top of page
Search

Stunts, Spectacle, and the Mission That Became Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise running in a cityscape, pursued by a low-flying plane. Skyscrapers, including a tall tower, dominate the grayish-blue background.
Illustration by Mukta Nitin Desai

“Sir, Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny, and he has made you his mission.”


The line, part of a monologue by Alec Baldwin in the fifth Mission: Impossible movie, very quickly became a focal point for fans of the series. Just in terms of sheer memetic awesomeness, the line is, of course, memorable. But it also speaks to a prominent thread in the series – the borderline deification of Tom Cruise. 


It didn’t start that way, though. The first Mission: Impossible, released in 1996, is mainly a fun twist on the television show it’s adapting. The series, which ran from 1966-73, and then had a revival in the 80s, is a hell of a lot of fun. It’s very routine, with a lot of episodes falling into a familiar formula, as the plan usually involves tricking the bad guy into going into the wrong room. The best episodes, however, have a clockwork precision to them, and that’s the energy the first movie riffs off.


But in the decades since, the gravitational pull of Cruise’s star power and the enticing spectacle of watching him do his big stunts warped the franchise into being predominantly about those two things — Cruise and his stunts.


There’s a way that the “living manifestation” line could be seen as the ultimate paean to Cruise’s ego, the last word in self-referential ego stroking. First of all, it’s not — I’d argue that The Last Reckoning is worse in that regard, for reasons we’ll get to. But also… I mean, the fact is, it’s not exactly unwarranted. Over 35 years, the Mission: Impossible series has come to define action cinema excellence, and Cruise’s borderline worrying commitment to the craft is a huge part of forming that impression; especially in recent years, where the idea of “cinema spectacle” has become so neutered that Marvel actors standing on a green screen is enough to make people clap. 


It’s been pointed out that the Mission: Impossible series can be roughly mapped onto the rise, fall, and phoenix-like rebirth of Cruise’s career. The first one came out when he was young and hungry and eager to prove himself. The second one, directed by John Woo and featuring endless slow-motion explosions and Cruise’s wavy hair, became his awkward foray into mainstream success. I’d argue it didn’t work because Cruise, for all his Hollywood good looks and charm, is too weird a figure for the mainstream to fully know what to do with. He has the good looks of a typical leading man, but the energy he gives off has always been just a little too intense, a little too alien. 


Similarly, the third one doesn’t quite work because it’s impossible to imagine the character of Ethan Hunt — or Tom Cruise himself — as a romantic lead. I can tell you I’ve always been distinctly uncomfortable whenever he’s had to romance a woman (which is a large part of why Eyes Wide Shut is simultaneously one of the creepiest movies ever made and also a fantastic,  and completely intentional, comedy). So centering an entire one of these movies around the idea of Hunt settling down and getting married is possibly the biggest suspension of disbelief in the entire series.


It’s with 2011’s Ghost Protocol, though, that things get interesting. That’s the one where Cruise scales the world’s tallest building, and it’s once again incisive to put this in the wider context of his career; this was still in the era where we weren’t sure if we liked Tom Cruise anymore. Scientology hung over everything, to the point where co-star Michael Nyqvist spent most of the press tour for the movie repeating the phrase "Tom Cruise is an amazing actor and generous co-worker whose personal life we, as a society, know far too much about."


When Ghost Protocol came out, Cruise was still recovering from a very tumultuous 2000s. The midpoint of that decade saw a confluence of Scientology finally starting to lose its ongoing PR war, with media like South Park openly mocking the organization and its beliefs, as well as Cruise experiencing a string of disastrous public manic episodes, such as the infamous incident with Oprah’s couch, or the time he debated mental health with Matt Lauer, parroting Scientologist pseudoscience.


The fact that those thorny questions about Scientology’s abuse and Cruise’s involvement in it have been more or less absorbed back into pop-culture common knowledge/obscurity says a lot about the kind of high-level personal branding team Cruise must have. Since then, he’s taken his personal life entirely out of the public spotlight, redirecting his entire public persona to just be about the movies. However, let's not overlook the key narrative aspect that showcases the power of image and presentation in the fourth MI film: the notion that Cruise puts his body on the line like never before, dangling himself off the tallest building for our entertainment. 


With Rogue Nation, the fifth film in the now burgeoning franchise, a change was made. Up until this point, each instalment in the series had been helmed by a radically different auteur voice. The first movie had Brian De Palma’s sweaty paranoia, followed by John Woo’s operatic excess, JJ Abrams’ post-9/11 shakycam grittiness, and Brad Bird’s live-action cartoon whimsy. Now we had Christopher McQuarrie, who would go on to helm every subsequent entry in the series. 


Just on principle, I’m not a fan of this. One of the most unique aspects of the early Mission: Impossible films was the way they each functioned as a sandbox for these radically distinct auteurs to impose their style onto a distinct but malleable format. I would argue their lack of continuity was a benefit, since it allows more freedom to play with the format. 


McQuarrie, by contrast, doesn’t have a set style. The visual style of Rogue Nation, Fallout, and The Final Reckoning can best be summed up as “blockbuster competence” (Dead Reckoning is a stylistic outlier, for reasons we’ll get to). But the thing is, they’re good enough that it doesn’t matter.


