Twenty-two years — that’s how long it’s been since Brian De Palma made Mission Impossible. The makers of that film knew they had lit the fuse wire (come on, play the theme) on a major franchise, but I certainly did not. Catching it on TV, I knew it was outrageously entertaining, a guilty pleasure, especially the stunt involving a train and a helicopter in a tunnel. I also tremendously enjoyed the scene in which Tom Cruise, herein called Ethan Hunt, hangs suspended from a wire at a CIA facility, but I had no clue that it would turn seminal. I knew the theme music was attractive, but I was ignorant about the element that would make film buffs play it in loop to this very day. Today, five films later, the MI series is arguably the best in the action movie genre. At least, it is the most complicated, enduring and influential. And, let’s not forget the mask play.
Now, ahead of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, all one hears about is of the High Altitude Low Jump (HALO) and how Cruise did it, at least in part, in person (without using doubles). We hear how an injury (not related to HALO) kept him off the sets for nine weeks. Still, Cruise returned after seven weeks, pumped up to shoot.
YouTube is flooded with teasers, trailers, behind the scenes videos, and fan tributes. So this isn’t just a movie; it is, make no mistake, an event, mostly because the studios (Cruise is one of the producers) throw money at it. This why Cruise doesn’t want to kill the Hunt in him; the increasingly novel gimmicks and the box-office dollars will do for now.
I was lucky enough to catch Mission: Impossible 2 in the theater. Even then, I was hoping that it was the last we heard of the spy from the fictional Mission Impossible Force (IMF). Wouldn’t Cruise, the biggest fish in the Hollywood pond, have a wide selection of lures and baits to choose from? I remember sitting in Chennai’s Satyam Theaters wondering why in God’s hell did they decide to make the love story between Hunt and Nyah Nordhoff-Hall (Thandie Newton, nowhere in the picture now) such a central part of the movie. Having Hong-Kong-based John Woo as the director does have such an effect on any movie, I guess. I have to admit that I found myself quarreling with what was on screen — and how the impossible part of the stunts was what brought audiences to theaters (weirdly, it hurts a little less when you watch it the second time around).
You might throw the "willing suspension of disbelief" bit at me, but that doesn’t quite cut it. There are others who routinely save the world or kick some ass. There are franchises like Bourne, Bond, Fast and the Furious, Expendables, Transporter and other movies, but none of it is like watching a Mission Impossible film. Why?
Let’s chip away at some answers. It is not just the characters who can do the impossible. Some of the events in the series, too, are hard to imagine as possible. The partial destruction of the Kremlin in Ghost Protocol immediately comes to mind.
We know Hunt is good with motorbikes, even when he is riding against the traffic. We first saw him do wheelies against the villain in MI:2, and he was back doing the same in Rogue Nation. So, when you see him in Fallout on a motorbike again, you should be wary, but people just aren’t. Instead, they are ravenous for the next installment. Many have argued that the series got better with every movie.