A Mission Impossible Restrospective

I thought now would be a perfect time to go through each Mission Impossible film and address its appeals, what it lacks and what it added to the franchise as a whole.

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Scott's Self-Indulgent Movie Podcast · Episode 978: A Mission Impossible Retrospective

The Mission Impossible franchise is unique in moviedom. When a franchise or brand name exists in the movie world for more than ten years, let alone almost thirty, it tends to have one of three things going for it. One is a killer concept/world. These are your Star Wars, or your Planet of the Apes where the main concepts can remain the same (i.e. fighting fascism and intolerance respectively) but what each film or series does with those ideas can vary greatly depending on the creative team behind it.

The second are well known characters. Pop culture icons that are more or less evergreen and stay in the zeitgeist thanks to a consistent churn of movies or materials documenting their adventures. Batman and James Bond both fit the bill here.

And the third and final category are franchises that exist through the power/will of a single person, which is rarified air. This is George Miller coming back to direct Furiosa last year after making the original Mad Max in 1979 or Sylvester Stallone making yet another Rambo or Rocky movie.

This is also the category that Mission Impossible falls into thanks to the intensity of one Tom Cruise. What makes the Mission films especially wild is how despite a 60 plus year old star, they've continued to push the envelope of real action on screen performed by their lead actor while never looking at things like aging, obsolescence or legacy. They just threaten to destroy the world again and have Cruise and company pull it out of their butt through another bit of stunt-fueled insanity.

Half of the Rambo and Rocky films are all about legacy and aging and here's Tom Cruise strapping himself to a byplane that would've chased Cary Grant in North by Northwest...for the movie you see.

So as the final film in Cruise's iteration hits theaters this Friday, I thought now would be a perfect time to go through each film and address its appeals, what it lacks and what it added to the franchise as a whole.

Mission Impossible (1996)

This movie is always a great barometer for what people want or like in a movie. For fans of the original TV show it was seen as a slap in the face for the opening sequence that killed almost the entire team, turned one of the show's original heroes into a villain, and put our hero Ethan Hunt in direct conflict with the agency he was allegedly working for (a recurring theme). For me as a young action junkie, this didn't have the intensity, frequency of set pieces, or one man army stuff I had come to expect from "spy movies" based on my Goldeneye viewing experience.

And on the other end we have people who act like the series peaked here and never did anything better. That I don't get, not because the movie isn't good, but because this feels mostly like a Brian DePalma vs. a Mission Impossible movie. So if you claim to love the franchise and point to this as the "best one," the franchise you allegedly love has been doing it wrong for movies 2-8.

This is a more traditional spy movie, since so much of this movie is about avoiding detection or intense information exchanges, and the stunt heavy madness to come was just getting started, but hadn't exploded yet.

As it is, we've got Brian DePalma, a modern suspense master, delivering what could be his last great directing performance as he glides Tom Cruise and company through a series of tense standoffs and acquisitions before going full North by Northwest with a fight involving a train and a helicopter. Tons of fun all around.

The Good

The break-in sequence to the sequence data facility with Tom Cruise splaying out inches from the floor is a prefect movie scene. The audience knows exactly what the goal is and all of the possible complications. The direction heightens every moment of possible discovery. And Tom Cruise doing that Spider-Man nonsense himself is the start of something special (but more on that later). Everything about that scene is perfect.

Admittedly most of the big set pieces are really good because DePalma, as I already mentioned, is directing the s*** out of this movie. The dutch angles during tense conversations are great. The brutal kills in the film's open are properly startling. 

While nowadays it seems to be more of a working partnership with Christopher McQuarrie writing and directing and Cruise starring, executive producing, and working hand in hand with McQuarrie, it is very interesting to see a Mission Impossible movie where Cruise didn't have full grip on the reigns yet.

The Bad

The missteps in this movie have more to do with the script than anything else. Short version, there's too many twists. This is a danger when your movie is a mole hunt and this movie falls into that trap a bit. Also for a franchise that puts such an emphasis on doing stunts for real, the train and helicopter beats feel a bit dated (but that happens to most movies like this). Overall though...not bad.

What Stuck

The two most obvious things that stuck in this movie are Ving Rhames as Luther, who provides a near-perfect counterbalance to Tom Cruise in voice and energy as our beloved hacker and the franchise's obsession with elaborate heists that Ethan doesn't want to do, but really likes to do. All of which are then used to justify some kind of stunt that Tom Cruise will actually perform because he not only seems to have a knack for it, but he also might be an adrenaline junkie/madman. 

The less obvious elements are thematic. One of which is the tendency for Ethan to be on the outs with his own agency. In this movie it's a frame job, so it's very different when he's making wild choices that no one else agrees with, but this is the cornerstone of what makes this franchise work from movie to movie. This isn't about a guy with the best gadgets pulling off the impossible job. It's guy against the ropes being resourceful and doing what he can, with the help of some unlikely friends, to save the day. And that'll keep coming back again and again.

Mission Impossible II (2000)

I have a strong affection for Mission Impossible II. It was the first film in the franchise I saw in theaters. The promotion included a hilarious bit for the MTV Movie Awards where Ben Stiller played Cruise's stunt double and eventually led to Cruise being on Tropic Thunder. I bought the VHS and then the DVD. I bought the album of nu metal/alt rock tracks including a lead single from Metallica called "I Disappear." I knew who John Woo was and I wanted more John Woo heroes shooting gas cans and making cars explode fun. I thought Thawdie Newton was one of the most stunning women I had ever seen. 

It is also considered the worst movie in the entire franchise. It's polarizing at best. Has that changed my view of it? Yes and no.

