How Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble set the blue­print for the mod­ern actioner

In the last two decades there have been two Bonds, three Bat­men, two Jack Ryans (with a third on the way) and a whole host of Sher­locks. Even Jason Bourne was tem­porar­i­ly reas­signed. In all that time, how­ev­er, there has only been one Ethan Hunt.

Cur­rent­ly cel­e­brat­ing its 20^th anniver­sary, Bri­an De Palma’s first Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble film fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the way we look at action movies, and Tom Cruise, for­ev­er. For view­ers of a cer­tain age, the words ​‘Mis­sion Impos­si­ble’ are syn­ony­mous with Cruise, evok­ing images of the now 53-year-old scal­ing sky­scrap­ers, hang­ing from ziplines, and gen­er­al­ly defy­ing the odds. But it wasn’t always this way.

When the film was announced, both the title and the icon­ic theme tune were asso­ci­at­ed with the pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion, the Amer­i­can TV series star­ring Peter Graves, Bar­bara Bain and Mar­tin Lan­dau which ran from 1966 to 1973. With the show still clear in the minds of those who had grown up with it, and orig­i­nal cast mem­bers con­demn­ing the project, Cruise and co faced a dif­fi­cult task in reboot­ing Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble for the big screen. Fit­ting­ly, the film was a mas­sive suc­cess, break­ing box office records and ush­er­ing a new era for the Hol­ly­wood blockbuster.

Enlist­ing De Pal­ma as direc­tor, the film had all the hall­marks of a tra­di­tion­al action movie: thrilling face-offs, big explo­sions, even big­ger stars. More impor­tant­ly, it also had a brain. The film’s plot is its most con­tentious ele­ment, with many crit­ics at the time brand­ing it over-com­pli­cat­ed, but at the very least it was a rare moment of com­plex­i­ty in an oth­er­wise straight­for­ward and stag­nant genre.

The first half of the ​’90s saw a spate of action movi­et that, while pop­u­lar, weren’t exact­ly tax­ing. Speed, Under Siege, Cliffhang­er and The Last Action Hero were vari­a­tions on a theme, while oth­er ​’96 releas­es Inde­pen­dence Day, Twister and The Rock won audi­ences with super­fi­cial charm rather than emo­tion­al depth. Cruise and De Pal­ma brought along an intri­cate tale of an agent framed for the mur­der of his team, mix­ing Hitch­cock­ian ten­sion with breath­less action sequences and a headache induc­ing num­ber of twists. The film’s suc­cess opened the door for a more intel­li­gent breed of action hero, as reliant on intel as he was pithy quips. Char­ac­ters like Jason Bourne and lat­ter-day Bond owe a great deal to Mis­sion: Impossible.

While its cul­tur­al impact was sub­tle, the change it made to its star’s career was colos­sal. After Top Gun made him a house­hold name in 1986, Cruise spent the next decade con­scious­ly avoid­ing action movies, favour­ing grit­ty dra­mas like A Few Good Men and Born on the Fourth of July. Ethan Hunt offered some­thing more seri­ous, an inten­si­ty that matched the actor’s own.

There were no catch­phras­es, no esca­lat­ing body­counts and, cru­cial­ly, no stunt­men. Lack­ing the stature or physique of an action star was no longer an issue, because audi­ences could see that it was real­ly him dan­gling above that enor­mous secret com­put­er. In an indus­try rapid­ly giv­ing over to com­put­er effects, Cruise was the real deal. Twen­ty years and four sequels (and count­ing) lat­er, he still is.