The miracle of Mission: Impossible

There used to be a running joke about the Mission: Impossible movies (apart from Tom Cruise doing a big run in every instalment). This was the franchise most likely to one day kill its star. As the signature stunts kept getting bigger, and the hands-on Cruise crinkled into his 40s, 50s and now 60s, it seemed as if blockbuster one-upmanship, personal thrill-seeking and Hollywood hubris would collide in some horrible calamity. 

It was all too easy to imagine the tributes: “At least Tom left us doing what he loved… pretending to defuse an actual intercontinental ballistic missile in mid-air”.

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Good news, then. Unless something goes badly awry on the international red carpets for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Cruise has made it through his eighth and probably last mission in one piece. It’s a miracle! Or perhaps we all got a little too caught up in the PR hype about an indefatigable perfectionist insisting he do all the daredevil stunts ‘for real’. (In his defence, Cruise has surely logged enough hours in a bungee harness to be considered an experienced stuntman.)

The real miracle is Mission: Impossible itself, a cinematic brand purpose-built to exalt its star. The initial 1996 film was the first fruit of Cruise/Wagner Productions, a company set up by Cruise and his then agent Paula Wagner to give the A-lister more behind-the-scenes control over an already successful screen career. Despite that calculated, arguably vainglorious origin the series has managed to endure 30 turbulent years of shifting audience tastes. While Cruise’s headlong agent Ethan Hunt will never have quite the same name recognition of Bond-James-Bond, the M:I films remained fleet and fun while Daniel Craig’s 007 era became a rather self-serious trudge.

What’s the secret? With the benefit of hindsight, it feels like the durable blueprint of the original TV series jigsawed sweetly with the time-pressured, often haphazard reality of big-budget filmmaking. The M:I movies can always justifiably get their exposition out of the way early in the form of the notorious self-destructing briefing tape. And when the initial mission plan goes out the window, Ethan making it up as he goes along fits with the heightened world of espionage, where reality is always shifting under your feet. Lalo Schifrin wrote the irresistible M:I theme in the eccentric time signature of 5/4 rather than boring old 4/4, and the movies have always had a little extra skip in their step.

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Within that solid template – and the comforting constant of Ving Rhames as Ethan’s hacker ally Luther Stickell – we can now track a three-decade evolution. In the early running, the selling point was that each film had a different vibe as Cruise hand-picked directors who brought their own style, from the surveillance psychodrama of Brian De Palma in the original to the swooshing doves-and-motorbikes mayhem of John Woo in Mission: Impossible II (2000). But if Mission: Impossible III (2006), directed by a pre-Star Wars JJ Abrams, seemed a little bland in comparison, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) elevated the franchise to new heights. Overseen by Pixar animation veteran Brad Bird, it initiated the “so what crazy stunt is Cruise doing in this one?” narrative by dangling Ethan from the heights of Dubai’s vertiginous Burj Khalifa.

When Christopher McQuarrie took the reins for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and subsequent instalments, the series mutated into something more holistic. The writer/director began to cleverly quarry the earlier films for characters and lore to mould what previously felt like exciting but essentially unrelated spy adventures into a more cohesive whole. 

While never losing sight of the importance of staging jaw-dropping action set pieces, always with Cruise front and centre, this new M:I continuity reached its apotheosis with the cliffhanger ending to 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.

Three decades is an impressive run for any franchise; The Final Reckoning is going big with an almost three-hour running time apparently stuffed with land, sea and air stunts (notably some wingwalking on an old-timey biplane that would likely make Harold Lloyd shake his head and say: nope, too risky.) 

The rational thing would surely be for Cruise to put down the rubbery face mask and call it quits. But will he choose to accept that? Probably not.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas now.

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