But we'll get into that. The main thing about this movie is that it is very much a James Bond movie, made when Bond films were floundering, but with Tom Cruise as the star vs a Brit, in the skin of a John Woo movie and that is janky as hell stylistically.

As I already alluded to, the franchise was more or less beholden to the directors to start, and this is a very John Woo film (especially when it comes to action and the film's visual language) minus the R-rated intensity that gave his melodramatic bullet ballets an edge. So let's get into what works and what doesn't.

The Good

I don't care what anyone says. The action in this movie rips. It's an approach to action the franchise would never embrace again, but Tom Cruise doing acrobatic slo-mo gun fu is pretty great as are his series of flip-kick takedowns he does towards the film's end. Is this what anyone comes to the franchise for nowadays? Absolutely not. Do I care? Not when I'm seeing Ving Rhames explode an SUV with a grenade launcher before Tom Cruise rides past the flames left in its wake before we single arm pistol shots a car's gas can so it flips over. Woo still has a firm grasp of when to use slow-motion here too.

Anthony Hopkins is a great addition as Ethan's liaison from IMF who pulls out some great lines and Thawdiwe Newton makes an immediate impression as our love interest even if her part is severely underwritten. 

Ving Rhames return is welcome, as is his frustration with his crisp clothes being ruined, this movie's use of masks might be the best in the series (while giving a way that voices can be altered), and I actually like the plot of a bioweapon and cure and making our bad guy just a glorified hostage taker who was once with IMF who has some inside info on how Ethan works.

The Bad

There's so much in this movie that is clunky as fuck. There's tons of dialogue that hit wrong then and hits even worse now, aka calling the one woman with a name in this movie "bitch" all the time is NOT great. The butt rock guitar riff in the score is kinda fun once or twice and then it just keeps dropping over and over again every time Ethan does something cool. The movie shifts from "cool fun" to melodrama on a dime. And a lot of scenes that should be tense are undercut by literal explosions more times than I can count.

And honestly Dougray Scott is wildly miscast. He's not bad as a villain per say, and him taking this role meant Hugh Jackman became Wolverine so that's a win, but he's supposed to be a perfect match for Ethan Hunt in mind and body and just...no. His main superhuman ability in this movie is the Batman villain effect, he's got a bunch of dudes to throw at his problems. How? Eh we're not thinking about that.

Honestly the prominent inclusion of Limp Bizkit on the soundtrack is a perfect encapsulation of this movie's mindset. It seemed fun and cool at the time and quickly turned rather embarrassing. And while I don't think an ironic or semi-ironic turn around is likely for the time, it's hard to fault them for making it this way at the time. It was 2000. Big silly action was a great bet and John Woo was riding high in Hollywood off of similar energy in Face/Off. The movie was also wildly successful and got another one made and that'll shut naysayers up.

The main problem is that the franchise could never make this movie again because times and tastes change and this is about as "of the moment" as this franchise would ever get. But we'll talk about that shortly.

What Stuck

Not much this time honestly. Ving Rhames being a recurring character is perhaps the biggest development, but there's nothing in this movie that indicates he'll be an integral part of the team moving forward. There's also the addition of the voice altering tech that would make a lot of the mask-based face swapping work, which is a nice addition.

But perhaps the biggest element that stands out iiissss: Tom Cruise doing stunts. The opening sequence with Cruise on the giant red rock was more or less done by Cruise by himself, despite a bunch of stunt people around and the knife by his eyelid was done for real as well. Which is not without risk even with a wildly competent lead performer and all of the safety precautions in the world.

This is also the first time they seemed to integrate the "Tom actually did this stuff!" into the marketing, which becomes it's own meta throughline moving forward. It's also exactly what the franchise would need in the future once Tom Cruise's star power had been diminished.

Mission Impossible 3

The Tom Cruise that hit theaters in 2006 was a very different Tom Cruise hitting a very different movie-going public. This was Tom Cruise in his "my family is giving me the greenlight to jump on couches because I'm so in love with Katie Holmes and they're my PR people now," phase of his career, about to break ties with his longtime collaborator Paramount who would then argue about Scientology and psychiatry on talk shows.

Why was this such a big deal? To this point, Tom Cruise was more or less bulletproof. He was a respected actor with multiple Academy Award nominations to his name and hadn't had anything less than a hit in about a decade. He had also been teaming up with big name directors like Spielberg and Michael Mann, the second of whom got him to play against type.

He was an affable guy who made guaranteed hits. And everything he did in public in this stage was...at the very least cringe if not outright oft-putting. And it definitely put a giant puncture in that bulletproof public image.

So even a pairing with another up and coming director, JJ Abrams, a Magnolia reunion with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and the third film in a generally liked series...didn't live up to the hype either on film or at the box office.

It was made for substantially more money than the second film and made far less. Was it still a hit? Yes, yes it was. Was it what everyone wanted right then? Eh. Not really. The hyper-intense Mission Impossible 3 did not match up with a box office that was about big comedies, big animated movies and big silly franchises that leaned more on melodrama versus in your face intensity.

And while Cruise still had some juice, having a giant movie star in your movie wasn't guaranteed success.

Oh the movie itself. It's...fine. The main issue with Mission Impossible 3 is the same issue with almost every JJ Abrams movie. Which is that they are generally enjoyable to watch and have good moments, but I almost always end up feeling like something was missing at the end. But we'll get into that in a moment. Let's talk about what works.

The Good

The setup for this movie is pretty good. Ethan has decided to give up the IMF life and settle down with a lovely wife. He's now moved to training new recruits and apparently has only passed one. And now she's been captured and presumed dead. Time to get back into action while keeping his real job on the DL from his soon-to-be wife with a villain who is infinitely more ruthless than anyone he's encountered before.

