Mission: Impossible - Fallout

[Deck Rickard]

I don't think they will do that since they didn't do that in the fourth film. I think we all know about now that's the fate of another character in the film Deck Rickard.

Also based on those photos up above, some type of helicopter chase with two helicopters could be a lot of fun. I can't think of too many movies that have had that type of action sequence.

Wait... which character do you expect to die? Lane?

 

[TheVileOne]

Wait... which character do you expect to die? Lane?

Yes, Lane.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Yes, Lane.

That makes sense but there are other rumors that Lane is the mastermind behind everything.

 

[chamber-music]

Sean Harris who plays Solomon Lane hates the spotlight (even though he is an actor) and really wanted his character to die and not come back for any sequels.

Sean Harris was desperate to be killed off in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Sean plays Syndicate leader Solomon Lane, but director Christopher McQuarrie had to go against the actor's wishes when casting him.

"The funny thing was that Sean Harris did not want to be in this movie... He didn’t want to be in a franchise movie.

"He’s just not that kind of guy at all.

"And when I finally convinced him to be in it, the first thing he said to me is, 'Promise me you’ll kill me. Just don’t bring me back, because I don’t want to be in five of these movies,'” Christopher recalled to screenrant.com, adding that Sean kept begging the director to send his character to death.

Luckily Sean's arm was twisted and he eventually came to his senses, realising Ethan and Lane battling it out to the end wouldn't work for the storyline.

"And I said [to Sean], 'You’re right. We’ve just come to the same conclusion,'" Christopher recalled.

"And he just responded, 'What have I done?' At that moment we knew we weren’t gonna kill him."

I'm kind of surprised Harris even took roles in big franchise movies like Prometheus and Mission Impossible given his dislike of attention. Harris was interviewed at the red carpet of Prometheus and he really did not want to be there.

Given Cruise said the movie was about villains using much of the previous actions of Hunt's MI team against them I could see some wacky twist like Cavill's villain Walker being the son of Vanessa Redgrave's mysterious arms dealer Max from the first movie.

Vanessa Redgrave as Max

 

[Dark Raven]

If they had gone a more classic Mission Impossible series route, Cavill could've played Willy Armitage, the strongman of the team.

It's best they don't touch any other classic characters though after what they did to Jim Phelps.

 

[Mysteryman]

If they had gone a more classic Mission Impossible series route, Cavill could've played Willy Armitage, the strongman of the team.

It's best they don't touch any other classic characters though after what they did to Jim Phelps.

The Phelps betrayal could have been worse.
They originally approached Peter Graves, asked him to reprise his role as Phelps, He turned them down.

 

[Dark Raven]

The Phelps betrayal could have been worse.
They originally approached Peter Graves, asked him to reprise his role as Phelps, He turned them down.

And just as well.

Why did they have to make Phelps a traitor at all? If they wanted to make anyone a traitor, they could've used the Dan Briggs character from Season 1. Not many people care about him.

Or they could've left out Phelps entirely and made Cruise Rollin Hand. Or he could've even been a young Phelps.

 

[Loki882]

Peter Graves turned them down because of the betrayal nonsense. Greg Morris, who played Barney Collier on the show, actually walked out of the theatre before the movie even ended, he was that angered by the twist.

 

[Mysteryman]

Peter Graves turned them down because of the betrayal nonsense. Greg Morris, who played Barney Collier on the show, actually walked out of the theatre before the movie even ended, he was that angered by the twist.

I remember the Morris quote "I left early."

 

[Mysteryman]

One of the things that I never understood about the marketing of of the first Mission Impossible film is that in the final trailer, they clearly show Ethan fighting Phelps on the train.
All you have to do is freeze frame the trailer and the truth is there.

 

[TheVileOne]

Mission Impossible is more about giving Tom Cruise a cool action-adventure vehicle than honoring the original series. It's really been that way since the beginning.

It used to annoy me, but not so much anymore. Really since the fourth movie being so outstanding.

 

[Vaibow]

Imagine how Simon Pegg feels doing the rounds alongside the gorgeousness of Cavill, Cruise et al

 

[Mysteryman]

Mission Impossible is more about giving Tom Cruise a cool action-adventure vehicle than honoring the original series. It's really been that way since the beginning.

It used to annoy me, but not so much anymore. Really since the fourth movie being so outstanding.

Ghost Protocol was quite the movie indeed.

 

[Deck Rickard]

One of the things that I never understood about the marketing of of the first Mission Impossible film is that in the final trailer, they clearly show Ethan fighting Phelps on the train.
All you have to do is freeze frame the trailer and the truth is there.

