A Life Through Film #021: Mission: Impossible
De Palma? More like got me in de Palma his hand because his movies are so good
Release Date: 5/24/1996
Weeks at Number One: 2
Thanks for reading! This is my ongoing series where I track the evolution of American culture in my life by reviewing every number one film at the weekend box office since I was born in chronological order. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my introduction post here, and be sure to like and share the review if you enjoyed it!
If you’re a regular reader of this series, you may have begun to pick up on the structure of these reviews. With each movie I watch, I’ll pick one element of the film and zoom in and out as necessary, using it as a framing device for cultural context. For Get Shorty, I framed the review around the career of John Travolta. For The Birdcage, the fight for gay equality in the ‘90s. Things like that.
Usually, it’s easy for me to pick one of these focal points. Whatever jumps out at me first when researching the movie is often what I will center my whole review on; my knowledge of the Chris Farley story powered much of my writing on Black Sheep, for example. Occasionally, though, I get it wrong. I started researching Up Close & Personal thinking that the most interesting thing about the film was its Joan Didion penned script when in reality, the review was more about the sanding down of cultural memory.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what to focus on. This week, a particular challenge, provides maybe the hardest selection of interesting factors yet. Do I do a career retrospective on one of the most successful actors of all time? How about a legendary director whose career is full of interesting twists and turns? Or how about the beginning of a massively successful franchise that’s still running today? Oh God, I don’t have to examine the use of fictional Cold War spies after the fall of the Berlin Wall again, do I?
It’s here where I have to pause for my own wellbeing. I shouldn’t be overthinking something that, at the end of the day, I’m doing for fun. I have chosen to accept the task of writing about these films, and if I want to be a bit scattershot this time around, I’ve earned my right at this point. Besides, it’s not like there’s pressure from a lack of complete analysis for this week’s movie.
I am far from the first person to write about Mission: Impossible.
Another structural note about this series: after the trailer is usually when I give a plain description of what the movie is. “Mission: Impossible is a 1996 spy thriller starring Tom Cruise and directed by Brian de Palma.” But that almost feels unnecessary here. The Mission: Impossible series is a multibillion dollar multimedia franchise that is only teasing a conclusion now nearly 30 years after its first film, itself a remake of a 1960s spy show. Even before I became a fan of the series, I had gleaned much of its ideas and content through cultural osmosis: crazy stunts, cool theme song, dangerous espionage, Tom Cruise.
Actually watching the series put all of those elements into context, but you don’t need to have seen any of these movies to know that this one, the first film in the franchise, has the moment that everyone knows from Mission: Impossible as a whole. We’ll get to that though.
Before engaging with the franchise fully, I thought that Tom Cruise was merely the star of the Mission: Impossible series. That is incorrect. He is the series. As a producer from day one, Cruise has financial and creative stake in every film, and ultimately every big decision goes through him. Paramount took a big risk and gave a ton of power to a man who was only 34 when the first M:I movie came out. But to be fair to that gamble, Cruise had already established himself as a true star long before 1996.
I’ll be so honest: if it weren’t for the Scientology thing, I think Tom Cruise would have a strong case for being my favorite actor (at least when it comes to blockbusters). I’m not a completionist of his filmography, but I can’t think of one time I’ve seen him turn in a bad performance. Whether it be one of his many action movies, a big studio comedy, or a quiet adult drama, Cruise always gives it 100%. His passion for big movies that must be seen in theaters, one of his more defining traits in the last couple of years, is strangely refreshing in an era that seems so much more focused on highbrow streaming TV shows1.
That may be a result of Cruise becoming a megastar in an era full of big movies that had to be seen in theaters. After catching the acting bug in high school, the Syracuse native trekked down to New York City to find his way in the profession there. It didn’t take long before he was breaking out on the big screen in early ‘80s movies like The Outsiders and Risky Business [4/5]. With Top Gun, a Navy recruitment ad that happened to also be the highest grossing film of 1986, Cruises’s status as beloved draw at the box office was codified [that movie’s a 3/5].
At the same time that Cruise was starring in hit after hit, Paramount was seeing another trend at the box office. The Star Trek films, acting as sequels to the original scifi series, had done good business throughout the ‘80s, and the studio knew they had other older TV shows in their IP vault that could be similarly successful. At the top of their list was Mission: Impossible, a spy show from the 1960s that framed espionage not as James Bond-esque lone wolf violence, but rather as a group effort, a team pulling off heist-like subterfuge. Produced by Lucille Ball, the original Mission: Impossible show was quite popular during its run from 1966 through 1973.