And man Phillip Seymour Hoffman is so good as the bad guy in this. The thing Hoffman always understood was dynamics. A lot of people take on a villain role like this and immediately put on their Christopher Lee voice and prepare for their monologue. But choices like throwing away "do you have a wife girlfriend," without a care in the world are chilling (inset because of the implication joke here). Even how he hits Ethan

I also like our full team that includes Rhames, Maggie Q, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers who provide equal measure banter, sex appeal and beyond. It's a good group.

There's also great individual action movie moments like Ethan's giant pendulum swing onto a skyscraper and the moment that's been teased to hell and back which is Ethan getting blown back into a car after a missile explodes nearby. Same goes for little things like Ethan knowing lip-reading or guiding his wife through stopping his heart to revive him.

And the humor, sweetness and drama all hit. So....why don't I dig this movie that much?

The Bad

Editing and shot selection. These are this movie's biggest problem. Because I can see how all of these set pieces should look in my head and that is never what appears on screen. This is the problem you can run into with an inexperienced action director who's been given the reigns to a $150 million movie for the first time. They may not have an inherent understanding of how action filmmaking works and just might lean into all of the worst trends of the era. 

I'll take something simple like a shootout. The keys to a shootout are knowing where your main players are, vaguely knowing what the enemies are and what they're capable of, and then choosing shots to show/demonstrate the push and pull of the firefight. Ideally in wider shots so you can tell what's happening.

But the shots in this movie are just chaos and piecing together exactly what's happening is easier with dialogue than with action.

You want to know the reason the big explosion reaction sticks in your head? It's one of the few wide shots with no cuts. We see the missile, see Ethan react and run and then watch the impact. Perfect little beginning middle and end action storytelling there. And then Ethan picks up a gun and it's like the film stock was put into a blender again.

I want to be clear that the issue is not using shaky cam in an action movie. It's not my preference, but hand-held camera work can be used responsible and effectively, as long as you let the audience see the important parts. I don't need to see every bit of footwork someone in a melee bout is doing if I see the hits. But I gotta be able to see the hits. Not have the camera move away from the hit and cut into oblivion.

And while it wasn't as big as the time, this movie also suffered from the mystery box problem (so much so that it's being retconned/updated for the final film). In every other Mission Impossible film we've got a clear problem. We've got nukes about to go off, a virus about to be unleashed on a completely unprepared populous...or a nuke about to go off. Whatever you get the idea. Stakes are clear. 

But why does it matter what the "Rabbit's Foot" is if it's really all about Ethan trying to save his wife. We have to know what he's trading. Vaguely trading something that could blow up the world isn't nearly as devastating as "this is a sniper round that can hit the President from 5 miles away." Now to this movie's credit, this is throughline the series latches onto down the line, the notion of saving one life being as important as saving millions to Ethan at the very least. But still, in a movie where all of the best bits are eaten in the edit bay or cut away from before shit gets real cool, I wanted something, anything, concrete to hold onto.

What Stuck

The problem with Mission Impossible 3, in terms of franchise longevity, is that 3 was clearly designed to be Ethan Hunt's walk into the sunset. One last ride where our IMF bad ass closes an unclosed loop in professional life and locks down a solid personal life with a partner who's been through the ringer with him. And while I don't know this for certain, I imagine a big part of this approach was that Cruise was about to end his longstanding relationship with Paramount to work with United Artists and he wanted to end the series without him being killed off. Very funny in hindsight.

So almost none of the big elements or players in this movie stick around, nor does the movie's approach to the IMF as a highly organized government entity with trainers etc.

Amazingly Ethan's wife Julie, played by Michelle Mognahan stuck, but more on that later. Not only that, but Simon Pegg's Benji went from amusing side character that helps over the phone into a franchise staple in Ghost Protocol. 

The stuff that does stick around is all centered around Tom Cruise. Because this is the first Mission Impossible that prominently features the running. This is the first and definitely not the last time that Benji will be guiding Ethan as he sprints through an unfamiliar location. We also see bits and pieces of Cruise's go-to hand to hand style (though in the movie it's more because he's got a charge in his head) which emphasizes elbow strikes and blocks.

We're also going to have a lot more of the aerial nonsense like the giant pendulum swing Cruise does to get the Rabbit's Foot and an ill-advised low base jump. Tom Cruise in the air is going to be a thing.

But the big gun battles? Gone. The hyper intense visual style? Never again. The quick editing? Mercifully abandoned in the post 9/11 movie wreckage. And after five years Cruise would come back to his favorite franchise and his old studio to revitalize the franchise and set its course for the foreseeable future.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I don't know if Ghost Protocol is the best or even my favorite movie in the franchise. But it's definitely the most important. 

As I alluded to earlier, up until this point all three films in the franchise look completely unrelated to one another based on their visual style, their tones, and the supporting cast. Basically they leaned into the foibles of each director.

And even though he never directed another movie in the franchise, Brad Bird helped to set this series right. 

We reintroduce Ethan. We give him a new team with a familiar face. And we stack the deck against him resource wise in favor of his instincts and ingenuity. He's gotta stop nuclear annihilation and is probably going to have to do some insane stuff to do it.

The hook is pretty simple. That a mission IMF was working on has gone to hell and now Ethan has to be broken out of a gulag-like prison situation to help the team that's reeling from a mission failure and teammate loss. 

