In this FandomWire Video Essay, we explore the WILD evolution of Mission Impossible.
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Mission Impossible Is A Fascinating Franchise
This… was epic. It’s the sort of wild, over-the-top action set piece that has allowed Mission Impossible to stand out amidst the saturation of action cinema over the past several decades. And while the franchise has had its ups and downs, it’s widely revered as one of the greatest action series of all time. If you asked someone on the street to name their top five action movies, you’re likely to find at least one Mission Impossible film somewhere on that list.
But how did Mission Impossible go from being a relatively tame espionage film in the ‘90s to being one of the most acclaimed, successful action franchises in the world? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hold tight and tune in for a debriefing as we explore the WILD evolution of the Mission Impossible franchise.
Among the most significant factors of the franchise’s decades-long evolution is the revolving door of filmmakers with varying styles that directed each entry. While Christopher McQuarrie has settled in as the series’s go-to director since 2015’s Rogue Nation, the first four films each had a different man behind the camera bringing their distinct vision to the screen.
To understand how the Mission Impossible franchise became what it is, it’s important to understand its origins. The films are based on a long-running television show that had a successful seven-season run on CBS in the 1960s and ‘70s, followed by a two-season revival on ABC in the late ‘80s. However, to think that a primetime series could become one of the biggest, most spectacular, and long-running action franchises in the world is stunning.
The success of Mission Impossible as a series is largely thanks to the efforts of one man: Tom Cruise. The first film in the lineup, released in 1996, was a passion project for Cruise — the first project he was to produce under his then brand-new production company. Thus, like so many films that Cruise would make in the future, Mission: Impossible became a true passion project for the actor.
Mission Impossible stands out not only as one of the longest-running action franchises in Hollywood but also one of the few made with the same lead actor for its lengthy history. Look at other acclaimed franchises like Bond and Bourne — they had the franchise passed on to another actor: briefly and unsuccessfully, in the case of Bourne. 28 years later, Tom Cruise is still going strong as Ethan Hunt.
Although in the early 2000s, there were rumblings of Brad Pitt taking over the franchise, and even Jeremy Renner’s William Brandt — first introduced in the fourth installment, Ghost Protocol — had been considered to take the lead in future installments, those plans never came to fruition.
Looking at the first film, it’s difficult to predict the heights that Mission Impossible would ascend to. In 1996, Mission Impossible was only the third highest-grossing film of the year, behind Independence Day and Twister. Critics at the time complained the plot was too convoluted, and those involved in the creation of the original television show were upset by the liberties taken in terms of turning it to a spectacle-driven adventure rather than the more “mind game”-centric nature of the spy franchises.
The first Mission Impossible film was directed by Brian De Palma, the filmmaking auteur behind some of the most well-known action films of all time, including Scarface, The Untouchables, and Carlito’s Way. To this point, audiences were accustomed to spy films being sleek and stylish in the vein of James Bond. So seeing something more rough-and-tumble like Mission Impossible was a change of pace that took the genre, and audiences, in a new direction.
For the most part, the action sequences in the first Mission Impossible entry feel much more grounded than anything we would see in the rest of the series. Apart from the use of exploding chewing gum as a weapon, which is admittedly a little out there, these are all things that we could picture a real secret agent doing.
However, that doesn’t mean the original film doesn’t contain its fair share of awe-inspiring sequences. One scene, in which Ethan Hunt breaks into the CIA headquarters in Langley, creates what might be the series’s single most iconic image: Cruise dangling inches off the ground, having rappelled into the room from above.
This scene alone creates enough tension and suspense to bring an entire theater to the edge of their seats. Ethan dangling mere inches from the sensors of the floor, him catching a fallen drop of sweat mid-air before it lands. These are moments that truly showcase the abilities of De Palma to craft stress-inducing cinema in a manner that few filmmakers can. His talents in this arena are perhaps best showcased in the criminally underseen 1981 thriller Blow Out, starring a young John Travolta.
The first film also shows the foundations of Cruise doing his own stunts, a technique that would not only become pivotal in the Mission Impossible franchise but also Cruise’s career as a whole. For example, for the climactic train action sequence, Cruise and the crew hunted down the only wind machine in all of Europe powerful enough to create 140-mile-per-hour winds to replicate the look and feel of being on top of a moving train. And while this is an impressive feat, it’s child’s play compared to what he would do in future entries.
Mission Impossible 2 brought John Woo on as director and represents a shift into left field for the franchise: a shift that was understandably met with division. That being said, the film has received a bit of a critical reevaluation in recent years, with fans praising the film for its radically different and more unique perspective.
