Today we ask, why isn’t Ethan Hunt as popular or as memorable as other major franchise characters?
Genre: Action
Premise: Tom Cruise does action.
About: Tom Cruise continues to take risks, this time betting on Christopher McQuarrie to direct his latest Mission Impossible film. McQuarrie has become a sort of muse to Cruise, and vice versa. Even when he’s not directing Cruise (on such films as Jack Reacher), he’s often fixing up a script he’s working on (Valkyrie, Edge of Tomorrow). But with this being McQuarrie’s first HUGE directing assignment, the screenwriting Oscar winner chose to leave most of the writing duties to hot up-and-coming writer, Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3, Sherlock Holmes 3). Not sure why McQuarrie still got final credit but, hey, welcome to Hollywood, Drew. The film surprised many box office analysts this weekend by breaking out of the anticipated 40+ million bracket and pulling in 56 million bucks. Cruise Control is back!
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie (story by Christopher McQuarrie and Drew Pearce) (based on the television series by Bruce Geller)
Details: 130 minutes
I don’t know what it is about the Mission Impossible movies. I seem to enjoy them while I’m watching them. But literally less than an hour after they’re finished, I’m forgetting which scenes were part of which films. Was the helicopter-train chase in the first or the second film? Was the highway-bridge drone attack scene in the third or the fourth film? Mission Impossible seems to inject some sort of stealth forgettability into each incarnation.
And that’s not good with how crowded the action space has gotten. You’ve got your James Bonds, your Jason Bournes, even your Fast and Furiouses. So why doesn’t Ethan Hunt measure up to a Bond or a Bourne? I have some theories on that which I’ll get to later. But to Cruise’s credit, he seems to realize this as well, and this time out, he was looking for any way to get a leg up on his competition.
So we get the much publicized opening scene where Cruise ACTUALLY held onto the outside of a plane while it took off. No CGI. No tricks. It’s really a 53 year-old actor outside of a plane as it’s taking off. Color me SHOCKED then when I’m sitting there in the theater, prepping my popcorn tub with the perfect ratio of peanut butter M&Ms to popcorn kernels, getting ready for this monumental moment, and the shot lasted all of 5 SECONDS LONG! I don’t know if I was disappointed or just dumbfounded.
Here’s a shot that lasted only five seconds. It easily could’ve been done just as realistically with basic movie trickery. AND, the one thing nobody’s talking about, THE SCENE DIDN’T EVEN NEED TO BE IN THE MOVIE! It was clearly written in there specifically to give Cruise a chance to do this insane stunt.
All of this points to Cruise specifically doing this as a publicity stunt to sell the movie. And this means – which I can’t believe I’m writing – Tom Cruise RISKED HIS LIFE just to promote this film. Take that Vin Diesel. You ain’t jumping on planes. Need more make-up on your forehead wussy boy?
But seriously. That is either really impressive or incredibly dumb depending on who you talk to. But it did net MI:5 (I think we’re on 5, right?) a 56 million dollar weekend. Which, while not Bourne 3 (70 million), Skyfall (87 million), or Furious 7 (147 million) numbers, it’s still pretty solid.
MI:5 involves a twisty-turny plot that basically goes like so. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is trying to find this evil organization known as the “Syndicate.” He meets this shady mystery agent named Ilsa who helps him. Meanwhile, Ving Rhames and an out-of-nowhere hilarious Jeremy Renner, are trying to keep Ethan’s location a secret from the CIA, who want to disband the Mission Impossible Force. They all eventually meet up together, however, and mission impossible their way into the Prime Minister’s lair to stop this “Syndicate” business once and for all.
Okay, so, was this any good?
What’s unique about Mission Impossible is that Cruise seems to be approaching it from the old school way of filmmaking, which is to sit down, think up a bunch of cool set pieces (hanging on planes, riding on motorcycles) and then build a script around that.