One thing I really like about this group of agents is that all of them have a question mark attached. With Ethan the real question is whether or not he can still do all of the stuff we've seen him do in the past, since his foe gets the better of him a few times to start. And also did he murder a bunch of dudes to end up in prison? Last time we saw Simon Pegg he was sitting in front of a computer, so the notion of his being an asset in the field seems shaky. Paula Patton's character might be too blinded by rage and grief to be effective. And Jeremy Renner's congressional analyst seems so hamstrung by indecision that he comes across like a liability. So what better way to have them all prove their mettle via a series of elaborate heists where they all need to work around technology that keeps failing and a lack of support?

This is also the first movie that really leaned into the "Tom Cruise doing his own stunts" in the marketing. Because in an era of movies where the biggest blockbusters all seem to use as much CGI as humanly possible, often creating entire environments and scenes in a computer, Tom Cruise sitting atop the Burj Khalifa saying "I'll see you at the movies" makes you stand out. The end result? A giant critical and box office success and a greenlight for Cruise and company to keep making these movies until the box office depletes or Cruise fulfills his apparent death wish.

The Good

Basically everything? Part of the reason Brad Bird is such a good choice for this franchise is that he is a very good action filmmaker. He wants to keep everything he can in camera and he's very good at constructing scenes for maximum tension, that often feature a number of moving parts all operating at the same time. It's why the action beats in his Incredibles movies are so engaging. 

The Burj Khalifa climb is a perfect example. Before Cruise even gets on the building we've got:

1. A reason he should do this (they need to access servers they can't hack in time and you can't get past the locks). They even eliminate every other option besides this with Ethan taking a giant sigh every time.
2. We have tech that explains how Ethan is able to do this and how it is supposed to work, with clear indications of how it can go wrong.
3. And we've got a tight time window so he cannot wait or prep too much.

And now he's on the front of the building, with wide shots to show the audience holy shit he's really doing this, and every time a glove falters the audience feels like he might not make it. He slips, falters and nearly falls an awful lot, all while Simon Pegg callously tells him to hurry it up. 

This sequence also has an element the franchise didn't have before: a self-aware sense of humor. Each of the previous films had jokes here or there, but there's an undercurrent of knowing silliness to the proceedings now. Ethan not wanting to do this is already kinda funny since doing this was Tom Cruise's idea in the first place, as is Benji's "you do this stuff all the time, it's fine" attitude to everything. This only expands as the franchise continues and Cruise's stunts get more elaborate and more dangerous.

We also move away from the gun heavy approach from the last two films to a bigger emphasis on hand-to-hand combat, gadgets (that may or may not work) and vehicular insanity (including the finale we're they're just dropping cars at each other). And we also emphasize the ingenuity of Ethan and the team as the primary tool in this franchise's arsenal, which is a nice running theme moving forward.

This also might be the best written movie of the bunch, at least when it comes to the team. As I mentioned before each team member has a giant question mark about their abilities going in and by the end they all prove themselves or answer that question. Simon Pegg puts together coaxial cable with his bare hands, successfully before firing a kill shot at his fellow agent's opponent (true field agent shit). Jeremy Renner's Brandt proves his mettle, mostly to himself and gets closure about his "big mistake," (even though it is supremely fucked up that they let him think he failed for so long). Paula Patton gets revenge and completes the mission and Ethan Hunt is back in the fold, handing off info to...his old friend Luther. The future of the franchise looks and feels bright here.

The Bad

I'm at a loss for major complaints about the movie. At worst I have nitpicks about some drastic shifts in tone from moment to moment, and some less well thought out elements of back story, but baseline, everything works. Cast works, action works, story works and all of it comes together for a highly entertaining 2 hours of movie. 

What Stuck

So much stuck here. Cast wise both Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg would be back and the last second cameos from Luther and Jules indicated that they were still in this world and could be brought back at any time. 

What really stuck around was what I'll dub the "Mission Impossible" approach. From marketing to making of the movie they created a series of benchmarks that they would continue to use from here on out.

1. That meta sense of humor about how insane the stuff Ethan/Tom Cruise is doing is fully incorporated into the films now and may or may not be featured in each cold open. It will be a giant part of the marketing every time now.
2. At least one "are you f***ing kidding me" stunt per movie. Cruise will do a lot more than that, but you need one he can talk about on the talk show circuit.
3. The bones of "we've got a potentially world ending maniac getting his hands on nukes" is our threat baseline and it's going to require a bunch of trips to some very lovely places and bunch of stunt fueled heists and chases to make things right.
4. The shift to hand to hand combat sticks around as well with Ethan now having a signature fighting style.
5. Running is back and it's here to stay. So much running.
6. Ethan and company being on the ropes and operating at less than the peak of their powers (i.e. limited support) is a theme that will continue to pop up in these movies.

The blueprint for future Mission Impossible success is all right here and indicates all of the secret sauce that makes the franchise stand out in a crowded field of blockbuster franchises.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

With enthusiasm back behind Cruise and the franchise, Cruise decided to flex his executive producers muscles a bit and brought in his favorite Mission Impossible collaborator, and writer/director of the last four films, Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie wasn't a credited part of Ghost Protocol, but he did have a major hand in script rewriters, that clearly didn't go unnoticed by Cruise. Hence why Cruise tapped McQuarrie to write and direct Cruise's take on Lee Child's Jack Reacher franchise for Reacher, which isn't great, but demonstrates a lot of promise in terms of action filmmaking chops and McQuarrie's previously established skill at writing punchy movie dialogue.

What does that mean for the movie and the series? Everything is a little bigger and more intense. And instead of simply trying to save the world, Ethan is going up against his own government who wants to stop him and a "Rogue Nation" of operatives that all function like an evil IMF called the Syndicate. Every long-running franchise does something like this and it's a pretty solid idea here. Ethan is chaotic order. These guys are ordered chaos.