My one complaint with Rogue Nation is that I think the concept of an “anti-IMF,” as Benji refers to them, is sort of wasted. When I hear that phrase, I want to see Tom Cruise at the other end of a genius misdirect or a cunning mask ploy — as it stands in the movie, they’re all just a bunch of interchangeable mooks. Jumping ahead, I also had this problem with the AI nemesis, “The Entity,” which in one scene impersonates Benji’s voice, but otherwise essentially sits the action out.


There’s a way in which McQuarrie’s hiring marks the point where the Mission: Impossible series became “normal.” Again, though, we have to look at this in the context of the wider film world at the time, since it was around this point where the MCU had gained cultural dominance, and the kind of baseline competence McQuarrie and Cruise brought to these movies was becoming the exception rather than the rule. 


Concurrently, the last decade of mainstream cinema has seen a rise in films that, bluntly, look like they were shot in a cupboard, green screen vistas with the actors blatantly pasted in, backgrounds that don’t look remotely realistic, with props and costumes that are entirely CGI creations. It’s no surprise that the bare essentials of the Mission: Impossible series came to be even more celebrated in this time. 


Fallout is arguably the apotheosis of this moment in the series, a perfect encapsulation of blockbuster filmmaking, the capper to a truly perfect run of movies, equivalent to the magic run of Fast & Furious 4-7. But like Furious 7, you get the sense with Fallout that they’ve pushed the spectacle as far as it can go without breaking. This is as big and as bold as the franchise could go without tipping over.


This brings us to Dead Reckoning - Part One. The film stands as a strange outlier, since so much of that movie feels like McQuarrie consciously evoking Brian De Palma with his constant Dutch tilts, aggressive close-ups, and general air of government paranoia and cynicism. Unfortunately, it feels much more like a pastiche rather than the real thing, the equivalent of directorial cosplay.


Similarly, the first hour of The Final Reckoning just doesn’t play. A full hour of meticulously establishing how all the previous movies tie into this one, and then just as carefully establishing the stakes going forward? We don’t need to know all this stuff! It feels like the film doesn’t trust its audience. It reminds me of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, which got top-heavy with too many moving parts and plot pile-up from previous movies. 


We also don’t need this much shoe-leather to get to the big stunts. It really does feel like they’re trying really hard to impress on us how big and awe-inspiring and, crucially, real the stunts are, when… I mean, we didn’t need it for the Burj Khalifa. We just felt it. This is where the mythology of “Tom Cruise does all his own stunts” starts to impose, since so much of the movie is dedicated to reiterating to the audience that “hey, he’s doing this for real!”


But watching it on a big screen, I really felt like what I imagine it must’ve felt like to first watch Buster Keaton do his thing back in the 1920s. Because, well, he is doing it for real. It doesn’t matter how memetic it’s become; you just can’t believe some of the things you’re seeing. There were several points in both the plane and the submarine sections where I felt my heart fully stop. Avengers: Endgame, with its entire final act taking place on a dimly rendered green screen, sure ain’t doing that for me.


I would argue that the series did lose something when it committed to one directorial voice and became laser-focused on stunt work and spectacle over everything else. But on the flipside, I can’t deny that it paid off. And ultimately, the series is so multifaceted that any one of them could be your favourite. Even with the McQuarrie run, there’s enough of a variance between films, and each one still has its own identity. Compared to the conveyor-belt filmmaking of the Hollywood blockbusters it’s up against, it’s no wonder fans have flocked to the series in the way that they have.



Edited by Anish Paranjape


Sam Stashower is a recent graduate student and a writer at Political Pandora. He has contributed film reviews and pop culture analysis to The Quindecim (Goucher College) and The Eagle (American University). A devoted media enthusiast, he can—and inevitably will—find a way to connect everything he watches, listens to, or reads back to Star Trek.



Disclaimer


Any facts, views or opinions are not intended to malign and/or disrespect any religion, group, club, organisation, company, or individual.

This article published on this website is solely representative of the author. Neither the editorial staff nor the organisation (Political Pandora) are responsible for the content.


All illustrations in this piece, if any, are original works created exclusively by the Design Department of Political Pandora.


These illustrations are protected and are not available for replication, reproduction, or redistribution in any form without explicit written consent from Political Pandora. Unauthorized use, including but not limited to copying, modifying, or redistributing, is strictly prohibited.


Photographs in this particular article are taken from external sources and are not a property of Political Pandora. The use of these images are not meant for commercial purposes.


While we strive to present only reliable and accurate information, should you believe that any information present is incorrect or needs to be edited, please feel free to contact us.



References:



Keywords: Tom Cruise Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible Stunts, Ethan Hunt Character Arc, Tom Cruise Action Movies, Mission Impossible Franchise Timeline, How Many Mission Impossible Movies, Tom Cruise Real Stunts, Best Mission Impossible Film, Christopher McQuarrie Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible Fallout Explained, Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Review, Is Ethan Hunt Based On A Real Person, Tom Cruise Career Comeback, Mission Impossible Vs Marvel, Scientology And Tom Cruise

Comments

Join the 
Pandora Community

Join Political Pandora! We offer exciting opportunities for passionate youth.

 

Publish your work on a global platform with an engaged audience, often cited in academic research. Your voice matters—be part of the conversation!

bottom of page