Paramount felt their long-dormant TV show could translate nicely to the big screen, but had trouble getting the project off the ground for years. Enter Tom Cruise. The actor had just opened his production company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, and wanted to get the Mission: Impossible reboot as their first project. Cruise had been a fan of the show and agreed with Paramount’s vision of a reboot. The star was made producer, and he got to work finding a director. Luckily for him, he just happened to run into a legend.
One night, as he was visiting friend and neighbor Steven Spielberg, Cruise found the director already hanging out with a peer. Brian de Palma has appeared in this column before as a figure in John Travolta’s career, since it was the financial failure of de Palma’s Blow Out [4.5/5] that basically put a pause on the actor’s presence in Hollywood for over a decade. But de Palma’s oeuvre isn’t only strangely beautiful and violent films that didn’t make money; he also has at least a few big hits under his belt. Most people probably haven’t seen Phantom of the Paradise [4.5/5] or Body Double, but I imagine you’ve at least heard of Carrie, Scarface, and The Untouchables [3.5/5].
Cinephile Cruise was a massive fan, and after interrogating de Palma on his work at Spielberg’s house, the actor went home and marathoned his movies for 14 hours. Honestly, this would be my exact reaction. I can’t imagine I would be able to relate to him on much else, but I’d love to watch Phantom of the Paradise with Tom Cruise. Though maybe he preferred de Palma’s more mainstream fare. The actor specifically points to The Untouchables as the film that made him realize that de Palma was the guy for Mission: Impossible. Cruise reached out to ask and, eager to make a big hit again, the director said yes.
Soon though, the dynamic between the two men would begin to sour somewhat. In the 2015 documentary/career retrospective De Palma [3/5], the director explains the source of the tension that existed between him and Cruise as a result of making Mission: Impossible together. The crux of it was that Paramount, in an effort to keep their star and bank roller, allowed Cruise to be the final voice on any creative decisions. No story better encapsulates this than the saga of getting Mission: Impossible actually written.
At the start of pre-production, De Palma initially hired David Koepp, who had written the director’s previous film Carlito’s Way, to pen the spy thriller’s screenplay. Cruise didn’t love the direction Koepp’s script took his character, so he went to the studio and they fired the writer. They kept his work though, and brought in Robert Towne, another acclaimed screenwriter who had worked with Cruise on Days of Thunder. De Palma, likewise, didn’t like the direction Towne’s script was going, so he got the studio to rehire Koepp so that both men could work on the script separately at the same time.
It’s interesting that Cruise was so dead set on having de Palma direct M:I. He clearly loved the man’s work, but he also expected this auteur whose films so often carry his unique touch to play second fiddle to him creatively. There must have been any number of capable sycophant directors in Hollywood at this time for Cruise to have picked, but he was too much of a movie guy to ignore the generational talent he had access to. Part of me wonders if this is why almost every subsequent entry in the franchise would see a different director at the helm. For the next couple of decades, Cruise would go through talented directors until he found the one who he could work with as a unit. We’ll get to that some day though.
Despite difficulties with things like the script and filming on location in foreign locales like Prague, Mission: Impossible actually finished production early and under budget. Industrial Light and Magic, the secondary main characters of last week’s column, got their hands on the footage to apply post-production effects, and the rest of Hollywood, smelling an obvious hit, cleared their release calendar to avoid running into a juggernaut at the box office.
Writing this has been tough, because there’s no suspense with this week’s story. Mission: Impossible was huge. It had a massive movie star, good marketing, and a director that people liked. But also, of course people were going to go see a big blockbuster at the start of the summer. In this series where I examine the cultural contexts of why movies make it big, it's difficult to do that when this movie would have succeeded at any point within a decade before or after its release.
But this is also a movie review column, not just a history lesson. Mission: Impossible is a film first and foremost, and it’s certainly not a perfect one, even if it’s really good. Despite its subsequent influence and success, this first movie is just a movie. Let’s see how it holds up as one of Tom Cruise’s beloved big movies.
This first entry in the series was not my first Mission: Impossible movie. I jumped in with the fourth entry, Ghost Protocol, which marks of the start of the “modern” era of the franchise. Normally, this isn’t something I’d recommend for any film series. After all, you’d think by the time you get to the fourth entry in an ongoing saga, the back stories and lore would make it impenetrable for newcomers. That’s where you’d be wrong though.
