Mission Impossible: When Tom Cruise first breathed on us

The release of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Count Part 1” is fast approaching. Finally, after many postponements due to COVID. Await Ethan Hunt’s return to cinema, inviting you to revisit his previous opus, from the staging style to the themes, highlights.

The booster shot session that kicks off the very first episode is exciting on a theoretical level and is where Tom Cruise begins to set his paws on the fledgling franchise – SPOILERS ALERT!!!

In the mid-90s, Tom Cruise wanted to produce his first film. and give themselves a great franchise. Along with his then-partner Paula Wagner, he turned his attention to the film adaptation of Mission: Impossible and added another prestigious line to his CV, handing the reins to Brian De Palma.

Which was a gamble at the time, as the filmmaker had a string of box office failures and hadn’t had a real hit since The Incorruptibles, which was also adapted from a TV show. Marked by a shoot that is said to be chaotic (legend recalls a script that was not finished during the first round of applause and frequent fights between the director and his star), the feature film was released on American screens on May 22, 1996, and it did not take long to get carried away.

With a worldwide gross of $457.7 million, it signed the third highest grosser of the year and allowed its author to reconnect with the heights of the box office thanks to a film that resembled him.

In what would later become a hallmark of the saga, the director would change with each episode so that each lucky one could make his mark, ensuring that the Tom Cruise name and brand of Mission: Impossible would draw audiences into dark rooms.

Therefore, it is Brian De Palma who opens the ball with a customized project, a story of espionage and double agents that allows him to tackle two favorite themes: voyeurism and manipulation, which he shared with Alfred Hitchcock, his absolute master.

From the PALMA SHOW

Visible patterns from the opening scene that look like they’re on purpose. And which, as it will be in the following operations, sets the tone: a man watches the operations taking place in a hotel room from a screen. What turns out to be a built-from-scratch and operating theater led by Ethan Hunt, who unmasks himself as he returns to the real world.

As his idol did in Rear Window, De Palma uses the genre and codes of the thriller to make a film that speaks to cinema, where the choice of images and their placement can be as dangerous as they are armed.

While each character tries to duplicate the other, the filmmaker also takes us on a boat thanks to Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and then Ethan Hunt, his portrayal in the film. Hiding behind his screens, the former enacts his diabolical script, turning the operation in Prague into a bloodbath as he takes down his own agents one by one, watching like a director delivering a live performance.

Before staging one’s own death with well-chosen images that we will learn to make later. Forced to take matters into his own hands to clear his name when everyone blames him, the hero must thus become the director of history.

“You’ve never seen me mad before!”

He then recruits agents who are in denial like him to form a new team, to whom he uncovers a plan to rob the CIA headquarters. A scene that will become instantly iconic and that makes us laugh while explaining mode of operationthus introducing flash forwards that would become one of the codas of the saga on the big screen.

Given his success and the fact that the audience has been holding their breath for a long time, with an impressive sequence, completely weightless, in the headquarters of the CIA, Ethan continues his number with a big boost of magic tricks (a floppy disk that is exchanged under Krieger’s nose and a beard, which Jean Renault performs). And, of course, Phelps has the upper hand when he takes over the editing himself.

Although his mentor from the dead gives him his version of the facts, Brian De Palma chooses to show us at the same time that it becomes increasingly clear in the mind of his hero. Ethan even goes so far as to literally become Jim, thanks to a game of disguise, confusing Claire (Emmanuel Beart) with Oedipal accents, where it’s about becoming her adoptive father (and then killing him). After seducing his adoptive mother.

Surrogate parents who die in the canal tunnel. In a spectacular yet borderline surreal finale, De Palma embraces the rules of the summer blockbuster and abandons his obsessions, explored in unsettling close-ups (particularly during the confrontation between Hunt and Kittridge in a Prague restaurant). ) and deframing, which emphasizes the paranoia with which the story is imbued.

Chaos, which comes especially from the geopolitical situation of the time. Like Goldeneye, which came out a year before it, Mission: Impossible plunges us into a world still marked by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which reshuffled the cards and where American supremacy is more of a concern than a solution.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the film debuted in Ukraine and then in the Czech Republic, thanks to which Brian De Palma, hidden behind the aura of his star, gives a happy shot in the Hollywood anthill. Without abandoning the codes of the franchise inherited from the original series (including the masks), it signs a violent, political film and less mainstream than one might imagine, especially when it slides towards horror during the scene in Prague.

MISSION COMPLETE

Brilliant and complex, it offers Tom Cruise an opportunity to make the brand his own by turning small-screen hero Jim Phelps into a traitor to history. Not even two hours after his first appearance as the masked actor, his Ethan Hunt is rehabilitated and becomes the franchise leader.

Which the final scene emphasizes by putting her in the same position as her boss at the beginning of the story, who the air hostess insisted on film. He is not yet a Superman who climbs rocks with his bare hands, but now it is through him that the mission orders go, the scenarios that he himself will have to ensure staging.

Or find men to do it. Helped by the success of his first release as a producer, he can intervene in projects and put the people he wants in the right positions.

As the Mission: Impossible saga officially becomes the vehicle for the superstar that he is, he finds that he can step behind the scenes and produce projects that speak as much about him and his persona as the story.

Next episode: When Tom Cruise was riding a motorcycle