre.

DAC Episode 408 - The Italian Job (1969)

the self-preservation society

Oh, Cool Britannia. A young Michael Caine gathering a gang of thieves in colour-coded Mini Coopers to stage an endless car chase through the streets of Turin? We used to be a proper something or other. Listen below or find us on your podcatcher of choice.

DAC Episode 407 - Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

finally, a dead lion.

Just in time for Marchoween (or Marchowe’en for your purists), it’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O’Brien’s culsterpiece (that’s a word now) of queernema (that’s also a word now). Once more, friend of the show D.J. Kirkbride pops by to talk about the movie and debate the moral worth of Frank N. Furter’s actions. How do Adam and Aidan respond to D.J.’s outrageous accusations (now known as outragecusations)? Find out below or listen to us on your podcatcher of choice.

DAC Episode 406 - Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Is Marvel back in 2026? Was it back in mid-2025, when Fantastic Four: First Steps hit theatres? If it’s back, where did it go? Under the ocean with the corpse of the Celestial from The Eternals? Off in some other numbered dimension of the multiverse? Is there, as we speak, another universe in which Marvel makes a blockbuster every other week, to such acclaim that society has reorganized itself completely around watching superheroes on giant screens? In other words, is there a 2019-iverse, forever suspended at the peak of Marvel popularity?

These questions do not get answered in Adam and Aidan’s discussion of 2025’s Fantastic Four. Mostly we just talk about how cool Ben Grimm and Sue Storm are. Listen below or follow us on your podcaster of choice!

DAC Episode 405 - The Stuff (1985)

nom nom nom

Sometimes you come up with a pitch-perfect satire of consumerism. Then you put Michael Moriarty in the lead role and give him a toupee. Life’s funny that way. Listen below as we wade through The Stuff, or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 404 - Superman (2025)

a live dog with a live dog sidekick.

Joining us! On this week’s podcast! Is comics editor and writer D.J.! Kirkbride! D.J., our resident Superman co-authority (along with Adam) is following up on his triumphant appearance on our Superman (1978) episode. What did we think of James Gunn’s take on the big blue palooka? Find out by listening below, or on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 403 - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S3

feels like a dead lion trying desperately to revive itself here.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 came and went (much like Captain Batel, heyyy-yo), leaving a lot of puzzled Trek fans in its wake. Holodeck murder mysteries? Zombie Klingons or something? Statue’d-up Marie? Sure, whatever.

Adam and Aidan discuss the third season of ST:SNW, ruminating on the highs and lows of this entertaining but messy season (a casualty of the WGA strikes), ranking the episodes and coming to a satisfying conclusion that in no way involves Melanie Scrofano being a statue. Listen below or find us on your podsculptor of choice!

DAC Episode 402 - Crank 2: High Voltage (2009)

this man will never be a dead lion.

What do you do after you make a movie about a man who needs constant jolts of adrenaline to keep his heart beating? You, uh… steal his heart and replace it with an artificial model that needs constant jolts of current to keep it beating? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Crank 2 (or Crank: High Voltage, or maybe Crank 2: High Voltage) can’t quite match the impact that Crank had in 2006, but Neveldine and Taylor can’t be accused of phoning in the constantly escalating stakes. Most of the moments from the first movie recur, but with ever-greater levels of absurdity. Does Chev Chelios survive this installment? Find out below or listen to us on your podspreader of choice.

DAC Episode 401 - Crank (2006)

a live dog would like a word with you.

Many people claim that the cinema of 2007, with its countries not intended for seniors and forecasts of blood like satanic weathermen, is the peak year for 21st century cinema. Of course, those snobby cineastes fail to account for the previous year, which produced what may be the purest jolt of adrenaline ever committed to movie screens. I’m talking about Crank, the Neveldine and Taylor joint that proved movies don’t need high art, or logic, or coherence. They just need an outlandish visual style, a cameo from Maynard Keenan, and a dozen cameras following an absolutely unhinged Jason Statham as he tears his way through Los Angeles. The premise? Keep your adrenaline pumping or die. It’s Speed on speed. It’s a garbage film made by garbage minds, an endless spewing of high-velocity trash aimed right at our limbic system. Its like will not be seen again. Needless to say, it’s a personal favourite here at the Destroy All Culture compound.

Woo! That was a lot. Listen below to our perfect opinions or find us on your garbage centrifuge (podcasting app) of choice.

DAC Episode 400 - A Life Spent Watching Movies

Welcome friends (and enemies! We know you’re out there) to Episode 400 of Destroy All Culture. For this episode, we forgo our usual focus on a single movie to talk about our history with movies and media in general, from Star Wars and Wizard of Oz to the beclowned state of the current blockbuster. We try - oh, how we try - to sum up a life lived immersed in film, and we wonder what makes a great movie. Where do we split the difference between Andrei Rublev and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter? And now that I write those words, I wish we’d answered that specific question. But you get the idea! Listen below or find us on your pod circulator of choice.

DAC Episode 399 - Miller's Crossing (1990)

when he’s raised hell you’ll know it, sister.

If you’ve listened to our previous episode on Rian Johnson’s Brick, you’ll already be aware of thematic and artistic touchpoints between Brick’s highschoolers-in-a-Hammett-novel premise and Miller’s Crossing, which could fairly be described as the Coen Brothers’ attempt at a Hammett pastiche.

The question is, how do you like your pastiche? Period-appropriate or -agnostic? Quietly sincere or extremely arch? Hey, do you want to see Sam Raimi get shot at? Whatever direction your tastes may lean, you could do worse than spend time with Adam and Aidan as they take Miller’s Crossing out for a walk in the woods. Listen below or find us your podplayer of choice.

DAC Episode 398 - Brick (2005)

he wants to see the ‘pin.

A cynical teenager in scuffed shoes gets a mysterious phone call. An enigmatic message is left in a locker. A blonde girl lies dead in a culvert. Oh, and everyone talks in the argot of a ‘40s noir film. After all, doesn’t high school feel like an unending crime scene for a monstrous act that is always about to happen?

Brick! It’s the hidden foundational text of Destroy All Culture! It’s the invisible yardstick by which all other movies on this podcast are measured! It’s also a pretty good film. Check it out some time. And then come back here and listen to Adam and Aidan talk about it.

DAC Episode 397 - May (2002)

a live dog beset by dead lion (maternal superego located in a doll).

It seems bizarre that it’s taken so long for this podcast to get around to Lucky McKee’s May, the 2002 cult favourite about a young woman who, faced with relentless imperfection in the world around her, decides to make something whole and perfect. Results are mixed. Are Adam and Aidan mixed on May? Listen below to find out, or come visit us on your podcaster of choice, murder us and sew us together into your perfect companion! We’re not busy.