Cruise and De Palma allegedly didn’t jive well on set, so it should come as no surprise that the second film had a very different director at the helm. Woo is a Hong Kong action icon best known for films like Hard Boiled and The Killer. His first venture into American cinema was the Jean-Claude Van Damme starring Hard Target, a silly yet entertaining film about rich people hunting the homeless for sport.
And what is interesting about Woo’s approach is that he shoots it like he had any other film in his career — with the same level of exaggeration, camp, and… an abundance of doves.
The action in the film is defined by an over-reliance on slow-motion and shootouts that are over-the-top. Woo’s most recent film prior to the Mission Impossible sequel was Face/Off, and through these two films, you can really see the Hong Kong filmmaker finding his voice with American audiences. Although the action feels somewhat ridiculous compared to the rest of the franchise, it’s a perfect product of its time, acting as a time capsule for the absurdity of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Mission Impossible 2 also works because its action sequences are bigger and longer. While the train sequence that was the climax of the first film was only about fifteen minutes, the climax of the second film is almost double that, giving us even more time to bask in the glory of the film’s grandiose nature.
Cruise also ups the lunacy of his stunts, starting with the time we are re-introduced to Ethan Hunt on “vacation,” free solo climbing on a cliff side in Utah. Although Cruise did wear a harness and thin wire for the stunt, there was no net, and filming the scene caused him to injure his shoulder during a jump between cliffs.
Another absolutely insane stunt comes in the final fight between Hunt and the film’s villain, in which Hunt is nearly stabbed in the eye. Cruise wanted the fight to look as realistic as possible, so he insisted on having the knife come less than an inch from his eye. In order to make the close-up shot look authentic, Cruise insisted on using a real knife. The weapon was tethered to a steel cable, stopping it just before it makes contact with the actor. These days, the sequence would likely be created using CGI, but Cruise’s commitment to the stunt was insane.
Coming out five years later, Mission Impossible III represented another shift in style for the franchise — returning it into something that felt much grittier. While Mission Impossible 2 felt like a product of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Mission Impossible III felt ahead of its time, taking heroes and making them feel more human thanks to the visionary stylings of JJ Abrams.
Part of grounding the series meant explaining some of the franchise’s more unexplainable tropes. Most notably, the ability for agents to disguise themselves and their voices as seemingly any character they desired. In previous films, it was common for a character to rip away a perfectly realistic mask and reveal their true identity without ever showcasing how these masks were able to be so lifelike. For the third entry, we see the full process of using high-tech machinery to conduct a three-dimensional scan of the target. It’s a difficult and extensive process that was mostly abandoned in later sequels but helps to showcase the more grounded direction this entry was taking the franchise.
People generally associate the Mission Impossible franchise with the seemingly inhuman feats that Cruise pulls off as Ethan Hunt, but the third film stands out by providing us with a more vulnerable Ethan. In Mission: Impossible III, Cruise’s spy is still saving the world, but the stakes feel so much more personal because he’s also trying to protect his wife.
The third film also has arguably the best villain in the franchise, played by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman. Until Hoffman’s character, the threats were somewhat vague — agents who had gone rogue and threatened to unseat the world order. Later entries in the franchise would go even bigger, with a shadow organization pulling the strings. But Hoffman’s arms dealer is one of the meanest, most brutal villains in the series — perhaps even action cinema as a whole.
It’s also worth noting that, in Mission Impossible III, the biggest set pieces in the film come early. The first two entries had their most exciting sequences be the final battle, but the final battle in the third feels much more grounded, owing to the fact that we are more concerned about the fate of Hunt and his wife than the world as a whole.
It’s in the fourth film, Ghost Protocol, where we begin to see the foundations of what the series would become. It’s the live-action debut of filmmaker Brad Bird — who worked with Pixar on The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Though it was an animated film, The Incredibles showcased amazing action with a tight-knit family dynamic at its core. Both of these elements are essential to Ghost Protocol as we see the team grow closer, relying on one another when nobody else can be trusted. However, perhaps the more important creative involved here was Christopher McQuarrie, who would later take the helm for the second half of the franchise.
One of the more notable things about Ghost Protocol is that it’s the first film in the franchise where everything starts to be taken a little less seriously. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt becomes a bit more wise-cracking, and his sidekick Benji, played by Simon Pegg, gets a much larger role here, adding a strong dose of brevity.
Yet, even though the film is much more tongue-in-cheek than the previous three, this is where it starts to feel like the characters hold the fate of the world in their hands. Sure, in the second and third films, Hunt is trying to prevent some sort of MacGuffin from getting into the wrong hands that has the potential to destroy the world. But in Ghost Protocol, he’s dealing with a literal nuke that he has to stop from blowing up San Francisco.
