Paramount’s getting serious about the “Mission: Impossible” series.
It’s about time.
Since the series was brought to the bigscreen in 1996, it has been focused entirely on Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise. He hasn’t had a consistent team in place from film to film, and the stories have all been freestanding, with little or no continuity of any import.
The first film, directed by Brian De Palma, is a lot of fun, with some great De Palma style (i.e. borrowed and polished) set pieces and a subversive streak. After all, the film made Jim Phelps, the hero of the original ’60s series, the film’s villain and then killed him off. That’s not the smartest move in terms of pleasing a fanbase, but it is pretty ballsy.
The second film, by John Woo, is a flat-out catastrophe, playing more like a Mad magazine version of a John Woo film than like the real thing. I think this was pretty much the nadir of the Hollywood career of John Woo, and a shameless ripoff of Hitchcock’s “Notorious” by Robert Towne, whose screenplay is the work of a once-great writer who genuinely couldn’t care any less.
The third film, directed by JJ Abrams, was slick and fun and played with the idea of grounding Cruise with a team around him, and for the most part, the film worked. Philip Seymour Hoffman made a radically different type of villain than in many films, and a very good one at that. It didn’t really set the genre on fire, but it didn’t have to in order to redeem the series. Really. “M:I 2″ is that bad.
So where does that leave the series now? According to a report published last night in Variety, the biggest move the studio is making is hiring Jeremy Renner. Makes perfect sense on a couple of levels. First, the actor is already signed to join the cast of “The Avengers” as Hawkeye, so why not make sure to shore up his credibility as an action lead in the meantime? And the idea appears to be that Renner will be a co-lead with Cruise here, not a subordinate. His character is going to be the guy that Paramount can hand the franchise to if they decide to write Cruise out after this.
It’s equally interesting to hear that they’re considering a title that doesn’t even feature “Mission: Impossible” in it. I’m not sure how that would work, since I don’t think the general public remembers Ethan Hunt’s name, and the only real hook to the series appears to be that title. Still, you gotta give Paramount credit for a general willingness to shake things up.
How about this, Paramount? Kill Ethan Hunt if you’re ready to hand off the baton. Make sure his
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