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How The Mission: Impossible Franchise Has Remained Popular
by Kevin Gardner
The Mission: Impossible franchise is a longstanding one, and any long-running series is bound to age over time. However, the general consensus of this venerated film series is that there hasn’t been a bad one in the bunch to date. However, there are still plenty of purists, for example, that hold the original film to be the metric against which the others are measured and inevitably found wanting. Either way, it’s worth taking a look at these to try and understand the lasting success and legacy of the Mission: Impossible franchise.
Consistency
An important part of creating a successful franchise is walking the tightrope between variety and consistency. The M:I series accomplishes this fairly well. While each film in the series has its own unique identity, they also offer up an experience that’s just comparable enough to its predecessors to feel like a natural continuation of the story and characters of that universe. The premise of the films is simply what the title implies, a very difficult and high stakes mission for Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team.
This setup is not unlike that of the television series from which it was adapted, although the TV series was more of a procedural show with an ensemble cast. That procedural element serves the film well, making the 007 comparison a natural one for people to make. The high tech and sci-fi elements, such as identity proofing technology and window-climbing gloves, respectively, are also a given for the franchise. The series is heavily associated with a particularly tense sense from the original film, one in which Tom Cruise’s character is dangling by a rope from a ceiling above a grid of laser sensors while trying to hack a computer. This kind of over-the-top, yet still tense, action set piece has become a mainstay for the series as a whole. Tom Cruise, the actor, has always been a major blessing to the M:I franchise. Despite being a more controversial celebrity in recent years, Cruise can nonetheless sell a franchise with his award-winning performances.
Variety
No series of films is immune to changes from film to film over time. Even the same staff will produce dramatically different content in different contexts, because people and circumstances change over time. However, it’s far more common to have the team working on each film be a largely, if not completely, different team than the one that came before it. Often, a director will bow out, at which point the argument can be made that the voice of the films must then change.
For example, the original film was directed by Brian DePalma, while the sequel was directed by John Woo. DePalma’s adaptation of the television series produced an iconic scene that has been parodied to death, while John Woo’s take on the franchise felt very much like a Woo film and wasn’t a great fit for the tone established in the original film with more contrived plot devices that offset the stunning action cinematography on display. On the other hand, J.J. Abrams provided the series with more character development for the protagonist, a bold move for procedural storytelling, but one that ultimately paid off the series. Meanwhile, extra attention paid to the narrative aspects of Abrams’ contributions is not mutually exclusive with iconic action scenes, such as the Burj Khalifa scene in Ghost Protocol, that keep fans on the edges of their seats. To beat all, the series’ most recent entry, Fallout, is one of the most highly regarded entries, often ranked just behind the original. Despite all of the variety the Mission: Impossible franchise has to offer, the films maintain steady and, more importantly, high critic and audience reviews.
The M:I franchise has not only remained in the public consciousness for over 20 years, it has also remained in a favorable light by providing above average films at worst and truly immaculate films at best. While every long-running property has its missteps, and Mission: Impossible certainly has, the M:I series has been able to provide much more value than mistakes.
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