So it’s clear that the makers of this movie knew that Rogue Nation was a success, and that their animating impulse was “can we do that again?” But, sadly, they couldn’t.

They tried real hard, though. They brought back the ambiguous double-agent woman from the last movie (despite that undoing her ending), and made her ambiguous and double-agenty again. They brought back the villain from the last movie (despite that undoing his ending) and put him in charge of a big secret organization again. They brought in new people for us to not-entirely trust again. And boy howdy did they bring in lots of elaborate action scenes again.

But even beyond the over-familiarity of all the reprises, they just didn’t nail the story here. The good thing about Rogue Nation is that it felt like more than an action movie where they trotted around the globe to scenic locales for implausible reasons to do silly stunts. But this one… well, pretty much exactly that. Nonsense plotting, intrigue that felt like a sideshow, and then just following a trail of plot tokens until the ending.

The locations were pretty, the stunts were cool, but ultimately there’s just not a lot here. If you’ve been watching the franchise, it’s not bad enough that you should stop; but it’s definitely not good enough to make you want to start.