So now it's time for Ethan to work with his best buddies at the IMF, Luther and Benji, and a new ally Elsa, to stop this group before they can do some real damage. This added intensity, without being melodramatic, works really well because it means each of our actors can show off a bit whether it's Pegg getting to show real distress at the film's end, Rebecca Ferguson being the perfect mercurial Bond girl who never was (but somehow way better), and Cruise demonstrating a care for the humans in his orbit the franchise hadn't dealt with before.

There's also a larger emphasis put on telling the story visually than with giant exposition dumps that I thoroughly enjoy. It means we get scenes where everyone's loyalties aren't clear that lend themselves really well like Hitchcockian opera house fight and shootout. 

Thematically this is all about the IMF justifying its own existence after a security breach which it does very well. This also unlocks an ongoing theme in the franchise that Ethan and his team on the ground have a better sense of priorities than folks in Washington who only know about the failures and don't necessarily see the successes.

The Good

Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise work so well together in this franchise. The best way I can describe it is that McQuarrie has a good sense for when Cruise would be better suited as his hyper-intense self vs. when it would be good for him to be the self-aware movie star self. For instance, Elsa bring Ethan back to life via mouth to mouth resuscitation and Ethan basically ignoring the fact that he was dead is kinda amazing and perfect and a great tonal lead in for the absolutely bat shit car chase sequence that ends up with the car flipping end over end with Simon Pegg screaming his lungs out.

McQuarrie is also someone who gets that sometimes you just make images because they're f***ing cool. Did we need a shot of Rebecca Ferguson in that silky yellow dress with her leg sticking out steadying her shot from a sniper rifle made from a flute? Absolutely not. Is it one of the best/most bad-ass images the franchise has ever produced? Absolutely.

Also Rebecca Ferguson is probably the best female character this franchise has ever had. Not only is she a physical match for Ethan, but Ferguson in look/vibe and performance matches Ethan's mercurial vibe. She's so hard to read and manages to be both a equal partner spy and femme fatale. There's a vulnerability behind her that is undercut by her survival instinct and frequent ruthlessness. In short, there's a reason, the franchise, Tom Cruise, and Ethan love her.

It's also a nice way to reinforce the theme of shared humanity and people being more important than things or loyalties to different groups. Trust people, not institutions.

I'm also in awe of the creativity on display to piece together some of these heist sequences. The underwater bit in particular is grade-A, stuff you can only get in the Mission Impossible franchise goodness.

And I haven't even gotten to most of the action scenes which are all equal parts thrilling and laced with simple to elaborate stunt work be it the high speed motorcycle chase or the cold open which features Tom Cruise strapped to a plane, that's entirely played for a joke.

The Bad

I don't think there's much in the film that's bad. If anything the movie makes some choices in terms of which set piece goes where and when that I may have shuffled. The movie's ending is my go-to example. Ethan and Elsa saving Benji with a series of hand to hand takedowns of the bad guy's goons doesn't feel like the final set piece in a giant movie. It feels like something you'd include in the middle or at the very least enhance with another set piece happening at the same time like Ghost Protocol did. Apparently the ending was reworked and you can kinda tell.

I'm also far less interested in the political meddling side of things than this franchise often is and it's why the very very simple approach used in Fallout is my favorite. I don't need Congressional hearings. I just want one bureaucrat who's either going to give Ethan resistance or give him a complication.

But much like Ghost Protocol, these are nitpicks because the overall experience is another lean, mean, often funny thrill machine.

What Stuck

Almost everything. McQuarrie is now onboard until Cruise's watch ends, as are Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg. And Rebecca Ferguson is going to keep popping up as long as she wants. This is the team. The two tech guys, one calm, one more manic, who will help this madman and maybe his love interest/rival/sometimes team member stop a world ending attack. 

Even Sean Harris as our soft-spoken maniac Solomon Lane is going to come back, as are the Syndicate and Alec Baldwin as Ethan's Congressional liaison who will spout of some hilariously hyperbolic lines by the time this franchise ends.

This is also the start of Tom Cruise training to do something wild so he can do more action on screen. And it's not the "being attached to a plane while it takes off" thing. Apparently Cruise did a ton of training so he could actually hold his breath for three minutes, which was a boon to filming those underwater sequences...since he could actually stay underwater for quite awhile. A madman like approach that will definitely come back immediately in the next movie.

This is also the beginning of Ethan's emotional arc of "never trading lives," which is going to come into stronger focus over the next two films and could play into Final Reckoning.

Everything else that carries over was more or less here before. The vehicular insanity, Simon Pegg being used as a comedic foil to Cruise, an elaborate heist, elbow based hand-to-hand combat, and that wild mix of intense life-threatening danger upended by a self-aware jokes are all going to come back.

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Fallout entered the movie world at both the best and least opportune time for its kind of movie (aka a practical before everything else kind of blockbuster fueled by its lead performer). 

While Rogue Nation entered the movie field shortly after the first Avengers movie, by 2018 superhero movies and animation were king. Black Panther, Ant-Man & The Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War, Aquaman, Deadpool 2, The Incredibles 2, and even Venom lit up the box office that year. Which meant that anything that didn't incorporate of ton of CGI spectacle into their movie would stand out.

And Cruise, McQuarrie and company decided to lean into that as much as humanly possible. Hey gang? You know how Tom Cruise is a maniac? Well this time we've got him doing HALO jumps, flying a helicopter and jumping between buildings. He actually injured himself on this take...and we kept it in the movie! 

The end result was the highest grossing movie in the franchise's history (worldwide) that came out to near universal critical acclaim.

