Mission: Impossible (film): Difference between revisions

* [[Rule of Cool]]: The films regularly chuck logic and physics out the window.

* [[The Spook]]: Kitridge in the first film has a nice monologue about how all the IMF agents are trained to be ghosts, such that even if they cut them off from agency support they can still operate with little concern. All of their most dangerous enemies are the same way.

* [[This Page Will Self Destruct]]

* [[Two Part Trilogy]]: In a surprising aversion, each film stands completely alone with only a bare connective thread between them. They have distinctive plots and have different directors, giving each film it's own "flavor" of sorts. As well each movie has a 4-6 year gap between them, which is very unusual with the common practice of 2-3 year ''maximum'' gaps for sequels.

* [[Double Caper]]: Basically the entire film: Jim Phelps' IMF team think they're shadowing a traitor in Prague who plans to sell the NOC list to an arms dealer. Only {{spoiler|it's actually a molehunt headed by Kittridge and a second team to expose a traitor on Jim's own team, the traitor is actually an IMF agent himself, and that "NOC list" is actually a tracking program to hone in on whoever tries to load it, with the real list safe at CIA HQ.}} Since Ethan is the lone survivor, Kittridge thinks he has his man. So now Ethan has to go rogue with a team of disavowed agents and get the {{spoiler|real and complete}} NOC list so he can expose [[The Man Behind the Man]] and true mole ("Job") and clear his name.

* [[Evil Elevator]]: Poor {{spoiler|Jack}}...

{{quote| '''Ethan''': This is Ethan Hunt. They're dead.<br />

'''Kittridge''': Who's dead?<br />

* [[Traintop Battle]]: The finale occurs atop a speeding TGV inside the channel tunnel. Unusually for the trope, they can barely move because of the enormous wind resistance.

* [[Unholy Matrimony]]: {{spoiler|Jim and Claire Phelps}}.

* [[You Look Like You've Seen a Ghost]]: Happens to Ethan twice. {{spoiler|And both of them were behind it all.}}

* [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle]]: The team successfully catches the mark possessing the NOC list and leaving to meet his buyer. {{spoiler|Then the team (sans Ethan) and the mark are killed one by one and the list is in the hands of the assailant.}} Only [[It Got Worse|the mark wasn't a mark, the list wasn't the list, and the mission wasn't a mission.]]

* [[Title Drop]]: When Ethan says convincing Nyah to go along with the plan to plant her with the [[Big Bad]] may be "difficult", his boss retorts that their assignment is not Mission: Difficult, it's Mission: Impossible, so "difficult" should be "a walk in the park".

* [[Typhoid Mary]]: {{spoiler|The villain's plans for Nyah; he even mentions Mary by name. Nyah, until the team arrives, plans to [[Heroic Sacrifice|kill herself]] to save everyone.}}

=== ''Mission: Impossible 3'' provides examples of: ===

* [[Action Film Quiet Drama Scene]]: Right after the rooftop-swing stunt.

* [[Air Vent Passageway]]: Ethan escapes the IMF headquarters via an air vent. The vent Ethan crawls out of is in a room with pamphlets for the Virginia Department Of Transportation, his cover job, implying that he uses that room frequently and either knows of -- or set up -- that opportunity, should he ever need it.

* [[Bash Brothers]]: Once Ethan brings Farris back up to cognitive shape using adrenaline in a syringe, they proceed to fight off the opposition in this manner (including Farris reloading Ethan's gun for him without any vocal communication).

* [[Big Heroic Run]]: One of the most impressive examples ever in ''III'', explicitly stated to be over a mile and done rather close to [[Real Time]] (he is running for several minutes).

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: {{spoiler|The "brain bomb" countdown used in the first act lets us know about how long Ethan has in the third act.}}

* [[Chekhov's Skill]]: A long-term example - Ethan's ability to lip read and his wife's training as a nurse comes in handy near the end of the film, then it shows up again in ''Ghost Protocol'' when Ethan finds out how badly injured he is at the Russian hospital.

* [[MacGuffin]]: The "Rabbit's Foot" is a classical MacGuffin, [[Lampshaded]] by the fact that nobody will ever tell Ethan what it actually is or does, although [[Simon Pegg]]'s character's cryptic speculation is almost better than a briefing. The only clue is a biohazard label.

{{quote| '''Benji Dunn''': ''It's interesting - I used to have this professor at Oxford, okay? Doctor Wickham, his name was and he was, like, this massive fat guy, you know? Huge, big guy. We used to call him - you know, well, I won't tell you what we used to call him. But he taught biomolecular kinetics and cellular dynamics. And he used to sort of scare the underclassmen with this story about how the world would eventually be eviscerated by technology. You see, it was inevitable that a compound would be created which he referred to as '[http://movieclips.com/gZeX-mission-impossible-3-movie-the-anti-god/ the Anti-God].' It was like an accelerated mutator or sort of, you know, like a, an unstoppable force of destructive power, that would just lay waste to everything - to buildings and parks and streets and children and ice cream parlors, you know? So whenever I see, like, a rogue organization willing to spend this amount of money on a mystery tech, I always assume... it's the Anti-God. End-of-the-world kinda stuff, you know. ...But no, I don't have any idea what it is. I was just speculating.''}}

* [[This Is Gonna Suck]]: A non-physical version when the team has to blow up the Lambo at the Vatican. Zhen doesn't like destroying such a nice car.

