With THE FINAL RECKONING On The Way, There’s One Villain Ethan Hunt Will Never Outrun
“I’m on the same side I’ve always been on. Stay out of my way.” – Dead Reckoning
Ethan Hunt goes rogue. If you needed to condense the plot of any of the famously convoluted Mission: Impossible films down to an elemental form, that’s as tidy a summation as is possible.
Ethan Hunt goes rogue.
He’s a renegade operative on the run from his own country for pretty much the entirety of the original Mission, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Dead Reckoning, while in 3 and Fallout he spends the first half of the film on the right side of the law before having to go off reservation for the second half. Even in 2, the only movie in which Ethan Hunt does not go rogue, get disavowed, and become a fugitive from his own government, he still disobeys the direct orders given to him at the outset of his mission, choosing to destroy the central supervirus he’d been commanded to retrieve.
It’s like he’s some kind of…maverick, or something.
Ethan Hunt not being able to order DoorDash without triggering an international manhunt makes more sense when considered in tandem with the Mission franchise’s series long distrust of any and all authority figures and existing systems of governance. James Bond deals with every megalomaniac with a volcano lair, but Ethan Hunt’s adversaries have always pointed more inward.
There’s been a Mission: Impossible movie in every presidential administration going back to Bill Clinton, but regardless of which way the political winds are shifting, the thesis of each film remains unchanged: The enemy is within.
The villain of the first film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of profit. The villain of the second film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of profit. The villain of the third film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of…engaging an arms dealer to orchestrate a false flag operation. (Can you guess which one of these was produced deep in the Bush years?)
Ghost Protocol is the closest the series ever gets to breaking from this pattern, with a villain who is more your typical spy movie madman with nuclear launch codes. But A) this character is noticeably the least interesting antagonist in any Mission movie (if not necessarily the actual worst in overall quality [hi, Dougray]) and 2) the dramatic thrust of Protocol is that Ethan’s efforts to stop this madman are endlessly complicated and thwarted by the same governments that should be supporting him. Because come hell or highwater, Brad Bird’s movie WILL be about how bureaucracies impede genius.
And then there’s the Christopher McQuarrie essayed back-half of the series, a four film saga where suddenly continuity exists and the wildly divergent aesthetics, tones, and conceptions of the main character are shoved together into a singular dramatic statement. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes…not so much.
Just what sort of world does McQuarrie envision surrounding Ethan Hunt? A broken one, quite frankly. In Rogue Nation, Fallout, and Dead Reckoning, the powers that be are utterly corrupted, their every office awash in circular firing squads of self-defeating conspiracies and masterplans. Rogue Nation eventually reveals that British intelligence organized and funded the splinter cell of former agents turned terrorist and then engaged in some more light quadruple-bluff backstabbing to try and cover up having done so.
Fallout brings the CIA’s malfeasance back into play, while Dead Reckoning pulls the scope back far enough to reveal the Director of National Intelligence attempting to curry favor with a homicidal AI to fashion a new world order (things get weird after six movies, what can I tell you).
The villains in the early films were entirely upfront about their mercenary motivations, while the baddies in 3 and Ghost Protocol at least give lip-service to their destruction being for the greater good. The McQuarrie saga’s original main threat, a terrorist sect of former spies now known as The Syndicate, followed the latter approach, claiming to wreak havoc in the name of overthrowing the awful systems that created the need for espionage and dirty dealings.
But by the time you get to Dead Reckoning, the men pulling the strings of the various conspiracies openly mock the idea of having an ideal. The purpose of amassing power isn’t to ‘do’ anything with it, it’s to HAVE it while others don’t. The good fight isn’t just lost, people think you’re an idiot for even trying to fight it.
In such a world, the Ethan Hunt we have come to know becomes the only solution. The more Cruise’s public persona has become uncanny and unknowable, the better suited Ethan Hunt is to his increasing role as not only a superspy, but the stop-gap who will intervene to keep the world on course even after all its leaders forsake their intended purpose.
We can’t trust in anyone or anything, but we can trust in Ethan Hunt (andtomcruise) to always be ready, willing, and able to climb a tall thing he shouldn’t climb or drive a vehicle off a tall thing he shouldn’t drive a vehicle off of if that’s what it takes to save us from our worst selves.
The original Mission: Impossible (which, it is easy to forget, is a nasty piece of work beneath its popcorn bluff) emerged from the same cultural moment that gave us the James Bond relaunch Goldeneye and John Frankenheimer’s masterful Ronin. All three films grapple with what spy-craft becomes in a world where the Cold War has been won, and the question of what happens to the soul-rotted, sociopathic living weapons now left without a war to fight or a cause to kill for.
Since then, the Bond and Mission films have continued to run parallel to one another while weaving similar narrative notions and real world geopolitical threads together (both 2004’s Casino Royale and 2006’s M:I 3 involve a superspy tangling with an international arms dealer engaged with terrorist plots). But while Daniel Craig’s 007 raged against the weary toll of his work, he remained dedicated to queen and country to the (very literal) end.
Ethan Hunt, though?
Ethan Hunt goes rogue.