Well, you need to consider that most people didn’t have access to the internet back then, allowing them to analyze movie trailers frame by frame. The only way people saw trailers those days was in the theater, or on a video rental. I guess you could pause the videos for closer inspection, but VHS wasn’t the highest quality.

The first MI needed to show the action to sell the movie, because there wasn’t much action in it, apart from what was shown in the trailer.

 

[Mysteryman]

My hope is for this film is that it might start in the past and and that we might see Jim Phelps recruit Ethan into the IMF.

 

[Loki882]

Mission Impossible is more about giving Tom Cruise a cool action-adventure vehicle than honoring the original series. It's really been that way since the beginning.

It used to annoy me, but not so much anymore. Really since the fourth movie being so outstanding.

Giving Tom Cruise a cool action-adventure vehicle isn't a problem.

Going out of your way to crap all over a character from the show, who was not only the leader but who's defining character trait was that he was a good/honorable man, by turning him into a psychotic traitor who murders his own team and dies in the end, for no good reason. THAT was the problem.

Simple fix, don't name that character Jim Phelps. Problem solved right then and there.

 

[Aximili86]

I never saw the original back in '96, probably only saw it sometime around the time MI:2 came out, but maybe back when it hit theaters it actually came as a pretty big shocking twist that worked in an objective storytelling sense?

Never saw the show, but from what I understand the team element that's been played up bigtime since MI:3 was a big part of it. So, they've come around on that, even if a little late.

Was there an Ethan Hunt on the show, out of curiosity, like a supplementary character? All I can think of is it might have been a pretty effective switcheroo in the '96 movie, like people familiar with the show would have obviously not seen it coming? It's definitely a pretty big "**** you" to the show, agreed, but also might have been smart in terms of a subversion of what was expected.

 

[Mandon Knight]

The film concept was orchestrated to adapt a 'franchise' for Cruise to 'head' as such, the Hunt character was specifically designed for him.

The show was a team ethic in how it conducted itself and having seen the original in cinemas in 1996, many of the people seeing it were seeing it for the Cruise star name rather than a M:I appeal as such, in terms of being fans of the original series.

The first film's team display is built from a deconstructed 'break them down-build them back up' point of view. Whether the view was to keep a few regulars on and build in sequels there on in, I'm not entirely sure, but the conclusion to the first makes it quite clear they want a sequel and who is going to be involved.

With WW box office of $457,696,359 and having the world's biggest movie star (then), could be argued now as well, I think the notion of seeing the original series as a template became more distant as time has gone on.

Unlike many franchises though, I think it deserves credit for not giving the audience the 'same' film with different locations, each has, to it's credit, tried to be a very different film in its own right.

 

[Dark Raven]

Giving Tom Cruise a cool action-adventure vehicle isn't a problem.

Going out of your way to crap all over a character from the show, who was not only the leader but who's defining character trait was that he was a good/honorable man, by turning him into a psychotic traitor who murders his own team and dies in the end, for no good reason. THAT was the problem.

Simple fix, don't name that character Jim Phelps. Problem solved right then and there.

This. If he had been anyone else, it would've worked and I would've been fine with it.

I was still even rooting for Jim Phelps over Ethan Hunt in that last fight on the train. Why? Because of all the years of following and caring for that character on the show. Why would audiences who loved the show suddenly want to root for Hunt, a completely new character? I was still hoping there would be another twist that would redeem Phelps. But sadly it wasn't to be.

I never saw the original back in '96, probably only saw it sometime around the time MI:2 came out, but maybe back when it hit theaters it actually came as a pretty big shocking twist that worked in an objective storytelling sense?

Never saw the show, but from what I understand the team element that's been played up bigtime since MI:3 was a big part of it. So, they've come around on that, even if a little late.

Was there an Ethan Hunt on the show, out of curiosity, like a supplementary character? All I can think of is it might have been a pretty effective switcheroo in the '96 movie, like people familiar with the show would have obviously not seen it coming? It's definitely a pretty big "**** you" to the show, agreed, but also might have been smart in terms of a subversion of what was expected.

There was no Ethan Hunt on the show whatsoever.

The closest thing to him was Rollin Hand, played by Martin Landau. He was the master of disguise and con man and had the same kind of role that Hunt might've had. Cruise could've just played that character instead.

And it was definitely a huge slap in the face to fans. It's like suddenly turning James Bond into the villain after all these years after introducing a new character no-one cares about.

Or in the reboot of Star Trek, if they turned Captain Kirk into the villain instead.

