It is said that they’re making a fourth Mission: Impossible movie, and that Brad Bird is in talks to direct it. I think this is a fantastic idea.
A big reason for my enthusiasm is, of course, the involvement Brad Bird himself, a talented filmmaker who made one of the best superhero movies there is with The Incredibles, and who topped it by making a movie about a rat with a keen interest in French cuisine just as engaging.
But the fact of the matter is, I love the Mission: Impossible movies. “But Justin,” you might well say, “the Mission: Impossible franchise … well, it’s hardly even a franchise at all, is it? It’s just generic spy action – those could be any movies. Why, you don’t even have a memorable lead character! Ethan Hunt has no distinguishing characteristics; he’s just Tom Cruise with a gun, which means all he really does is alternate between his intense face and that cocky smile he does, depending on the situation.”
Well, the first thing I would say is that Cruise may only have two expressions, but he does them both so very well. I usually like watching Tom Cruise in things, and I can think of no reason for this other than he just radiates charm; certainly it’s not a mystery why this guy is a movie star, right?
But onto the larger issues … look, the thing is, not a whole lot of people today – especially not in that youthful demographic the films are aiming for – have ever seen the original TV show or know what it was like (for the record: I’ve never seen it either). But you know what everyone in America does know, even if they’ve never seen that show?
Bum, bum, ba-da, bum, bum, ba-da, bum, bum, ba-da, bum, bum, ba-da deedillooo…deedillooo…deedillooo…da na. BA-NA-NAAA…BA-NA-NAAA…BA-NA-NAAA…NA NA!
Um, and so on. They are not making the movie version of the show, they are making the movie version of that song, because that is one of the most stirring television themes ever written. The producers felt pretty safe that as long as you had that theme, a couple of catchphrases from the show (“Your mission, should you choose/decide to accept it” and “This message will self destruct in five seconds,” which everybody also knows despite never having seen that show) a bankable leading man, and a lot of explosions, you could put pretty much anything in there and it would sell.
Instead of being a weakness, however, it turns out to be the franchise’s greatest strength.
See, James Bond movies are very clearly defined stylistically. There is a relatively narrow range of things you can do with Bond, and when you start moving out of that range, moviegoers go, “Hmm, I don’t know…it doesn’t feel like James Bond.” You could never put, say, Quentin Tarantino, or Edgar Wright, or John Carpenter on a Bond movie. It wouldn’t work, because their styles are all so distinctive and so not-Bond. What you need are extremely talented, but not flashy, directors to do 007. The direction must serve the franchise.
But the Mission: Impossible franchise, as it exists, has no unity of theme or character or style, so it doesn’t matter if they don’t match up. There is no recognizable franchise to serve, so you can get very talented directors and just let them go nuts. So the first movie is very much a Brian DePalma movie, very stylish and glossy. The second movie is John Woo doing his ultracool gun stuff, right down to the doves. And the third one lets J.J. Abrams revisit his Alias political-intrigue-and-personal-stakes bag of tricks. Three different directors with three different styles produce three movies that have absolutely nothing to do with one another. So the sort of metatextual brilliance in all this – which I’m sure was not planned, but it’s there anyway – it’s not just Ethan Hunt being given his assignment, it’s also the directors…
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make an action movie using the following elements:
1. Tom Cruise, and a box for him to stand on when interacting with taller actresses.
2. Ving Rhames as a guy who constantly points out how dangerous/impossible/crazy the mission they’re on is as a way to pump up the tension a bit.
3. A pre-existing suspension of disbelief that you can make masks so lifelike that they’re indistinguishable from the original person (despite differences in height, weight, etc.), yet peel off painlessly with one good tug.
…and of course…
4. Bum, bum, ba-da, bum, bum, ba-da, bum, bum, ba-da, bum, bum, ba-da deedillooo…deedillooo…deedillooo…da na. BA-NA-NAAA…BA-NA-NAAA…BA-NA-NAAA…NA NA!”
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I agree, I’ve described the films as adaptations of the credits rather than the show before, and as you say they’re all very much recognisable as their creators’ work.