Did it do a lot of things differently this time around? Yes and no. One thing that definitely made the movie stand out amongst its peers was that it clearly filmed on film vs. digital which means the tactile look and feel of every fight or action beat really sings and also feels like counter-programming to entire battlefields constructed with CGI in Marvel movies. This wasn't different from their general approach, but it does mean that the wide shots during the helicopter chase or Cruise climbing to get to said helicopter look and feel really different.

There's also a new thematic hook, which we'll get into, that gives these movies some added weight and character that has been missing outside of "I am Ethan Hunt so I save the world."

The Good

Fallout might be my favorite movie of the bunch. Why? Propulsive energy. While all movies have down time where people are speaking, Fallout feels like it's constantly in motion. A bit part of this is the score, which stands out for the first time in forever outside of the signature Mission Impossible theme that maintains this heartbeat of tense strings in the background even as Ethan is looking at a map or just walking. 

And the transition between each set piece is immaculate. In one extended scene we have Ethan HALO jump with to get into a fancy party to get their target, before they try to extract him, which goes sideways because the fella gains consciousness too quick and then it's all out brawl (and probably the best fight scene in the franchise) before Ilsa arrives for some unknown reason and kills the guy and then we're improvising our way through an arm's dealer meeting before more face punching and Ethan gets the info he needs. 

The whole movie is like this. A spy or action beat into another spy or action beat into another before we finally take a breather to celebrate or recoup and try something else to save the day. All peppered in with unexpected reveals (i.e. Jules' return and Benji finally getting to wear masks), long-delayed payoffs (see Elsa getting her direct revenge on Lane), and even an extended "What-if?" segment where Ethan imagines how the plan he's been given will play out.

This also feels like the most intimate a lot of this stunt work has been thanks to cameras being in the cockpit with Cruise as he flies the helicopter or him clearly zipping in and out of the Paris streets. Same goes for the extended shots during the HALO jump it feels so personal and immediate.

McQuarrie has also become a better action filmmaker as the series has progressed, case in point the bathroom scene. Each blow is easy to follow, the visual storytelling is immaculate (you can tell exactly what Ethan or Walker are thinking in each moment), and we get highlight reel moments from our stunt performer and Henry Cavill's fist guns. Great stuff all around.

Thematically this is probably the closest look fans have ever got into Ethan's inner workings. We know he's smart and capable and wants to save lives, but as a man his priorities and motivations have always been hard to pin down.

This time around we get a glimpse into Ethan's worldview which is that every life is precious. The earliest example is when Ethan trades Luther's life for a plutonium core, regardless of the implications, which is then constantly reinforced by comparison, by Henry Cavill's August Walker and the criminals/terrorists Ethan is fighting. 

Walker is brought in as a control on Ethan's apparent indecisiveness. To be the stick to Ethan's carrot or more spy-craft like approach (literally the comparison they make). But the movie makes it pretty clear that this supposedly valuable ruthlessness or detachment from people is a villain's mindset that does not work.

The main reason Ethan can't "become" John Lark is because Walker both blew their cover by being aggressive and then broke the technology that would allow Ethan to wear a mask and take his spot. Likewise, as soon as Ethan realizes that the snatch and grab job will end up killing local police, he calls an audible on his own and grabs Lnaek. The only time Ethan kills is to save lives including a innocent police woman whom he guns down an entire team for or the eventual KO of Lark to stop the bomb from going off. Whereas Walker and the bad guys use emotional connection and lives as hostages or see them as without value, including Ethan's former wife Jules. It's also a perspective that Ethan tries and seems to successfully impart onto Elsa who seems more concerned with being brought back into the fold or getting revenge. So seeing her once again come around to believing in Ethan versus her government and getting her revenge when the time is right and her part has been played is a nice little arc for her. We also have Angela Bassett's CIA deputy director who appears to adopt Ethan's approach as well. He's a consensus builder it seems.

I also think the inclusion of Jules in the final beat is really smart. From a character standpoint it's an added gutpunch for Ethan that if he fails the first person impacted would be the woman he had given up this life for. From a story standpoint it gives the franchise a chance to close that loop so Jules can send Ethan off with Elsa and his friends to keep saving the world. And from a villain standpoint, nothing says "I'm just a petty bitch no matter what my ideology says" more than intentionally bringing your nemesis' ex-wife into the immediate blast radius while she works for something akin to Doctor's Without Borders.

Also that fake out at the end is such a dick move and also brilliant.

The Bad

I don't have many notes here. I think the writing is crisp, and may have actually been aided by the time the production took off during Cruise's injury that McQuarrie used to revamp the script, the action is all great, and the movie does a good job of closing a bunch of loops all at once. Honestly you could end the franchise right here.

The only two complaints I can possibly levy is that this movie puts a bit more distance between Ethan and the team (i.e. Ethan seems to do almost all of the work by himself) and that maybe there's some exposition scenes that could be paired down. There's also a lot less humor in this movie compared to previous entries which would dedicated entire sequences to jokes, whereas this one has moments within set pieces that are kinda funny.

Still, not going to complain.

What Stuck

Again...almost everything. Main cast only gets additions or re-ups from here, no one's off the team per say, McQuarrie directed and wrote the last two films and we're not stopping Tom Cruise from doing wild stunts anytime soon. We're also going to keep Ethan on edge and with limited resources because that's where this franchise is most comfortable. It's much better with Ethan coming up with ludicrous stunt solutions to problems vs. Q-styled gadget solutions.

There are two things that stuck around however that might've gone under the radar. The first is the thematic through line on the value of individual lives. This is a big part of Dead Reckoning and looks primed to be a gigantic part of Final Reckoning but we'll see. Ethan doesn't like to trade lives which means his perfect adversary is someone who will either try to make him choose or force someone else to make the choice for him...