Or if we got a new version of Fantastic Four and it turned out that Reed Richards betrayed the team and was a murderous villain.

Phelps was incorruptible and he proved it many times on the show. Voight's version of Phelps was completely different in character and motivations. He was nothing like Peter Graves.

They could've just introduced Phelps later on in the Mission Impossible films if they wanted.

For me, the Mission Impossible films have only been worth following since the third movie. But even then, it didn't do certain aspects very well.

Ethan Hunt was trying to beat the information out of Philip Seymour Hoffman and wasn't getting anywhere with it. What an idiotic idea. In the series, this is typically what they showed in the beginning with someone else trying to get the information out of someone but failing miserably. That's when they would call in the Impossible Missions Force.

In the series, they would've tricked someone like PSH into giving them the information without him even realising. That was how clever the series was. In terms of their ingenuity and resourcefulness, the show was light years ahead. Their plans were so clever (and often amusing in that sense) that you couldn't help but cheer in the end when it was all revealed to the villain that it was a con.

And Ghost Protocol ripped off a scene straight out of a Mission Impossible episode with the two identical floors in a building.

The series also started using this theme from the series more since about the third or fourth film:

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But they've only done it in very small measure, probably because of licensing issues of only being able to secure a few seconds. In the series, it played all the time when they were carrying out their plans and putting things in place. They've never played it with this percussive, militaristic style in the films like in the series.

This Lalo Schriffin theme was almost as famous as his main theme tune music.

 

[DarkKnight88]

This. If he had been anyone else, it would've worked and I would've been fine with it.

I was still even rooting for Jim Phelps over Ethan Hunt in that last fight on the train. Why? Because of all the years of following and caring for that character on the show. Why would audiences who loved the show suddenly want to root for Hunt, a completely new character? I was still hoping there would be another twist that would redeem Phelps. But sadly it wasn't to be.

I'd agree if Jim Phelps was played by Peter Graves in the movie. But since he was played by Jon Voight, it was a re-imagining of the character so that connection to the character was only loose in that they have the same name. Since he was recast, it felt like a different character which is why it didn't bother me.

It wasn't like the movie was a sequel to the series ala Star Trek or anything.

 

[Deck Rickard]

I'd agree if Jim Phelps was played by Peter Graves in the movie. But since he was played by Jon Voight, it was a re-imagining of the character so that connection to the character was only loose in that they have the same name. Since he was recast, it felt like a different character which is why it didn't bother me.

It wasn't like the movie was a sequel to the series ala Star Trek or anything.

Yeah, this is pretty much how I feel.

And I'm sorry, it may make me a horrible person, but I get kind of amused at how much the Phelps thing still gets hardcore fans riled up. I can understand being angry at the time, but all these years later? Let it go. Watch the old TV series and ignore the films if it bothers you so much.

Now, I will concede that if they had done that to an adaptation of some TV show or comic book that I was a huge fan of back in the day, it probably would have bothered me. But I'm not sure I'd still be holding a grudge over it 20 years later.

 

[Aximili86]

Yeah, that's how it feels to me too. The movies aren't the same continuity as the show, they're a whole other thing. I guess it's understandable to hate that they did that to a character you grew up with, but given the context where it's spies and betrayal's a huge part of the genre, in a devil's-advocate way it's actually kind of cool that they did it, storytelling-wise. I imagine upon release nobody would have seen that coming.

It feels a little like someone taking issue with Craig's Bond being unrecognizable in a bunch of ways from, say, Moore's. It's the same character, but it's...not, too, y'know? Maybe Phelps in a cynical, post-modern Mission Impossible (the movieverse, or at least the first film felt that way with all the De Palma-isms) would go off the reservation over years doing that type of work. Not in the original series and its tone/feel, but with the world Brian was going for, who knows?

 

[Deck Rickard]

Yeah. And at the time, it was a pretty shocking twist because fans of the old show didn't expect them to make Phelps the villain.

And all these years later, you really have to give this franchise credit for keeping M:I relevant. Is it the most successful TV-to-movie adaptation ever? Or would that be Star Trek? I guess I'd have to compare box office figures and critical responses. Trek has had many more movies but they've had varying degrees of success, whereas I believe all the M:I films have been blockbusters.

 

[Mandon Knight]

Star Trek - all films - WW Box Office = $2,266,473,168 (across 13 films to date)

Mission Impossible - all films - WW Box Office = $2,800,369,451 (across 5 films to date)

 

[Deck Rickard]

Wow! Well, then. That settles it. M:I is the the winner by far. People can hate on Cruise all they want, but this franchise's success can be attributed primarily to him.