Since I loved Alias I was looking forward to a second Abrams version, but a Brad Bird one could well be great too.
I still wish, assuming his family was notified in advance and was OK with it, that the day after Peter Graves’ death either Secretary Clinton or Secretary Gates had made a public announcement that they disavowed any knowledge of Jim Phelps’ actions.
Tom,
That would have been wonderful if it could have happened or even during the Oscar’s lets remember the dead bit. Craig they were never going to make a 2nd Abrams MI for a number of reasons but the main one is that they have decided that making each movie a mostly different film distinctive by it’s director. There are a few different reasons for this and most of them are financial. Tom Cruise is really expensive possibly more so since they fired him, each director they got was costly but not as costly as hiring the same guy again. This has mad e the MI movies all the better for that fact. A really interesting book to check out is “The Hollywood Economist” by Edward Jay Epstein which actually mentions MI 1 and MI 2 and the incredible deal Mr Cruise got. I would also like to say that I’m really looking forward to MI 4
Jonathan
Aside from a black guy leaning over and gleefully speaking in tech talk, I am very happy to say that I have absolutely no recollection of anything having to do with those forgetful mission impossible movies.
Zenrage, what about a bomb exploding in a woman’s brain being signified by one eye rolling sideways?
Martin Landieu himself described the films as only being about the theme song.Frankly, the movies WOULD be better if they were closer to the series, with it’s ensemble cast and twisty, “STING”-style plots…but you’d never get either in a Tom Cruise film.
The thing is that the TV series wasn’t especially any better than the movies. The characters were two-dimensional, and the plots were really pretty generic ’60s crime plots. So, essentially, the TV series was about the theme song, too.
I only saw the show once or twice, and I’ve never seen the movies, but the basic theme does seem flexible enough for a wide variety of styles. My one (mild) objection to the movies (which again, I have not seen) is that, judging by the trailors, they seem to be built around Cruise as the star, instead of being ensemble pieces, which is what I thought Mission Impossible was supposed to be.
(Have they tried to get Martin Landau to appear in any of them? Isn’t he great in everything, and wouldn’t he provide a cool connection to the original version?)
(By the way, I haven’t seen the other TV series, from the ’90s or whenever it was, either. Did ANYBODY ever see it? I’d completely forgotten it existed, then it suddenly popped into my mind as I was reading this.)
I’m old enough to remember both the re-runs of the original series and the late-80s/early-90s reboot/remake/sequel. I miss the ensemble action of that series (the tech guy, the action guy, the brains, the disguise guy, the girl). It was always fun seeing how they’d solve problems. If they were to move towards a groovy team pic, I’d watch it even if it did headline Cruise.
[…] of the week, from a discussion at MightyGodKing dot com about the prospects for a fourth Mission: Impossible […]
“But the Mission: Impossible franchise, as it exists, has no unity of theme or character or style, so it doesn’t matter if they don’t match up.”
In spirit, at least, that does kind of capture the show. The idea was you had this ensemble team that collectively included experts in anything, and were all especially good at pretending to be something other than what they were, so you could send them to do any kind of job in any style of story and they’d have a plan.
In practice, it wasn’t ever that open ended, and the plots (of the episodes I saw, at least) were fairly repetitive — they always got sent to Eastern Where-Ever-The-Fuckistan to simultaneously steal back the microfilm with the missile codes and discredit the general by impersonating him at the Annual SPECTRE Wannabes ball in some spectacular gotcha! fashion. Then — poof — it’s a liberal democracy in 10 minutes.
But the ensemble thing was a cool part of the show, and I agree that it was mostly absent from the films (a little bit in the first one). However, “The Incredibles” was an example of *exactly* how to do an ensemble action movie — everybody got moments to shine individually, everybody played to their own strengths in the multihero slugfest at the end — so it’s entirely possible that Bird could bring that element back.
I did like that at the end of one of the movies, Tom Cruise says to his movie-wife: “I’m an agent with the IMF.”
If only she had responded with a puzzled look and said “International Monetary Fund?”
“…they always got sent to Eastern Where-Ever-The-Fuckistan…”
Please! It was the 60s. East Where-Ever-The-Fuckylvania.