That USED to work. I don’t think it works anymore. If you look at these other much bigger franchises, they’re building involved and continued storylines into their franchises. Their movies aren’t one-offs. They’re connected. And, as such, they feel less vapid. They feel like less of a roller coaster ride and more like full-on stories. Like the things that the characters do actually matter.
You’ve seen that lately with Bond, which has become more story-driven. You see it with huge hits like The Hunger Games. The Marvel Universe is interconnected. Bourne. The next round of Star Wars. The one exception is Fast and Furious. Their movies feel like standalone films.
But here’s the difference between Fast and Furious and Mission Impossible. THE FAST AND FURIOUS CHARACTERS STAND OUT. From Dominic to Brian O’Connor to the whole car-stealing team. Those guys are memorable identifiable characters.
Mission Impossible, however, still feels like you’re watching Tom Cruise. And again, this is a throwback mentality to the star-driven days where people used to show up just to see their favorite movie stars do crazy shit.
That’s not happening as much anymore. The success of franchises like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games and Avatar, and all those films I mentioned above, prove that people are coming to the theater to see characters and stories.
Never was that clearer than half-way through “Rogue Nation” when I asked myself, “Who is Ethan Hunt?” I don’t know! What does this guy stand for? What does he represent? What kind of person would his best friend call him? I know James Bond is a debonair playboy who confidently gets the job done. I know Jason Bourne is the amnesiac screwed over by his former organization who now has a chip on his shoulder. I even know Dominic Purcell is a family-first guy who will do anything for his friends.
Who is Ethan Hunt? Is he the guy who will always do the “impossible” thing that nobody else will do? Is that supposed to be his identity? I don’t know. To me it seems more like he ends up in those situations than seeks them out. Which makes his character even harder to pin down.
And I truly believe this factors into the box office. People don’t know who Ethan Hunt is supposed to be. So it comes down to, “Do you want to see Tom Cruise this weekend?” And the publicity of the airplane stunt got in enough articles that people decided, “Yeah, sure.” And I was one of them! I plunked down my money too. So kudos to the whole Mission Impossible team for pulling that off. But I’m definitely going into the next film more skeptically. I don’t want to watch yet another standalone adventure that has no connective tissue with anything that happened before it.
As for the rest of the script, I’ll say this. While it was your standard, “He’s got the data drive with the secret on it and we need to chase him all over the world to get it” storyline, unlike previous incarnations of Mission Impossible, the writers were more committed to helping you keep up with the plot.
I remember watching Mission Impossible 2 and they clearly didn’t give a shit about making sense. The plot points here have actually been thought through. And on top of that, they actually took the time to remind you what those plot points were.
I call this “hand-holding” and it’s SUPER important during complicated plots. This is even MORE important when you have a lot of double-crosses and twists and turns. I have seen many an amateur screenwriter leave their reader behind as they’ve assumed the reader knows just as much as they do, despite the writer giving us barely anything to go on.
There seemed to be a handful of scenes in MI:5 where one character reminded another character what they were going after. “We need to get [x] from [Frank] before he leaves town or he’ll disappear forever.” A lot of writers are scared to include these moments in fear of being deemed an “Exposition Eddie.” But when the plot’s complex, the reader/viewer appreciates them.
Unfortunately, despite all the money on the screen (and there really were some cool moments – I liked the motorcycle chase), I just couldn’t connect with the film. Due to the “non-continuous-story” approach of the franchise, I felt like it was going to dissolve into sand the second I left the theater. And that’s kind of what happened. The third act is already slipping through my fingers….. :(
[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Your main character has to have an identity. He has to represent something that’s clear and identifiable. It’s very common in an action movie to just generalize the main character as ” the action star.” But you can’t treat him that way. As you’ve seen from the above examples (Bourne, Dominic, new Bond), adding history and an identity go a long way. Go ahead and study all the classic movie characters who have stuck around for a long time and you’ll see this is the case. If you want proof, go to the most popular character in movie history: Sherlock Holmes. I’m sure every person here can tell you exactly what kind of person Sherlock Holmes is. Can you do the same for Ethan Hunt?
