Mission: Impossible — Fallout

Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise perfect the Mission: Impossible formula

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Directed By: Christopher McQuarrie
Other Notable Films From Christopher McQuarrie: Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, Edge of Tomorrow (writer), The Usual Suspects (writer)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill’s jawline, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson on a motorcycle, Angela Bassett’s businesswear
Screenplay By: Christopher McQuarrie
Movie Synopsis: Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt and his team must recover plutonium cores from a mercenary group before a shadowy extremist uses them to destroy the world. 
Signature Line: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context

The initial plan for the Mission: Impossible movie franchise was novel, if not outright fun: Tom Cruise, who’d taken the 1966 TV show and pitched it to Paramount Pictures as a series of feature films, sought to bring in a new director for every installment, so as to infuse each movie with a new feel, and style, and look, and texture.

And things went as proposed in the beginning.

First, he tapped Brian De Palma for 1996’s Mission: Impossible, a sleek and sophisticated affair that remains the sexiest of the bunch. Then the action savant John Woo stepped in for 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2, most notable for injecting motorcycles into the M:I bloodstream. The unproven-but-clearly-talented J.J. Abrams handled 2006’s Mission: Impossible 3, which gave the franchise its greatest ever villain.¹ And Brad Bird, who’d directed three animated films prior,² came in for 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, the first to feature a WAIT, HE FUCKING DID THAT FOR REAL? stunt from Cruise.³

Four movies. Four different directors. Just as Cruise had intended. 

But then Christopher McQuarrie showed up. 

And that was the end of that. 

McQuarrie, who directed 2015’s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, has directed every Mission: Impossible movie since then.⁴ He and Cruise understand each other implicitly, one a gifted orchestrator who thrives under the pressure of improvising multi-million dollar set pieces and action sequences,⁵ the other a breathtaking movie star willing to break his own bones in pursuit of the perfect shot.⁶ When they make a Mission: Impossible movie together, it’s like they’re locked into a battle to see who’s gonna flinch first, and it fucking rules. 

It’s how we ended up with the real-life underwater sequence from Rogue Nation where Cruise had to hold his breath for six minutes, and the real-life motorcycle cliff jump from Dead Reckoning where Cruise jumped a dirtbike off a cliff and then parachuted to safety, and the real-life bi-plane sequence from The Final Reckoning where Cruise climbed around on the wings of an in-flight plane, and, perhaps most impressively, the real-life helicopter dogfight from Fallout where Cruise flew a helicopter like it was a goddamn fighter jet.

I don’t know where the Mission: Impossible franchise goes from here. 

But I do know that as long as Cruise and McQuarrie are together, it’s going to go somewhere incredible, and it’s going to go there for real.⁷  

THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Mission: Impossible — Fallout 

0:45: Tom Cruise is here. He plays Ethan Hunt, a special agent in the Impossible Missions Force (IMF). Right now, he’s having a dream about getting remarried to his ex-wife (Julia, played by Michelle Monaghan). It’s very funny to me that Ethan is divorced, because it means that while he may have been able thwart countless super-schemes hatched by the world’s most high-powered evil organizations, he was not able to keep a marriage together. Matrimony, it would seem, is the only mission that is truly impossible for him. 

3:19: Ethan’s awake. He’s in Belfast, where he’s just received classified information about a new threat to the world order. A terrorist group known as The Apostles has been hired by a faceless extremist named John Lark, who needs their help securing three plutonium cores so he can complete three nuclear bombs. If Lark is able to make the bombs, then he’s gon—

Actually, you know what? There's a lot of exposition in every Mission: Impossible movie, but that information is rarely ever meaningful to the Mission: Impossible viewing experience. Really, all you need to know (and this goes for every time you sit down to watch an installment of M:I) is that over the course of the next two or so hours, you’re gonna see:

• A sequence where Ethan is debriefed for a new mission (That’s where we are right now)

• Some very cool stunts

• Some neat tech gadgets that could never exist in the real world

• Somebody (or multiple somebodies) get tricked by a person wearing a mask

• Something go wrong with a mission (And it’ll go wrong in a way that causes Ethan Hunt’s bosses to question his loyalty)

• A woman’s life in danger

• Multiple chase sequences

• Tom Cruise telling somebody they’ve got to trust him

• And Tom Cruise running upwards 65 miles per hour

Let’s get to it. 

