Yesterday, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning hit theaters, ostensibly bringing this long running series to an epic conclusion maybe?
Nah, who's gonna walk away from all that money? Apparently future installments are being planned.
Starring Tom Cruise and directed by Brian DePalma, from 1996, this is Mission: Impossible.
Some background on Mission: Impossible. The movie is a follow up to the 1966 television series of the same name and its 1988 sequel series.
The Impossible Missions Force (IMF) is a clandestine group of spies run by a mysterious unidentified agency with little to no oversight or accountability. But IMF agents also have no backup or support. If they are captured, the government will disavow any knowledge of them or their activities. The IMF is headed up by Jim Phelps (for all but the first season) who receives the team's missions ("if you choose to accept it") via tape recordings that self destruct once the message is delivered.
In the TV series, Phelps was played by Peter Graves. For the film, the character is portrayed by Jon Voight. (More on that later.)
In the movie, Jim Phelps still heads up the IMF and we find them on a mission in Prague to stop rogue agent Alexander Golitsyn from stealing CIA secrets.
Things go very badly.
The secrets get swiped, Golistyn vanishes and every single person on the mission is killed.
Except one person: Ethan Hunt, Phelps' point man in the field.
Hunt learns there was a 2nd IMF team present during the mission to uncover a mole in the IMF who is working with an arms dealer known as "Max" who is part of something called "Job314".
And Ethan is now being pinned as the traitor in the ranks.
Ethan Hunt is on the run now, targeted by his own government and foreign agents.
Ethan Hunt recruits a rag tag team of disavowed IMF agents to help break the conspiracy that has put him in the crosshairs of every intelligence agency in the world. Ethan engages in subterfuge, employing disguises (just as on the TV series, the movie IMF has the most realistic rubber masks ever) and daring stunts. There are cons and double crosses, nobody is who they appear to be as Ethan digs down to the truth.
It seems that the mole, the traitor within IMF is...
SPOILERS!
Jim Phelps.
Really? The lead guy from the TV show? The hero of the TV series?
Nah! That can't be.
But it is.
Jim Phelps is the rat fink that got Ethan's team killed.
And this development pissed off Peter Graves.
Graves was still alive in 1996 and was not at all happy that his role as Jim Phelps had been recast AND made to be the bad guy.
I watched enough of the original Mission: Impossible TV series to know that Jim Phelps was a straight arrow kind of guy and the idea of him going rogue just seems so unfathomable.
Well, I guess Jim Phelps is the past and Ethan Hunt was now the future of the IMF.
Speaking of moving forward, the classic Mission: Impossible TV theme by Lalo Shifrin was remade by U2's Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen.
Mission: Impossible is filled with action packed stunts and intense dramatic scenes of danger. Like the classic bit where Ethan Hunt is lowered into a secure computer lab and has to absolutely keep his arms and legs outstretched to prevent even the slightest contact with the floor.
This bit has been homaged and parodied dozens of times since then.
No comments:
Post a Comment