D-2 before “Mission: Impossible 7”! To wait until the release, back to previous episodes. And today place at the fifth, the one in which Tom Cruise takes the plane in an unexpected way and reveals Rebecca Ferguson.
The release of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” is fast approaching. Finally, after many postponements due to COVID. To wait until Ethan Hunt’s return to the cinema, we invite you to come back to the previous opuses, from the style of the staging to the themes, through the highlights.
A booster session that continues with the fifth episode, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, where Tom Cruise performs one of the craziest stunts in the franchise and is upstaged by Rebecca Ferguson – SPOILERS ALERT!!!
By continuing what JJ Abrams set up in Mission: Impossible III, Rogue Nation is a continuation of the previous episodes on the narrative level, but also behind the scenes. Screenwriter of Valkyrie and Edge of Tomorrow, in addition to having officiated as a script doctor on Ghost Protocol, Christopher McQuarrie became Tom Cruise’s privileged partner during the 2010s, and established this status by directing him in Jack Reacher.
It was therefore not very surprising to see him chosen to direct Ethan Hunt’s new adventure. Specialist in thrillers, despite a few forays into fantasy and SF, he composes a more down-to-earth adventure than the previous one, where Brad Bird had tried to push the limits of the impossible.
For Christopher McQuarrie, it is therefore a question of bringing the hero back to earth after his exploits in Ghost Protocol… and the opening scene of Rogue Nation, which sees the actor take off at the same time as the plane to which he is flying. is hooked.
Out of nowhere, he appears as a superhero. A superman who came to save a badly embarked situation and capable of aerial exploits like this. An introduction that reconnects with the quasi-cartoonish side of Ghost Protocol, the better to move away from it later.
And establishes one of the rules of the director in the saga: this desire to evacuate as quickly as possible THE big stunt of the film, on which the bulk of the promotion was based, and then move on to serious things.
In addition to presenting us, on a vinyl, the mission that Ethan will have to accept as well as the antagonist, the following scene thus functions as a note of intent. Through the mouth of his hero, who claims to seek “classic” among the recordings offered to him, the director and screenwriter announces that he wants to reconnect with the spirit of the original series of the 60s and the spy films of the time.
Paramount Pictures France
Without denying the current technology to which it offers a place of choice, despite an astonishing quasi-refusal to integrate gadgets into the story. As if the human and the cogs of the plot were more important than the action in his eyes. “I’ve heard stories: can’t they all be true?”says a young recruit full of admiration when she meets Ethan in this same scene.
A question that can also refer to Tom Cruise and the crazy stunts he performs without an understudy, and to which the hero does not really answer, leaving his interlocutor the choice to decide between reality and legend, an opposition dear to John Ford in L ‘Man who shot Liberty Valance. A legend that Christopher McQuarrie undermines on several levels.
Physically to begin with, because the vast majority of action scenes end with the spy missing: grabbed by the package he had just picked up on the plane, his head upside down after having returned the car that he was piloting, head against the asphalt after a failed slide on the hood of the machine, his nose in the sand after a fall on a motorcycle, or even dead and resuscitated after a long session of apnea.
“Gentlemen, this is Solomon Lane. Mr. Lane, this is the IMF”
It is difficult for him to suffer more than in this scene which brings him closer to Jack Bauer, another agent who has come back to life more than once and is perpetually accompanied by death. And this physical challenge goes hand in hand with the more psychological one offered to him by the Syndicate, a group made up of dissident spies briefly mentioned at the end of Ghost Protocol.
But above all introduced in the 1966 series, to which McQuarrie pays homage by bringing it to the big screen and offering it a new leader in the person of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).
Like Ethan, of whom he is clearly the double negative, his reputation precedes him since the terrifying legend is presented to us before the man and his nasal voice. A former member of the British secret service, he obviously represents what the hero could become, driven by darker intentions and devoid of the family around him.
TO THE HAPPINESS OF THE DAMNED
A family in which we find the usual members (Benji Dunn, Luther Stickell and William Brandt) to welcome a newcomer, who is none other than the most interesting character in the saga after Ethan. Perhaps because she quickly reveals herself as his female counterpart, in addition to being incredibly badass and charismatic.
This is the aptly named Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who has sold her soul to the Devil by infiltrating the Solomon Lane camp to the point of no return. Like her American alter ego, a member of the IMF whom the CIA wants to arrest, she is officially part of MI6 but evolves like a free electron who follows her own plan, in order to reconnect with her life of yesteryear.
In a film where the term “Snape” of the title, which means as well “dissident” that “lonely”applies as much to the villain as to them both, who no longer recognize in any government, any entity.
Paramount Pictures
Ethan and Ilsa, two damned souls
Can only rely on each other, without giving free rein to their feelings because of the paths they have chosen to take, Ethan and Ilsa underline the dimension that is both romantic and tragic of that who is capable of climbing the tallest tower in the world and of achieving the most insane exploits, but nevertheless remains a man, mortal, frequently let down by his superiors and to whom happiness never ceases to be denied.
An aspect through which the greatest strength of Rogue Nation is embodied. Because if the action scenes are packed with an effectiveness that cannot be questioned, it is of course on the characters and their interaction that Christopher McQuarrie concentrates the bulk of his efforts. It is no coincidence that the most successful scene is that of the Vienna Opera, against a backdrop of “Turandot”which relies on Ethan and Ilsa’s choices in what forms the pivot of the narrative.
An absolutely brilliant sequence in its way of managing the tension, until the gunshot which sounds like a release, and thanks to which McQuarrie pays a beautiful tribute to The Man Who Knew Too Much by Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker who never no longer inspires those of the saga launched in 1996 when we also think of the Chained in the face of the relationship between Ethan and Ilsa. And not just because Rebecca Ferguson is Swedish like Ingrid Bergman was.
With a direction less spirited and more pragmatic than that of Brad Bird, Christopher McQuarrie speaks about his love for detective cinema of the 50s and 60s, playing more on suspense than tension, despite a few facilities and shortcuts that tarnish the film a little. overall opinion. And by putting the characters before the action in a story with timeless accents.
Hence this anti-spectacular finale, which relies entirely on the staging and editing, and marks the resurrection of the IMF, confirmed in the final sequence, at the same time as the fall of Solomon Lane. Trapped in a bulletproof cage, he witnesses the triumph of Ethan and his values, but the hero’s victory is not complete.
Because he cannot follow Ilsa, now free after having played her role with the Syndicate, and the embrace between the two protagonists seems like a meager consolation for the one whose life seems eternally linked to espionage and its dangers. And even if the “You know where to find me” spoken by Rebecca Ferguson sounds like a note of hope, leaving in 2015 the door open for a future comeback.
More classic than its predecessor, while aging a little better, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation confirms the good form of the franchise and its status as a field of experimentation for filmmakers, even if Tom Cruise seems to have drawn a line under the idea of hiring great directors like Brian De Palma and John Woo at the time.
This does not prevent the episodes from showing many qualities and it is more through the script, his basic profession, that Christopher McQuarrie imposes his mark. Visibly satisfied with an opus which brought in $682.7 million in revenue worldwide (third highest score in the saga pending Dead Reckoning) while giving his character a more human side, the interpreter of Ethan Hunt will soon know where to find the director for the next one.
Previous episodes:
- Mission Impossible: when Tom Cruise took our breath away for the first time
- Mission Impossible 2: When Tom Cruise rode a motorcycle without his feet
- Mission Impossible 3: when Tom Cruise faced the best villain of the saga
- Mission Impossible 4: when Tom Cruise made us dizzy
Next episode: Mission Impossible 6: when Tom Cruise was doing his stunts in Paris