When researching the history of this movie, I found plenty of clickbait articles that promised a clear outline of the overarching plot of the series, which really surprised me. I’m going to let you all in on a little secret: the stories of these movies don’t actually matter. And that’s not just me saying that as someone who’s seen all of them; de Palma said as much when discussing the development of Mission: Impossible for that De Palma documentary. He as the director crafted the set pieces he wanted to see, and the story was filled in between those big moments in a way that made sense. Like the original show, character development was kept to a minimum, with the film’s script focused more on windy plots and cool moments.
Your enjoyment of this film will hinge almost entirely on whether you can stomach its main actor. Tom Cruise in 1996 is possibly better suited than anyone to lead Mission: Impossible. His combination of physical charisma, cool factor, intensity, and, oh right, solid acting ability justifiably make Ethan Hunt one of his more iconic roles. He doesn’t disappear into the character (he wouldn’t try doing that in his movies for a few more years), and the elements of characterization, like references to a family farm, are so weak that you can feel the sequels working their hardest in the future to strip them away.
Personally, I think it works because I find Cruise entertaining as a performer. All of the things he does are so firmly in his wheelhouse because Paramount asked him to build the wheelhouse. But I’m a fan of the guy’s work, and generally enjoy it when he’s on my screen. I also recognize that there is a strange emotional distance that it is impossible to cross when you see the man, no matter what stage of his career he’s in. And also, there’s the Scientology. I get it. Your mileage may vary.
The driving narrative of Agent Hunt trying to clear his name after surviving the attack that killed the rest of his spy team and made him look like a traitor is not what people remember about Mission: Impossible. Pop culture hasn’t encoded its plot twists to the pantheon of great reveals and I don’t think I could quote a single line of dialogue of the movie back to you right now. And yet I don’t think we’re dealing with a poorly written movie here at all. The script accomplishes the goal of keeping a plot moving from set piece to set piece, and when you get to those big sequences, you forget all about the stuff that came before. Especially the really big one.
The most famous moment in both Mission: Impossible the movie and Mission: Impossible the franchise has to be the suspended silent hacking scene. Decked in all black and a smart pair of glasses, Cruise as Hunt must avoid tripping sound, heat, and motion sensors as he swaps floppy discs from a CIA mainframe. It does not matter why he is there, only that the best way to accomplish this mission with incredibly graceful wire acrobatics. Of course, things go wrong, plans must be adapted on the fly. A drop of sweat must be caught, a rat must be taken care of, and there’s the tricky matter of a falling knife.
This scene is the blueprint for many of the best moments in the decades that follow. The tension ratchets up with every second, de Palma wisely choosing to remove all score from the audio track to sell the silence that must be abided by. The bright lights of the inner computer chamber feel overwhelming. Its simultaneously a relief when we cut away from them to another part of the building and yet also nerve-wracking to see if some unforeseen foible is about to make itself known. This one set piece justifies not only the whole movie at least two of its sequels as well. The CIA computer sequence is still so effective as a piece of filmmaking that I’m tempted to say you can just watch it instead of the whole film.
The incredible wire heist at Langley is the centerpiece of Mission: Impossible, but believe it or not, worthwhile, entertaining spy sequences come before and after it as well. The tense opening sequence shows what starts as a standard group mission in Prague going horribly wrong as a traitor’s plan leaves Ethan Hunt on the run, setting the stage for the espionage antics to follow. Later, the explosive climax ties a helicopter to a train in the Channel Tunnel and offers a decent payoff to the movie’s unwinding plot.
It’s a credit to the screenplay that the plot is strong enough to keep you watching, despite all of its technical jargon and twists. This first M:I doesn’t have the most compelling narrative in the series, but it’s far from bad. There are some clever quips between Cruise and the supporting cast; Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Beart, and future series regular Ving Rhames are particular standouts. It’s all enjoyable stuff, if not all that memorable compared to the stunts and thrills. In my review of Rumble in the Bronx, I compared the plot of that movie to that of a video game, simply there to string the player along between exciting gameplay moments. Mission: Impossible is like that, but the game has a better than average story, like an Uncharted title2.
All of this is shot with the care and expertise you would expect from a director of de Palma’s caliber. If you’ve seen his films before, you’ll recognize all the hallmarks of his style: split diopter shots, zooming shots looking down from the ceiling, moments of stark red lighting reminiscent of Italian giallo movies, the works. Stylistically, this isn’t de Palma’s most adventurous turn in the director’s chair. Instead, Mission: Impossible shows a master taking decades of work with budgets big and small and picking what works best in a movie aiming to be the biggest of the year.