And while the next two films look like they won't maintain the same level of intensity as this film, the franchise's willingness to get more serious sticks around. 

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning

One of the wildest things happened between Fallout and Dead Reckoning. Well yes COVID. That f**ed the entire movie business up for multiple years. It also triggered a lot of discussions about the value of the theatrical experience versus watching at home and whether or not a movie should go out because it's ready (looking at you Tenant) or should it be released because the timing is right and the biggest possible audience can see it?

And at the center of all that was Tom Cruise. But not for Mission Impossible. For Top Gun: Maverick. By many accounts, Paramount wanted Top Gun: Maverick to get released in 2021, which was still a shaky time for theatrical releases due to the pandemic, and Cruise put his foot down and insisted that the movie get released into a more friendly movie-going environment. 

The end result was the biggest box office success of Cruise's career. Near universal critical acclaim. Over $1.5 billion at the box office. Oscar nominations. Immediate star-making and star-revitalizing turns for co-stars like Glen Powell and Miles Teller. Cruise was now the "savior of cinema," who could deliver emotional highs in a legacy sequel that the original film never even touched. 

 So surely Cruise coming back with the first part of a two part finale for Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 would see similar levels of success. Critically? Yes. Box office wise it was considered a disappointment, with many outlets citing the cost of the production vs. the box office haul.

Which is about to provoke a rant because the real question for any movie should be, is it entertaining. Does it have value. And if it didn't perform as expected at the box office, the question shouldn't be whether or not the movie was "worth it," it should be...what kept this movie from living up to its potential?

And in this case there's an obvious culprit: Barbenheimer. A week out from Mission Impossible's latest release, and on the heels of a new Indiana Jones movie, a movie getting an impossible level of push from right wing grifters in The Sound of Freedom, the two biggest movies of the year in terms of media attention, box office, and awards discussion came out a week later and exploded (pun most certainly intended). Both Barbie and Oppenheimer were pop culture phenomenon's the same way that Top Gun: Maverick was and even a good movie will get lost in that shuffle. The movie is still good right? Yes it is, though it is a much messier product this time around.

This time Ethan is fighting against...an algorithm. In particular an algorithm that has paired up with a sycophant that has been in and around Ethan's dealings for the past few years. We're introducing a bunch of new faces including a new lady for the group in Hayley Atwell, a new bad-ass henchwoman from Pom Klementieff, and most lethal silver fox put to screen in 2023 played by Esai Morales. 

We're also bringing back characters we had long thought forgotten like Henry Czerny's Kittridge, and introducing a slew of named actors to play frustrated or slimy intelligence officers like Shea Whigham and Cary Elwes. Thematically this movie is dealing with a lot of the same issues Cruise dealt with in Maverick while also adopting a larger seesaw between serious and silly. And I kinda dig it.

The Good

So much in this movie is as good as it has ever been and allows Ethan and company to flex different muscles than they did in Fallout. There's a lot more spycraft in this go-round with Ethan infiltrating buildings, impersonating people and swapping key items and information. Which in turn leads to a lot more comedic beats as Shea Whigham and company are completely flustered by their inability to track Ethan down or people who thought one thing was happening realize something else was happening. 

What I love is how so many actors who entered this franchise as overtly serious characters like Henry Czerny's Kittridge or Vanessa Kirby's arm's dealer are brought back with much more comedic bents where they get knocked out and come to at exactly the wrong time or see someone wearing their face. That's fun stuff that plays with the franchise's established tech and lore.

And the new additions are near perfect, especially our new lethal ladies played by Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff. I really like Atwell's characterization here because she's very capable at escaping dangerous situations with what she's looking for, but she's also not the same kind of surgical warrior woman that Rebecca Ferguson exudes by simply existing on screen. She's more banter partner than significant glances partner and it's a fresh new dynamic. Whereas Klementieff enters the screen like a wrecking ball and never lets up as our primary henchwoman. She's so fun and crazy and I love her.

In terms of our new villain I think Esai Morales is a great selection as an actor, he's very charismatic, handles himself well in fights and feels like an equal to Cruise's Ethan Hunt. He might be underused, but that's for the next section.

I'm also very impressed with Christopher McQuarrie who keeps finding little nuances and changes to the familiar formula. One of my go-to examples are the two fights happening in tandem in Venice. One on end we've got our human villain facing off against our established leading lady Elsa who's trying to do what Ethan would do and defend a new misguided spy/thief in a sword fight no less. On the other side we've got Ethan in tight corridors with Pom Klementieff's henchwoman...whom he defeats by slamming into walls (great emotional reveal via action).

But the signature piece is...everything around the train sequence. The spy work going into the exchange, Ethan's absurd motorcycle jump into a parachute glide, the fight on top of the train, and the "climbing up the falling train before we all die" sequence is nerve-shredding. Like every kind of sequence you can imagine on a train minus an attack helicopter showing up to shred the passenger cars with bullets. 

We've talked action so let's talk theme. While I think the delivery is clumsy, the core of this movie's main idea and themes are good. Essentially we've got two themes working in tandem. On the one hand we have a challenge to Ethan's driving ethos which is that every life has value and should be protected. Our human villain and computer clearly don't see things that way and want to enforce their worldview on the entire world. And about halfway through when Elsa is killed, it looks like that way might have a point. Which means Ethan saving and getting help from Klementieff's assassin who is betrayed by our villains is a perfect counterpoint and foil, as is Hayley Atwell's survival (as Ethan promised).

The second theme is about humanity vs. machines. This is a theme Cruise has been percolating with for some time, both as a filmmaker and within his movies. As much as Cruise doing so much of his own stunt work is this franchise's selling point, it also harkens to Cruise's movie-making ethos, practical is better. If you can do it for real, do it. And if I need to train up to do, I will. Very easy to see how a guy who grew up making movies like the original Top Gun would look at movies made almost entirely on CGI soundstages and go "that's not the way."

