The Birth of Ethan Hunt: The Story Behind Mission Impossible

During the time of the Cold WarEspecially in the 1960s, espionage stories in the world had a great heyday. That’s where the agent was born 007 or the CIPOL agenteven the avengers (nothing to do with Marvel) or the Santo (without allusion to the Silver Masked). In those times and for seven years, a series emerged that would revive in a huge way in the year 1996 thanks to one of the most popular actors of the time: Tom Cruise.

Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to take a journey back to the mid 90’s where Mission Impossible, as well as other types of stories of this nature, began to take their way in the world of cinema. Despite the successful return of James Bond a year earlier with Goldeneye, the team of Jim Phelps and company would take the big screen by storm at the hands of an experienced filmmaker like Brian DePalmagiving it an updated twist where the ravages of the Cold War would take their toll on the MFI.

After being nominated for an Oscar for Born on July 4 (Stone, 1991) and just before getting a couple more nominations, Cruise would embark on the path of film production, the adaptation of this television series being his first venture in that position. But, what was it that made this adaptation so popular that, almost three decades after it began its passage in the cinema, it is still so current and is one of the best action franchises of all time? For a young teenager, the impact of this mission stemmed from many factors.

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First of all, there was the fact of knowing the television series, because thanks to a ‘revival’ that it had at the end of the 80s, open television took the opportunity to broadcast repetitions of that legendary program in which the MFI always had a difficult mission that a team had to solve despite all the complications. Although it was not of a family nature, those late screenings of the show that he watched as a family would remain marked in the mind of those who write alongside other heroes as KITT the Incredible Car y Michael Knight or the adventurer MacGyver that with a single knife he could do whatever he wanted to always find a solution to his problems.

From there, the name of Jim Phelps, whose image of the talented gray-haired man played by Peter Graves, would be changed to Jon Voight in this first tape of the saga, it would always remain etched in my mind. However, one of the big changes that impacted many was making him a victim of the situation to make him the first villain in the saga. However, that was a brilliant move by Cruise, as the agent Ethan Hunt would come to replace that place to become one of those memorable characters in his career alongside Maverick of Top Gun.

The marketing was impressive but kept the mystery around the tape well. It was enough to show a fragment of a sequence that would become a reference in the cinema to know that Mission Impossible could repeat the success of another television adaptation released in 1993, the wanted. In the middle of a summer that she had presented great titles for the genre such as Independence Day; The rock con Nicholas Cage y Sean Connery; Tornado and his flying cows or The rescue con Mel GibsonWhat made this film special was a handling of the suspense over the spectacular sequences that felt quite true to that show.

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In fact, that’s how I connected with her. All that initial sequence, after the classic introduction followed by that catchy song composed by Lalo Schifrin reimagined over and over again, but keeping his characteristic ‘tururu tururu’ tremendously humable at any rate, which reminded me of those moments when I watched the series in family. But it was the fact that it was removed from the elements of the Cold War, making it more current and with an apparently failed mission that triggers all the conflict done very much in the style of the show that made this film something memorable.

From those minutes, DePalma’s game is perceived, correctly recruited by Cruise to direct this adventure of espionage and twists that is gradually being built. The other part was the characters. From that first team slaughtered to the one that Hunt forms to claim his name, names like Kristin Scott Thomasthe aforementioned Voight, as well as Jean Reno and the very Marsellus Wallace of Tarantino, that is to say Ving Rhamesthose who accepted that mission without knowing that it would be the beginning of a great phenomenon that continues to date.

Another success of this Mission Impossible was to get two members of the band U2, Larry Mullen Jr. y Adam Claytonoffered this update of the original theme of the series, just before the release of the album Pop and fresh from composing a song for Batman eternally. Added to this is one of the composer’s most bombastic scores. Danny Elfman after passing through The strange world of Jack and their collaborations with Tim Burton.

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But above all, it was the figure of an Ethan Hunt who could bleed, be hurt, and suffer damage beyond that halo of indestructibility around spies in the movies that set a brief precedent that caught my attention. With a slight air of the characters created by John LeCarre combined with Cruise’s talent and the hero’s vulnerability, which in a way paved the way for the arrival of characters like Jason Bourne and the action figures that could meet a tragic end or not be as hard to kill as in their glory days.

Curiously, the film also brings back memories of the explosion of the famous multiplexes, since this film had to be seen in what was the cinema with the most rooms at that time in the country, the recently released Cinemex Santa Fe, which had 14 rooms where capacity increased to project various films on billboards. However, it was a real pleasure to accept the mission and end up feeling those airs of tension together with a tape that, over time, would pass into the hands of various filmmakers who added to or experimented with the saga. But nothing like witnessing the rocky but risky birth of Ethan Hunt and the IMF. This text will self-destruct in five seconds.

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