Ghost Protocol also contains what might be one of the most insane stunts Cruise has done in any of his films: climbing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. We took a detailed dive into this moment in our earlier video, “The PERFECT Scene in Mission Impossible,” so be sure to check that out, as well. Although Cruise did not free solo the building as the character does in the film, he did really climb the building at those heights with the assistance of harnesses and wires. It’s a truly impressive feat and perhaps the peak of Cruise’s insanity.
McQuarrie would step into the director’s chair for the fifth entry in the series, Rogue Nation, which represents the series’s commitment to spectacle over all else. After the evil Syndicate was introduced in a tease at the end of the fourth film, they are the primary villains of this film but are little more than an excuse to get Hunt trotting around the globe and doing the impossible.
Rogue Nation stands out for hitting the ground running, with the opening sequence of the film being an action scene on a plane, in which Cruise grabs onto a plane taking off, and pulls his way in. For this stunt, Cruise was legitimately suspended from a plane, often flying at altitudes of around 5,000 feet.
And while it’s difficult to imagine, that isn’t even the craziest stunt Cruise did in the making of Rogue Nation. Later in the film, he dives into a submerged chamber that required him to hold his breath for three minutes. One stunt coordinator on the film even claims Cruise held his breath for a total of six minutes. While the current breath-holding record is eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds, the average human being can only hold their breath for around thirty to ninety seconds. This underwater scene was filmed in a single long take, making it an even more impressive feat.
Beyond those two seemingly inhuman stunts, there are also plenty of exquisitely crafted action sequences that cement the franchise as the peak of action cinema. For example, an assassination sequence set in the Vienna State Opera perfectly creates tension in a way that many films have tried and failed to do in the past.
Another scene, a chase in which Cruise is riding a motorcycle in pursuit of Rebecca Ferguson’s undercover MI-6 agent, takes the motorcycle-bound action we saw in the second film and brings it to another level. Something that stands out about McQuarrie’s approach to action is that it is very economical with the edit, using cuts to showcase the excitement at its highest possible level.
This approach would be further expanded into the sixth film in the franchise, Fallout, which features the biggest stakes in the series, as Hunt and the IMF team set out to prevent a terrorist organization from getting their hands on weaponized uranium.
Yet, despite the fact that Fallout is arguably the “biggest” movie of the franchise, where it thrives the most is its comparatively smaller-scale hand-to-hand combat. Arguably the best scene in the film is a fight in a bathroom, which gave us the beloved interest of Henry Cavill “cocking” his fists. The confined spacing of the bathroom creates a tighter segment, utilizing the stalls and sinks as obstacles to be smashed through and adding to the high-level hectic moment. To this point, we hadn’t seen a ton of fist fights in the Mission Impossible franchise, with a focus more on grand stunts, and it was exciting to see choreography that could be this rough yet so dance-like at the same time.
Fallout also contains a chase scene that echoes the one we saw in Rogue Nation but ups the ante yet again. After Hunt breaks the previous film’s villain out from his armored convoy, he and his team are then chased through the streets of Paris. It’s interesting to see how the duo of Cruise and McQuarrie are constantly trying to find ways to one-up themselves, and this is the best example of it.
Of course, Fallout doesn’t have any shortage of insane stunts, such as an early one in the film in which Cruise and Cavill skydive into a thunderstorm over Paris. In reality, they’re diving into normal weather over the Abu Dhabi desert, which was digitally altered into Paris. However, to get the shot, the team had to do over 100 jumps from a height of around 25,000 feet. Talk about commitment.
And, in what should not be a surprise at this point, that’s not even the craziest stunt in the movie. The climax features Cruise piloting a helicopter through a valley in a mid-air chase. It’s almost a precedent to the insane flight stunts that Cruise would do later in Top Gun: Maverick, but the fact that the actor learned how to fly a helicopter specifically for this film is absolutely awe-inspiring.
In the newest film in the franchise, Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise and McQuarrie have shown no signs of slowing down. They continue to top what they have done before, doing even more insane, inhuman stunt work with bigger stakes.
In yet another insane feat Cruise rides a motorcycle off a cliff into a BASE jump. And yet, despite the fact that what Cruise is doing feels inhuman, he manages to make everything feel so effortless. It’s a combination that no other actor has ever perfected.
As the franchise is set to wrap up — at least for now — with the eighth film in the franchise, Dead Reckoning Part Two, we’ll have to see what Cruise has in store for audiences. It’s insane to think that this franchise grew from being a somewhat confined espionage thriller with some huge action sequences to a franchise defined by its death-defying stunts. And if you’re like us, you can’t wait to see more.
What’s your favorite Mission Impossible movie? Which stunt do you think is the most epic? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to like and subscribe to NEVER miss a mission. We’ll see you next time. This video will self-destruct in five seconds. Five… four… three… two…
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