Was anyone else distracted by the "Magic Countdown" bomb?

exactly, I feel like it's 1 hour time

OK, put it this way: how much time elapses during the whole countdown sequence in the movie? As you're watching it, I mean.

Yeah it's movie time, but it wasn't really that bad - plus some of the stuff was likely happening concurrently while they showed is consecutively.

You obviously weren't paying attention. All your observations are explained by the fact that it took 14 minutes and 59 seconds.

I have an easier time believing all this happened in 15 minutes than I do believing that:

-Ferris Bueller woke up late and goofed around the house for a while
-Called Cameron and had to coax him to come out and play
-Cameron argued with himself about whether to go
-Cameron went to Ferris' house and they goofed around some more and made the phone call
-Went back to Cameron's house to pick up the car and go get Sloan at school
-Went to lunch (brunch?) at a fancy restaurant
-Went to the Sears Tower
-Went to the art Museum
-Took in a Cubs game
-Participated in a parade
-Went to Sloan's house and swam while Cameron was comatose
-Went back to Cameron's house and talked about the car
-And Ferris was still able to get home by 5

Maybe a bit distracted by it on my second viewing when I was “analyzing” some of the events (first time I was just going along for the ride). But not really, and that’s for two reasons:


1. Suspension of disbelief. It especially comes in handy for a Mission Impossible film.

2. These 15 minutes unfold in real time.


Yes, it’s a lot for such a short amount of time. But as always, it’s a fun ride watching these characters (Ethan in particular) pull off the unthinkable and save the world at literally the very last second. Plus, it’s no secret Tom Cruise moves QUICKLY!

Yes, 15 minutes of cartoon time (or just bad writing).
Obviously, the writer felt that a 30 minutes or 1 hour countdown would appear to the average movie going idiot as "big deal, that's not a short time! I can chug 3 cotton candy big gulps in that time!". So they fixed this by having the time set at 15 minutes (which, to be honest, is short even for the bad guys to leave the atomic blast area with a chopper).
Then, the same genius writer stuffed this 15 minutes with all that literally impossible crap for a respectable final showdown: he couldn't just have Hunt beat up the bad guy and grab the detonator, that's been done a million times.
So, before the beat up, he added a chase scene, but it had do be a chopper chase scene to be "Mission Impossible Original".
But that's also not extreme enough, so Hunt had to crash the chopper because he had no real weapons. And he had to actually steal the chopper, but that's too easy so he had to climb on it to steal it. And so on and so on, they could have kept adding more obstacles, like he had a sudden attack of diarrhea while climbing the rope, but they stopped already too late.
This, my friends, is HOW TO WRITE A BAD ACTION SEQUENCE.

They should have called it the "Final Countdown" bomb in honor of the 80's rock song by Europe. ;-)