Something that helps make de Palma’s style work even better is Mission: Impossible’s genre. Unlike later installments in the series, this first entry is not really an action movie. Instead, the bulk of the film is a taught political thriller, focused more on using technical skills and conversation to build to the big sequences, most of which also rely less on big gunfights and more on thrilling games of cat and mouse. This is much more in line with much of de Palma’s oeuvre, which resembles Hitchcock’s far more than it does Michael Bay’s (we’ll get to him next week).
My enjoyment of this movie is admittedly hindered by expectations set by its sequels. The action and stunts will become even more legendary, the supporting cast and antagonists will become more compelling, and Ethan Hunt will shed almost all of the ties to normal life that he has in this first movie, operating more as a pure agent of ability and espionage. Believe it or not, he will be better for it. Tom Cruise is not a normal human being; his most famous character shouldn’t be one either.
I still recommend Mission: Impossible overall. It’s held up shockingly well thanks to a fun script full of excellent set pieces and a reliance on practical effects over CG. The climax probably looks the worst of any scene in the movie thanks to a need for computer graphics, but it doesn’t ruin the film in the long run. Like I said earlier, you can basically jump in wherever with these movies, but if you’ve somehow missed the entire M:I series to this point, starting with the first one is a great way to get into the franchise. Not just because it’s the beginning, but it would be a disservice to go back to this (relatively) simpler film with knowledge of just how good later entries are.
I was surprised to find that reviews of Mission: Impossible were quite mixed around release, with the film holding a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes. Interestingly, both positive and negative reviews of the film touch on basically the same points. It looks great and is pretty exciting, but the core story is convoluted and lacking in humor and humanity. To some, like Hal Hinson at the Washington Post, this makes the movie a waste of time. To others, like Roger Ebert, it’s the film playing to its strengths. In his 3/4 review at the time, Ebert remarks:
[De Palma] is more concerned with style than story, which is wise, since if this movie ever paused to explain itself it would take a very long time.
If you were to look at just the longevity of the franchise, you might assume that Mission: Impossible was the biggest movie of the entire mid ‘90s. And to be sure, the film did incredibly well: a $45 million dollar opening, two weeks of box office domination, and a final domestic pull of nearly $200 million after 5 months. When you factor in the incredible international pull, the $80 million spy thriller earned nearly a half billion dollar return.
Yet despite those insane numbers, Ethan Hunt could not conquer the tornadoes around him. Mission: Impossible knocked Twisters from the top spot, but the latter film ended up being a bigger draw long term. The disaster flick pulled in over $240 million domestically, making this week’s spy thriller have to be content with third place by year’s end (as for the biggest movie of 1996, come back in a few weeks and I’ll be happy to tell you about it).
Those numbers are fascinating in hindsight, considering the lingering and popular presence of Mission: Impossible deep into the 21st century. Meanwhile, unless you count a ride at Universal Studios, Twister didn’t get a proper sequel until 2024. Granted, there are a lot more stories you could tell with spies around the world than with tornadoes in the midwest. But if a movie today made a quarter of a billion dollars domestically, the next few films in the franchise would be mapped into a cinematic universe before it could even hit streaming.
In an interview I watched from around the film’s release, Tom Cruise was noncommittal on whether the world would see more Mission: Impossible projects in the years to come. Even at the time, before the final dollar had been tallied on that first week’s box office success, surely he already knew that he was telling lies to the press. Of course a sequel happened. A lot of sequels happened. But not everyone was so onboard with this vision.
When de Palma was approached to return for a followup, he seemed baffled that anyone would even want to:
After I made ‘Mission: Impossible,’ Tom asked me to start working on the next one. I said, ‘Are you kidding? One of these is enough. Why would anybody want to make another one?’
I love de Palma’s work, but he was dead wrong there. They would indeed make another one, and it’ll appear in this column one day.
“A Life Through Film” is my own personal mission impossible, but I look forward to eventually getting through this entire franchise. When you start this strong, how can you not?
Rating: 4/5
Next Week: It’s not the start of a franchise, but next week in A Life Through Film, we meet a couple of very interesting men who will be somewhat recurring figures in the years to come. Nicholas Cage stars in a Michael Bay production. Welcome to The Rock.
See you then!
-Will
Not that I’m against those. My wife and I just started Yellowjackets and love it.
Sidenote for the gamers out there: My official Uncharted ranking goes 2 > 4 > 3 > Lost Legacy > 1. And no, I haven’t seen the movie yet.