Impossible Proves Where The Sequels Went Wrong

The first Mission: Impossible movie is a brilliant spy thriller, but the franchise stumbled in the next few years, because it didn’t pay close attention to what made the first movie special. Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible took some bold steps to differentiate itself from the TV show of the same name, and it ended up as the perfect way to start a franchise.

The Mission: Impossible franchise rebounded from its minor slump, but most fans place the later movies higher up in their personal rankings. As Tom Cruise’s franchise has found its feet, it has gotten better and better, but failing to learn from the best scene in the 1996 original almost killed Mission: Impossible before it could achieve its full potential.

The Langley Heist Sums Up What Makes Mission: Impossible So Great

Mission: Impossible’s Most Iconic Scene Is Unbearably Tense

Looking back on Mission: Impossible, it’s remarkable to see just how much the franchise has changed over the years. De Palma crafts a tense, moody spy thriller, which is a far cry from the explosive stunts and action set pieces that later came to categorize the franchise. The best scene in Mission: Impossible isn’t a fight or a chase sequence; it’s the Langley heist.

The script sets the stakes of the Langley heist perfectly, so that the actual sequence can play out in almost total silence. As Ethan is slowly lowered into the pristine white vault on wires, De Palma uses several intelligent tricks to ratchet up the tension to unbearable levels.

Silence and stillness do a lot of the heavy lifting in the vault scene, but De Palma adds in some unique flourishes too, which underlines how his hallmarks are all over Mission: Impossible. From the intelligent pacing of the scene to the tightly framed camera angles, it’s like a perfect short film.

The heist scene is a masterclass in tension, which is perfect for the kind of spy thriller that De Palma set out to make with the first Mission: Impossible movie. The action scenes are few and far between, as the movie gets most of its excitement from the mystery of the mole within IMF and Ethan’s personal mission to avenge his team.

The Sequels Forgot The Appeal Of The Mission: Impossible Movie

Mission: Impossible II & III Leaned Into Action Without The Same Tension

After the first Mission: Impossible movie, the franchise lost its way with the first two sequels. There are still some great moments in both Mission: Impossible II and Mission: Impossible III, but they don’t feel quite as tense, immersive or stylish as De Palma’s first movie.

De Palma turned down the opportunity to return for Mission: Impossible II, and he was replaced by John Woo. The Hong Kong director is known for his gripping action movies, like Hard Boiled and The Killer. While Woo is a legend in his own right, it’s fair to say that he’s a completely different kind of filmmaker to De Palma.

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Tom Cruise Climbing the Burj Khalifa in Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol

Tom Cruise’s Biggest Stunts In The Mission- Impossible Franchise

While Tom Cruise has been a household name for decades, in recent years, he has been praised for doing some of the craziest stunts you can think of in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

The shift from De Palma to Woo highlights the way that the franchise shifted from relying on tension to relying on action. The problem is that neither of the first two sequels fully adapt to this transition. Some of the action feels hollow and weightless, since the scripts don’t do enough work to establish the stakes and the motivations of each character.

It’s hard to imagine a scene like the Langley heist in either of the next two Mission: Impossible sequels. It’s a brave move to put such a slow, quiet scene at a pivotal moment in a spy thriller, but De Palma pulls it off. Neither of the next two sequels would have been able to include such a scene without it feeling completely out of place.

How The Mission: Impossible Franchise Got Back On Track

The Fourth Movie Struck The Right Balance

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol Tom Cruise

There are still some positives to take from Mission: Impossible II and Mission: Impossible II, but the franchise didn’t truly reach its potential until Brad Bird took on the directing duties for Ghost Protocol. The fourth movie set the standard for the franchise’s future, and each subsequent movie refined and one-upped the same formula.

Ghost Protocol works so well because it pairs its big action scenes with a script worth caring about. Not only are the chases and set pieces a step up from the previous two movies in terms of sheer excitement and audacity, but they are dropped in at the perfect moments. It balances plot and action without ever feeling too expositional or empty-headed.

While it commits to big-budget action, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol also manages to recapture some of the excruciating tension from the first movie, albeit in a completely different way. Ethan dangling from the side of the Burj Khalifa is a perfect example of this, since it’s incredibly tense, but it’s also more of a spectacle than the Langley heist.

Only when the Mission: Impossible franchise learned to pair exciting action with moments of painful tension did it strike upon the ideal blueprint. The following movies are much bigger, brasher and louder than the Langley heist, but they have the same key elements that make it so uniquely entertaining.