It might be the most iconic set piece in action movie history.
Tom Cruise, playing secret agent Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible 鈥 Ghost Protocol,” (2011) dangles off the edge of the tallest building in the world. As the clock ticks towards a high-stakes meeting with an arms dealer, Hunt must climb 11 stories up the Burj Khalifa with only unreliable adhesive gloves to keep him alive.
And when the gloves fail, he still has to somehow make it back down.
The drama, high stakes as it is, is threaded with humour. Some of it is wordless 鈥 a failed glove, thrown into the Dubai wind minutes earlier, slaps against the glass next to Hunt in a brief moment of futile functionality. Some of it is in the facial expressions, like the disdain Hunt shows for Jeremy Renner鈥檚 fellow agent William Brandt, who keeps reminding him of the ever-ticking deadline.
And some of it cannot be printed in a newspaper, like Hunt’s expletive-laden response to Brandt yelling, 鈥淵our line鈥檚 not long enough!鈥澛
This sequence contains everything that makes the “Mission: Impossible” franchise great. It forgoes CGI and green screens in favour of real-life, boundary-pushing stunts: Cruise was聽actually hundreds of feet up the Burj Khalifa. It’s exhilarating, a mad scramble to meet a deadline in the most audacious way. And, perhaps most importantly, it makes fun of itself 鈥 not with the ironic detachment that defines modern superhero blockbusters, but with sincerity, even heart.
Put together, that makes “Mission: Impossible” the greatest action movie franchise of all time. As the series鈥檚 eighth (and ostensibly last) instalment, ”The Final Reckoning,” hits theatres this weekend, consider this a love letter to a franchise singing its well-earned swan song.
Each movie has something that makes it exceptional. The 1996 original, directed by Brian De Palma, is delightfully cloak-and-dagger. It features Cruise, fresh off “The Firm” and “Interview with the Vampire,” lending his talents to what was meant to be a one-off expansion of the two 1960s TV shows that had come before.
John Woo’s “Mission: Impossible 2” is campy and corny but glorious, all slow-mos, hair-whipping and dramatic mask reveals. The third film, J.J. Abrams鈥 feature directing debut, is wonderfully gritty with a phenomenal Philip Seymour Hoffman villain performance.
But the franchise found itself when Cruise hung off the side of the Burj Khalifa in “Ghost Protocol.”
In doing so, it discovered the magic that makes “Mission” work: the set pieces, bigger and more audacious with each passing movie, packed with tension and shot to perfection. It also brought in the franchise’s second-most important man: Christopher McQuarrie.
Cruise had worked with McQuarrie, the Oscar-winning writer of “The Usual Suspects,” on the World War II movie “Valkyrie.” When “Ghost Protocol” filming started spiraling out of control 鈥 the twisty plot, unanswerable questions, meandering dialogue stacked one layer too high 鈥 Cruise brought in McQuarrie to solve it.
In an instant, , McQuarrie came up with the perfect dialogue to聽 show the audience the stakes of those Burj Khalifa-scaling adhesive gloves: 鈥淏lue is glue.”聽
“And when it’s red?”
“顿别补诲.鈥
The franchise would never be the same.
As the years went on, the writing got better and the stunts got crazier. In “Rogue Nation,” the fifth movie, Cruise hung off the side of an Airbus A400M while it took off, his legs bouncing off the side of the fuselage and his hair blowing in the wind. He flew 5,000 feet in the air, braving the cold and potential bird strikes. He wore special contact lenses to protect his eyes.
In the next movie, “Fallout,” Cruise became the first actor to perform a high-altitude, low-opening skydive on camera. He did the stunt not once, not twice, but 106 times, according to McQuarrie, who by now was directing “Mission” movies. It was all filmed by a cameraman, falling just inches below Cruise.
If that weren鈥檛 enough, later in the same movie, Cruise climbed up the underside of a helicopter as it took off. In one stunt, he fell off; co-star Rebecca Ferguson thought he actually died. Oh, and he ended up piloting the helicopter, too.
And in “Dead Reckoning,” the seventh movie, Cruise drove a motorcycle off a cliff in what . But these stunts aren鈥檛 just expensive advertising campaigns 鈥 they change the way these films are made, limiting CGI and maximizing shots of Cruise鈥檚 face, our biggest and best movie star.
Cruise is the sun around which the “Mission” franchise turns, but without his team, the movies wouldn鈥檛 be nearly as special. Benji (Simon Pegg), the tech wiz turned field agent and Hunt sidekick, is a lovable goofball who feels everything the audience feels: stress and incredulity as Hunt does something death-defying yet again. (From the fourth film: “For a second, I thought you said, we were breaking into the Kremlin.”) Luther Stickell, played by Ving Rhames and the only character besides Hunt to appear in all eight movies, is a voice of reason and Hunt鈥檚 therapist. Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust is a badass martial artist and veiled love interest.
And they aren鈥檛 just along for the ride. They motivate Hunt, whose altruistic motivations keep the movies chugging. He refuses to let his friends die, even when it means putting millions of lives at risk. Some call it a character flaw; this writer considers it another “Mission” charm.
It all comes to a head in “The Final Reckoning.” Hunt is fighting against a sentient artificial intelligence, one that threatens truth as we know it. It鈥檚 ultimately this fight for humanity, a constant across most of the series, that sets “Mission: Impossible” apart. James Bond has a license to kill. John Wick kills for revenge. Hunt kills carefully and judiciously. When he has to kill, he kills for us.
Cruise, the biggest movie star of multiple generations, has turned “Mission: Impossible” into the best action franchise going. He has one more impossible mission left in him.
鈥淚 need you to trust me,鈥 Cruise says in ,” 鈥渙ne last time.鈥
After watching him pilot this franchise for nearly three decades, why wouldn鈥檛 we?
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