Mission: Impossible (film series)



Mission: Impossible is a series of action spy thriller films based on the television series of the same name, produced by and starring Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt.

The series follows the missions of the Impossible Missions Force's main field team under the command of Hunt, who is forced to take over after the team is betrayed from within in the first film. As such, the series focuses on Hunt as the lead character as opposed to the ensemble cast structure of the television series.

The series is the 18th-highest-grossing film series of all time with over $2 billion worth of worldwide gross.

Mission: Impossible (1996)
Ethan Hunt is framed for the murder of his fellow IMF agents during a Prague Embassy mission gone wrong and wrongly accused of selling government secrets to a mysterious international criminal known only as "Max". The action spy film was directed by Brian De Palma, and was produced by and starred Tom Cruise. Work on the script had begun early with filmmaker Sydney Pollack on board, before De Palma, Steven Zaillian, David Koepp, and Robert Towne were brought in. Mission: Impossible went into pre-production without a shooting script. De Palma came up with some action sequences, but Koepp and Towne were dissatisfied with the story that led up to those events. U2 band members Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton produced an electronic dance version of the original theme song. The song went into top ten of music charts around the world and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance. The film was the third-highest-grossing of the year and received positive reviews from film critics.

Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Ethan Hunt sends Nyah Nordoff-Hall undercover to stop an ex-IMF agent's mad scheme to steal a deadly virus and sell the antidote to the highest bidder. The film was directed by John Woo and starred Tom Cruise, who also served as the film's producer. The movie has strong thematic similarities with Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 spy thriller Notorious.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Ethan Hunt, retired from being an IMF team leader and engaged to be married, assembles a team to face a ruthless arms and information broker intending to sell a mysterious dangerous object known as "The Rabbit's Foot".

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
Ethan Hunt and the entire IMF are blamed for the bombing of the Kremlin. He and three others must stop a man bent on starting a global nuclear war.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)
The IMF agency comes under threat from the Syndicate, a near-mythical organization of assassins and rogue operatives who kill to order. Faced with the IMF's disbandment, Ethan Hunt assembles his team for their most difficult mission yet — to prove the Syndicate's true existence and bring the organization down by any means necessary.

Mission: Impossible VI (2018)
On July 24, 2015, a report surfaced saying Paramount Pictures is already developing Mission: Impossible VI. At this time, no cast members were officially set to return for the sequel, but Cruise will again be producing along with David Ellison and Dana Goldberg at Skydance Productions and J.J. Abrams at Bad Robot. On July 28, Tom Cruise confirmed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that a sixth Mission: Impossible film was being developed and will, it is hoped, begin production in 2016. On November 19, McQuarrie was being eyed for returning as director while Rebecca Ferguson began discussions of reprising her role of Ilsa Faust. By December 2015, McQuarrie announced that he will be returning to direct the sixth film and Ferguson will be reprising her role as Ilsa Faust as well.

Controversy
Some fans of the TV series were upset that Jim Phelps, team leader in the series, became a traitor in the first movie, selling the details of government agents to an arms dealer. Actor Greg Morris, who portrayed Barney Collier in the original television series, was so disgusted with the film's treatment of the Phelps character that he walked out of the theater before the film ended. Martin Landau, who portrayed Rollin Hand in the original series, was equally negative concerning the films. In an MTV interview in October 2009, Landau stated: "When they were working on an early incarnation of the first one – not the script they ultimately did – they wanted the entire team to be destroyed, done away with one at a time, and I was against that", he said. "It was basically an action-adventure movie and not 'Mission.' 'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there. So the whole texture changed. Why volunteer to essentially have our characters commit suicide? I passed on it. The script wasn't that good either."

Peter Graves turned down an offer to portray Jim Phelps in the 1996 film due to the fact Phelps was going to be revealed as an antagonist.

Change to theme song
The television version is in a rarely used 5/4 (5 beats to a measure) time and is difficult to dance to, as was proven by a memorable segment of American Bandstand in which teenage dancers were caught off-guard by Dick Clark's playing of the Lalo Schifrin single release.

The opening theme music for the first three films are stylized renditions of Lalo Schifrin's original iconic theme, preserving the 5/4 rhythm, by Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, and Michael Giacchino respectively by the films' chronology. Most of the versions included in the score also retained the 5/4 time signature.

However, for Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr.'s remix featured on the first film's motion picture soundtrack, the time signature was changed to standard pop 4/4 (4 beats to a measure) time to make it more dance-friendly, although the intro is still in 5/4 time. Also, the Limp Bizkit song "Take a Look Around" from the soundtrack to the second film was set to a similar 4/4 modification of the theme, with an interlude in 5/4.