In his movies, the biggest parallel is, and I brought it up for a reason, Top Gun: Maverick. The tagline for Top Gun: Maverick regardless of what they actually put on posters should be "it's not the plane, it's the pilot." A phrase that's repeated about 3-4 times first by Maverick himself and then by others who come around to his way of thinking. The idea being that humanity is required to guide even the most advanced technology to its most effective and highest potentials. Because even if you can get tech to do something humans can't, is it actually that impressive? Hence why almost all of the opponents Maverick and his team face-off against aren't other human pilots, but drones.

The Entity in Dead Reckoning is Ethan and Cruise's literal nightmare. An algorithm that takes control and decides what happens next based on callous end result decision making. It can imitate your friends and you won't know. It will make you decide which of your allies to kill off just to prove a point, and maybe because you want your story to have added drama. It will align itself with an enemy you had long tried to forget about, because it knows that emotional rush could make you pause or hesitate. It's a villain that feigns at being human, while operating like the worst humanity has to offer. So of course Ethan wants to kill it, because deep down he knows that that's too dangerous to hand over to humans who can be corrupted by its possibilities.

Does it work? When it's telling its main guy to kill off an assassin because she may have developed sympathies for Ethan, yes. When it's being the literal ghost in the machine, a lot less so.

The Bad

The biggest problem with any movie that is sold as a two-parter is the cliffhanger. The movie has to end, but it won't end with the neat resolution audiences have come to expect both from the franchise and from blockbuster action movies in general. First parts are always infinitely less satisfying regardless of what's on screen and Dead Reckoning can't buck that trend. Because even if Ethan and company have won this battle, the war is still on and we've had to wait two years for it to get resolved. 

It's also both funny and interesting that as soon as the franchise brought back a character from the first film, it also reintroduced another confounding list of players and possible allies and villains within multiple intelligence agencies. As much as I like the payoff to scenes like Ethan gassing an entire intelligence briefing, or the swap-out heist on the train, a lot of this is a lot more convoluted than it needed to be. 

The Entity being the villain is also...a frustrating choice. I understand the pitch and thematically why this is the case. But the movie is infinitely more effective when there's direct conversation between Morales' assassin and the Entity, versus the Entity acting on its own and everyone being really confused about the whole affair. Playing that like a giant mystery for a good portion of the movie also doesn't help because delayed villain reveals don't work unless they have an established personal connection to the protagonist. 

I don't want Blofield "I am the architect of all your pain" stuff, but I want something meatier to latch onto. Which is why it's telling that they attach that to Morales as a guy who killed someone in Ethan's past. And it's also telling that both villains become much more impactful when they either contribute to or directly kill Elsa. Regardless of how you feel about them killing Elsa off (I like it for character reasons), this is the real moment the Entity and Morales become our villains.

That delay between the conflict and the villain reveal is way messier and less smooth between each of these beats and set pieces than it could be and really stands out after Fallout ruthless efficiency.

Doesn't mean the movie is bad, but it does stand out after 3 straight movies of globe hopping "stop this guy" stuff.

What Stuck

This will be interesting to see but here's what I can confirm without any major spoilers, that haven't been revealed in trailers. We're bringing...like everyone back. From this movie, from the first movie, maybe the third movie I dunno. We're getting a giant band together with Cruise, McQuarrie and company to deliver a send-off for the ages.

We lost one bad-ass lady? We're bringing in Love Lies Bleeding Katy O'Brian and bringing back both Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff. 

You liked Shea Whigham reacting to Ethan Hunt shenanigans? We're bringing in a room full of character actor gold to react to his exploits. Benji is here. Luther is here giving significant hugs and lines (don't look into that one too much).

You know how we already did a bunch of Hithcock inspired stuff? This time around Cruise is gonna be hanging on for dear life on a byplane that he might have to board or jump off of...just like the helicopter in Fallout. We're holding our breath maybe in the middle of the goddamn ocean now after jumping off an aircraft carrier.

Let's go big. Let's get nuts. Let's defend the world from AI slop with Tom Cruise's force of will one last time. Which is more than welcome as the discussions around AI have infected everything around me, including my work.

At least that's the message I've been getting. My hope is that as messy as it might be to put all of these puzzle pieces together, Cruise McQuarrie and company maintain that magic sauce of stunt-fueled madness, hand-to-hand goodness, and just enough heart and humor to keep me thoroughly entertained. Here's hoping!

Conclusion

Trying to explain the appeal of the Mission Impossible franchise feels like trying to explain the appeal of the Fast & Furious movies. If you don't get it now, you probably never will.

Because it's hard to point to Ethan Hunt as a character and say, "he's why we keep coming back." Ethan Hunt is a standard, good-natured action hero who likes working with his friends and pairing up with attractive ladies to save the world. Who wouldn't? That's basic wish fulfillment right there. Hell if he ends up smooching Hayley Atwell, we've basically got a Captain America arc for Ethan.

But the main appeal of this franchise, at least in my eyes, is the name itself. Mission Impossible. On paper, it's another spy thriller franchise with an impossibly competent lead character. But in practice we're watching what impossible things humans can actually do on screen or what elaborate heists and set pieces they can craft, despite what studios or insurance companies might tell you.

There's an energy and enthusiasm behind these movies that emanates from Cruise and company. It's an energy that Florence Pugh embraced by insisting they let her do a controlled jump of a skyscraper for Thunderbolts*. And in the modern movie-world, there's nothing like it.