3:20: By the way, do you think Robert Oppenheimer would’ve felt better about having made the atomic bomb if someone had pulled him aside afterward and been like, “Hey, listen. This thing you made—this terrible, terrible thing you made, this device of monumental terror that's gonna be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people… it’s also gonna be used as the big threat in a bunch of cool action movies. So, I mean, at least there's that”? Do you think that would’ve made him feel better? My guess is no. But you never know.

5:03: Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames are here. Pegg plays Benji (an IMF technician) and Ving plays Luther (a computer expert). They’re Ethan’s two closest allies. They’re all in Berlin to buy the plutonium cores off some criminal psychopath before The Apostles can. 

9:32: So, the plutonium deal is not going that great. The Apostles showed up, killed the criminal psychopath and his henchmen, then took Luther hostage. Ethan now has to decide between handing the plutonium over to The Apostles or watching them kill Luther. (Incidentally, when The Apostles made the TRADE LUTHER FOR THE PLUTONIUM proposition, Luther shouted, “Don’t you do it, Ethan! Not for me!” That is not how I would’ve responded in that particular situation. I very much would’ve encouraged Ethan to make that trade. I would’ve gone full Nico Harrison.) 

10:38: Whoops. Ethan managed to save Luther, but The Apostles were able to nab the plutonium during the rescue. We can mark SOMETHING GOES WRONG WITH A MISSION THAT CAUSES ETHAN’S BOSSES TO QUESTION HIS LOYALTY off the Mission: Impossible checklist.

16:02: Ethan, Luther, and Benji just ran the mask trick on the scientist who built the nuclear bombs for John Lark.⁸ If I existed in the Mission: Impossible universe, I would start every conversation I ever had by pulling and stretching the other person’s face to make sure that it’s flesh and not rubber. 

16:26: BANG. The opening credits title sequence. The theme music is playing, we’re getting a bunch of disparate action shots, and everything is just feeling very much like we’re about to watch an all-caps MOVIE. You know what? Let’s actually watch this because I miss when movies had standalone title sequences:

What fun. 

17:15: Alec Baldwin is here. He plays Alan Hunley, a quick-talking suit who left his position as the director of the CIA so he could oversee the IMF. A neat little coincidence is that the last time we covered a movie here that featured a title sequence this deep into its runtime, Alec Baldwin was in that playing a quick-talking suit too (The Departed, which didn’t do its title sequence until 18 minutes in).

17:16: (Now I can’t stop thinking about characters from The Departed running around in a Mission: Impossible movie. Like, imagine Ethan Hunt giving some very earnest speech about trust and integrity and the sanctity of innocence, then he turns to ask his team if he’s gonna be able to count on them when the time comes, and Mark Wahlberg is there like, “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself.”) 

18:59: Fuck yes. Angela Bassett and Henry Cavill are here. They play Erika Sloane (the deputy director of the CIA) and August Walker (a CIA assassin and also Sloane’s right hand). I love Cavill in this role. He does a really good job of staying out of that LOOK HOW COOL I AM arena he occasionally wanders into (like what he was doing in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). He plays everything straight, which is the only way to play things in the Mission: Impossible universe. 

19:55: A great line from Sloane, who does not like the IMF at all: “The IMF is Halloween, Alan. A bunch of grown men in rubber masks playing trick-or-treat.” One of my biggest fears in life is that one day I’m accidentally gonna do something that makes Angela Bassett say something mean about me. I pray it never happens. 

20:20: Sloane tells Hunley that she’s gonna have Walker tag along with Ethan so she can be sure there won’t be another fuck-up like what happened when Ethan saved Luther but lost the plutonium. She doesn’t just say it like that, though. Instead, what she says is, “You use a scalpel, I prefer a hammer,” and when she says the line, the camera cuts to Ethan for the scalpel part, then over to Walker for the hammer part. This movie is so great. 

20:21: Also: You know you really fucked up a mission when they decide you need Superman to go babysit you. 

20:22: Also, also: Would you rather be described as “a scalpel” or “a hammer”? I think I wanna be the hammer. That seems a little cooler to me. 

20:23: Also, also, also: The fact that I wanna be the hammer is how I know I’m not a hammer. No hammer ever says, “I wanna be the hammer.” They just are the hammer, you know what I mean? Anybody who says “I wanna be the hammer” is, best case scenario, a spoon.