Mission: Impossible - Fallout — How Tom Cruise sets his action franchise apart from other movies in the genre

Twenty-two years — that’s how long it’s been since Brian De Palma made Mission Impossible. The makers of that film knew they had lit the fuse wire (come on, play the theme) on a major franchise, but I certainly did not. Catching it on TV, I knew it was outrageously entertaining, a guilty pleasure, especially the stunt involving a train and a helicopter in a tunnel. I also tremendously enjoyed the scene in which Tom Cruise, herein called Ethan Hunt, hangs suspended from a wire at a CIA facility, but I had no clue that it would turn seminal. I knew the theme music was attractive, but I was ignorant about the element that would make film buffs play it in loop to this very day. Today, five films later, the MI series is arguably the best in the action movie genre. At least, it is the most complicated, enduring and influential. And, let’s not forget the mask play.

Now, ahead of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, all one hears about is of the High Altitude Low Jump (HALO) and how Cruise did it, at least in part, in person (without using doubles). We hear how an injury (not related to HALO) kept him off the sets for nine weeks. Still, Cruise returned after seven weeks, pumped up to shoot.

I was lucky enough to catch Mission: Impossible 2 in the theater. Even then, I was hoping that it was the last we heard of the spy from the fictional Mission Impossible Force (IMF). Wouldn’t Cruise, the biggest fish in the Hollywood pond, have a wide selection of lures and baits to choose from? I remember sitting in Chennai’s Satyam Theaters wondering why in God’s hell did they decide to make the love story between Hunt and Nyah Nordhoff-Hall (Thandie Newton, nowhere in the picture now) such a central part of the movie. Having Hong-Kong-based John Woo as the director does have such an effect on any movie, I guess. I have to admit that I found myself quarreling with what was on screen — and how the impossible part of the stunts was what brought audiences to theaters (weirdly, it hurts a little less when you watch it the second time around).