Mission Impossible 3 Saved The Entire Franchise

Say 12, and we have two hours before they kill my wife. Are you in or not? Here's what we know about what you're seeing on screen. We know that Tom Cruise is going to jump off of the top of this skyscraper. What we don't know is that he's going to sprint off the roof into the sparkling Shanghai skyline, with the camera following him in a dizzying crane shot that, well, is pretty much unmatched. This is exactly the sort of spectacle we've come to expect from a Mission Impossible movie. But this isn't why Mission Impossible 3, that thing on your screen, is possibly the movie that saved the franchise and made it iconic today. In fact, Mission Impossible 3 may be the least memorable of all of the movies in the series, but also the most important. Two things that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. This is the movie that switched directions from two director-driven Mission Impossible movies, for good reason. Without three, the entire franchise would be nothing, near the hugely successful series it is today. And it was saved in the very first scene of the movie. So you start with Tom Cruise, Ethan Hunt, tied to a chair while Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian threatens to shoot Ethan's wife. We didn't even know Ethan had a wife. The last time we saw him, he was headed off on a romantic vacation, well, right about here. Anyway, our villain here wants Ethan to give him something called the rabbit's foot. Where's the rabbit's foot? Wait. What? What are you saying? That wasn't it? It starts counting to 10. We see Ethan go through a range of emotions, from bargaining, to threatening, to finally pleading. Please, don't do this. Just let her go. We've never seen Ethan like this before. Never desperate, never helpless, and certainly never with the life of someone he loves hanging in the balance. We're finally getting to see Tom Cruise use, well, some of his acting chops. He's no longer the silent, super cool, neo-esque superhero of MI2. Instead of always running, he now gets to emote. At the end of this unforgettable opening, our villain pulls the trigger, killing Ethan's wife, Julia. Ethan loses. Talk about a great way to hook you into a film, and a perfect microcosm of what's so essential about its effect on the rest of the series. So how did all this happen? For that, we need to go back to the beginning. The first MI movie was directed by Brian De Palma, who got to stretch his flair for dynamic camera work and split-screen editing throughout the runtime of this film. MI2 was made by John Woo, who never fails to put in fantastical fight scenes and some slow motion dubs. Between The Jousting Motorcycles and Operatic Tone, MI2 is a blast, but at times feels closer to a more eccentric Bond film. But despite the idiosyncrasies of the two, both films managed to be wildly successful. Ever the perfectionist, Tom Cruise, as both producer and star, struggled to find the right story and director for the follow-up. This trilogy seemed impossible until Cruise settled in for some TV time and discovered Alias, JJ Abrams' hit show filled with spy hijinks and hugely emotional character moments. Inspired, Cruise and Abrams got together to work on a more character-driven installment, a clear rebuke to the theatrical excesses of MI2. Gone were the slow motion dubs, and in was Ethan's personal wife. He's got a fiance, a house, and even a dog. It also introduced Simon Pegg's Benji to the team, making the IMF trio of Ethan, Luther, and Benji the core squad that will remain throughout the remaining installments. So yeah, there's a lot to love in MI3, including the aforementioned Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain. Hoffman gives the character real, cool, calculated menace. He's hands down the best villain in all the series. At least in my personal opinion. Can you even remember the bad guy in Ghost Protocol? Yeah, here he is. So now we've got the team and the villain, and now what Abrams needed was, well, motivation, purpose. And he did this by making an intensely personal story, showing us a more vulnerable side of these characters, more particularly, Ethan. Ethan's first mission in the movie is to rescue Keri Russell's Lindsay Ferris, an agent he helped train and someone he had a personal relationship with. Right off the bat, Mission Impossible 3 is doing something different. These missions aren't solely about saving the world for the first time. They're also about Ethan helping his friends and family, people he feels a responsibility towards. Which makes it all the more painful when we see Lindsay die in a particularly gruesome way when the explosive charge in her head goes off, despite Ethan and company frantically trying to do everything they can to save her. Things like this allow the audience to connect with Ethan on a level that we previously couldn't. One that makes all of the explosive action actually matter. Keeps the entire franchise from being, well, just an exercise in directorial excess. This more emotional storytelling would pay off in Ghost Protocol when we meet up with a more damaged Ethan, who's living apart from Julia after he helped fake her death and can only watch her from afar, knowing that's the only way to keep her safe. A plan which, of course, goes awry in Fallout, when in the climax of that film, villain's bomb just happened to be at the same UN relief site where Julia is working. This leads to a great scene between Julia and Luther working together to defuse that bomb and checking in on Ethan. A scene that wouldn't have been possible without the foundation that Mission Impossible 3 laid. There's also a small detail in part three that pays off in Fallout, where Ethan is trying to confirm that Julia's alive over the phone. He asks her to identify their favorite lake. There was a lake near the mountain. What is the lake called? And then three movies later in the opening sequence of Fallout, we see Ethan and Julia getting married at the same lake. A romantic moment until a nuclear explosion goes off. Which is still Mission Impossible, after all. So for now, Julia represents the life that Ethan couldn't have. It makes Ethan human and not just a man who wears a mask and jumps off buildings. Back to, obviously, MI3. But despite all of this, Mission Impossible 3 is still fun. There's an exciting heist at the Vatican that's followed up by the team celebrating in a speedboat, another mission trope that will repeat in Fallout. Point being, through all of the emotional foundation, nothing was taken away from what the series was always built to be. Action. See, in the previous two films, the actual missions were mostly nonexistent. MI3 takes a turn, and the missions become more exciting and fun for the audience to enjoy their substance there. So where the emotion gets played outside of those missions, and sometimes in them, what MI1 and MI2 lacked was logical foundation that MI3 helped provide for the actual action itself. So in MI3, while Tom Cruise doesn't risk his actual life for our amusement, that wouldn't really start until Ghost Protocol, the emotional bones of the character and the logical realities of the missions that are actually being undertaken are grown right here. MI3 is actually the lowest grossing installment of the franchise, which is obviously ironic. But without it, we wouldn't have the later movies, which are only getting bigger, crazier, and in some ways better. So yes, the first two movies had a style that, at the time, seemed unmatched. And the later ones had some of the best stunts ever put to film. But this third little middling movie was the perfect transition for a franchise finding its footing, almost like the pilot of a TV show. Sure, they're usually not the best episode, but they set the tone, showing what the show is supposed to be capable of. It just so happens that here we get this weird mid-series backdoor pilot. Mission Possible 3 showed that by making the movies more emotional and infusing them with personal stakes, they could reach higher heights. And that's really important in general. The thing that keeps these franchises alive, whether it's Fast and Furious, or Mission Impossible, or Pirates of the Caribbean, is emotion. At the end of the day, that's what we watch movies for. Even if sometimes that emotion is thrill or horror, it is still emotion. No amount of action can make up for the fact that in the first Transformers movie, there's not a lot of heart. Sure, talking robots are great, but what happens when the humans talk? See, there's a reason that from a filmic perspective, those movies aren't held to the same standard as modern Mission Impossible movies, or even the Fast and Furious movies. There's a reason that those franchises thrive and survive, and ones like Transformers continuously get rebooted. It's because when you're missing the key element of being human, well, your art is missing the key element of what art is supposed to be. We are, by default, emotional creatures. So, well, by default, your art should be, too. Today's sponsor is Upstart. As a lot of you know, I have a pretty heavy investing background. A lot of us come out of school, myself included, and end up in credit card debt. Upstart helps you take control of that, which I think is really unique. If you have multiple credit cards, you're trying to track multiple balances, due dates, Upstart makes that simple with one monthly payment in one place. With just a five-minute online rate check, you can see your rate up front. 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