Mission Impossible 3: When Tom Cruise met the saga’s best villain

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.

• Mission Impossible: When Tom Cruise first breathed on us
• Mission Impossible 2: When Tom Cruise rode a motorcycle under his feet

A booster shot session that continues with episode three, JJ Abrams’ cinematic baptism of fire that puts a terrifying villain on the path of a more human Ethan Hunt – SPOILERS ALERT!!!

No one knows what would have become of the saga today, had it fallen into the hands of David Fincher and Joe Carnahan, who in turn attached themselves to the production of this third opus before throwing in the towel for the same reason: a difference in artistic point. A view with Tom Cruise.

which finds its new colt on the small screen in the person of JJ Abrams. At that time it was not “this” Armageddon co-writer and creator of Felicity, Lost and, above all, Alias, whose translator Ethan Hunt, according to legend, devoured the first two seasons on DVD before offering him a mission. His directorial debut on the big screen.

And it is to the franchise that the same principle applies as to the series led by Jennifer Garner that she is for hire. Between his hands and his co-writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Ethan Hunt appears as a human before he was Superman, and this from the first scene that shows him in a very bad situation, while his wife is threatened.

Then the one that follows the credits orchestrated by Michael Giacchino and shows us a man who has disconnected and lives a normal life with his partner Julia (Michelle Monaghan). But he finds that, like Sydney Bristow, he can’t escape his chosen life of spy so easily.

This is again manifested in the guise of Lindsey Faris (Keri Russell), one of his recruits who falls during a mission in Berlin and whose death he is unable to prevent after saving her. A tragic and surprising event that looks like JJ Abrams’ founding act, marking his transition from the small to the big screen. “kill” Felicity’s heroine, her first creation.

The transition from the series to the cinema, which is also felt in the staging, and these plans, tight at the beginning, which expand as the story progresses and even go as far as Tom Cruise becoming one of the details of the Hong Kong decor. He sank. from the top of the tower.

JJ L’AMOROSO

The director does not deny the medium of which he was already one of the kings (Lost was released two years before the release of the feature film), nor does he forget that Mission: Impossible was born as a TV series. It is only natural that he pays homage to it with masks, a key element of the saga, and by re-introducing the concept of the chorus, somewhat set aside in the previous opus.

All in a film that resembles a long episode of Alias, both in its structure (we start at the end and return to the beginning, as in the pilot) and sense of rhythm, tense often renewed, but ongoing action, every time, out of necessity.

This resemblance to Aaliyah sometimes offends her, as does her somewhat choppy acting and unremarkable staging, which some have qualified as “television”At a time when serials were still considered a bad movie affair.

Admittedly, the notion of pacing aside, the film’s success is less about form than substance, a testament to the fact that JJ Abrams was a better screenwriter than director at the time. Casting Ethan as Sidney Bristow’s older brother, he turns the man into a spy, so the most memorable scene isn’t a bit of bravado, but a showdown between the hero and his nemesis, Owen Deviant.

He is played by the terrible Philip Seymour Hoffman, the latter is not an ex-agent or a carpetbagger, but “just” A trafficker who takes it very badly when he sees Ethan standing in his way and tries to repay him by touching his heart.

To this day, we don’t know what the famous rabbit’s foot was that the villain wanted to get hold of, because it was a MacGuffin, an excuse to advance the script, and which Hitchcock himself made a specialist. No, there was a real concern swirling around Julia: Is she really dead, as that chilling opening scene implied? Can the hero continue his work while ensuring his protection? Does he have the right to this simple happiness?

For the first time in the saga, the consequences of Ethan’s actions on his personal life are formed, and JJ Abrams plays with the concept of family, which very often appears with a series of contradictions: what the main character wants to discover with himself. A companion against him that he forms with Luther (Ving Rhames), Jean (Maggie Q) and Declan (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) on a mission.

Or the extended family of the IMF, which the traitorous John Musgrave (Billy Crudup) is trying to sell, and who will turn his back on the sound of his escape. “We are a family”The song was played over the building’s speakers by newcomer Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) to avoid any orders to capture the fugitive.

“Who are you? What is your name? Do you have a wife? A lover? Whoever it is, I will find it. And I will hurt him (…) and then I will. I will kill you in front of them”

Ironically, this scene marks the saga’s first (and so far last) foray into the premises of Ethan Hunt’s tenant, and this brief homecoming contrasts with what would become one of the hallmarks of the producer’s Mission: Impossible, namely this world tour that each has. The film takes.

The scenes (here the Vatican and Hong Kong, among others) become commercial bets aimed at promoting the brand, which was then celebrating its 10th anniversary in cinemas around the world. Each country visited then becomes a point of sale.

That’s the closest the movies have come to James Bond, and Tom Cruise’s character bore a slight resemblance to the man who would change his face a few months later and take on Daniel Craig.

Much more down-to-earth than John Woo, despite his high-flying training in Asia, the actor is not yet one to reproduce the exploits we’ll see born five years from now. This does not prevent him from impressing us when he passes under the wheels of a truck and explodes on the car in an explosion a few meters from it.

When he becomes legendary for crashing into a computer-programmed camera during a sprint (we’re talking about 33km/h at the top) or because of an unprecedented vulnerability in character. In that sense, JJ Abrams’ choice paid off in terms of Ethan’s development and the formula that will be the saga going forward.

Human after all

It should also be noted that the film was released less than a year after War of the Worlds, his last major feature under the great director. Without questioning the qualities of JJ Abrams, Brad Bird, Ed Zwick, Christopher McQuarrie or Doug Liman, the latter serve Tom Cruise more than he does to mold him into characters that say more about him than the roles behind him. which it disappears.

Between that time and since filming Mission: Impossible III, the star has been talking about her love for Katie Holmes to anyone who wants to hear it. What Oprah Winfrey’s couch still remembers is when she jumped in with both feet during one show, adding an unexpected stunt to her list.

The story centering on Ethan and Julia’s relationship echoes Tom Cruise’s personal life, even as it allows the first seeds of one of the most important aspects of his character to be sown: the romantic side. – The tragic hero. A saga that rejects the normalcy of a love story while proving capable of the world’s greatest exploits.

An acrobatics the star wouldn’t pull off, as the mission’s disappointing box office haul (grossing just under $400 million worldwide, the franchise’s lowest score) was almost the last when Paramount terminated the contract that bound them in August 2006.

Previous Episodes:

• Mission Impossible: When Tom Cruise first breathed on us
• Mission Impossible 2: When Tom Cruise rode a motorcycle under his feet

Next episode: When Tom Cruise made us dizzy