* [[Throw It In]]: One of the best shots of the third film came accidentally; when {{spoiler|Julia shoots Musgrave and he crumples to the ground dead}}, the briefcase containing the Rabbit's Foot was simply going to fall and open. However, the canister rolled perfectly towards the camera as it panned down and stopped with the biohazard label facing forward in dramatic fashion.

* [[True Companions]]: Ethan's team, who risk their careers and freedom to help him. Dunn in particular is a tech guy who works at IMF headquarters and even cracks that he hopes they share a cell together while helping him.

* [[Why Am I Ticking]]: Used to great effect

* [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle]]: The team successfully rescues Farris from her captors and finally escape the area via helicopter... {{spoiler|only the implanted bomb in her head goes off right before the defibrillator is ready to deactivate the bomb.}} Understandably, they are chewed out by their boss.

* [[Climb Slip Hang Climb]]: The adhesive gloves scene.

* [[Combat Stilettos]]: You know Sabine is about to get her ass thrashed when Jane kicks off her heels in a rare aversion of this trope.

** Later in the film, {{spoiler|an arms dealer explicitly does ''not'' tell Ethan where he can intercept the [[Big Bad]].}}

* [[Demoted to Extra]]: {{spoiler|Luther and Julia, allegedly due to budget constraints. Luther is essentially [[The Artifact]] at this point}}.

* [[Designated Girl Fight]]: Jane Carter has a grudge against Sabine Moreau for killing her previous team member. As has become the norm, when they fight it is less of a scratch and slap event and a lot more brutal.

* [[Even the Subtitler Is Stumped]]: [[Played With]]. After the Kremlin bombing, Ethan wakes up in a Russian hopsital with a concussion. He focuses on a local news report, and the movie displays helpful subtitles... in Cyrillic. They gradually resolve themselves into English as Ethan's faculties return.

* [[Everybody Owns a Ford|Everybody Owns A BMW]]: Many of the vehicles the characters use are BMWs. Unusually for this trope, many of them end up getting smashed rather badly. Fortunately, the [[Cool Car|i8 concept car]] used in India is not one of them.

* [[Foreshadowing]]:

** The phone booth console near the beginning of ''Ghost Protocol'' doesn't self-destruct until Ethan applies some [[Percussive Maintenance]], presaging the technical problems plaguing the IMF team throughout the movie.

* [[Hidden Depths]]: Brandt, who only reveals his training when the meeting with Sabine goes south.

* [[I Let Gwen Stacy Die]]: Brandt feels responsible for {{spoiler|Ethan's wife's [[Never Found the Body|death]]}} because it happened on his watch.

* [[In Medias Res]]: ''Ghost Protocol'' has this in two folds. The tail end of a mission is seen where an agent was killed and the package he was carrying stolen away, then it shows Ethan being broken out of a Norwegian prison, all before the opening credits. The complete opening mission is later shown in full including the contents of the package, and the exact reason Ethan was in a prison wasn't fully explained until the end.

* [[Inspector Javert]]: Anatoly Sidorov. Verges into [[Friendly Enemies]] when he finds Hunt contemplating a [[Trash Landing]]. His professional interest in his Eagleland counterpart's escape tactics overshadow his actual mission, and it's only after Ethan ''has'' escaped that he remembers his gun. He also shows up at the worst possible moment mid-film, {{spoiler|permitting Cobalt to escape without a glance.}}

** Unusual for this trope but not without precedent for the franchise, Sidorov casually gives up the chase once he realizes his target is innocent.

* [[It Got Worse]]: Repeatedly, from the very start of the film.

* [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]]: Jane Carter performs an impromtu... field interrogation by knifepoint in a flashback, although the results are not shown on screen.

* [[Lzherusskie]]: Averted. Anatoly Sidorov is played by Russian actor Vladimir Mashkov.

* [[Make the Bear Angry Again]]: The villain blows up [[Monumental Damage|the goddamn Kremlin]] to provoke Russia in a nuclear war with the US.

* [[Oddly Small Organization]]: [[Big Bad]] Hendricks/Cobalt has an organization that seemingly consists solely of himself and his [[The Dragon|Dragon]] ({{spoiler|and as it turns out, half the time [[The Dragon]] is simply Hendricks himself wearing a latex mask}}). He also hires an assassin and her men for one job, and kidnaps a scientist who's family he's holding hostage for another. Even counting the extended group, that's less than half a dozen people. Which makes sense, because it can be hard to find professional employees when your organization's stated goal is literally ''[[Omnicidal Maniac|to destroy the world]]''.

* [[Oh Crap]]: {{spoiler|[[Emotionless Girl]] Sabine openly panics when she realizes Carter, whose partner she killed, was running toward her with murder in her eyes.}}

* [[One Steve Limit]]: Subverted, slightly<ref>If only because one of them is only a disguise.</ref> Both the Russian general Ethan impersonates to infiltrate The Kremlin and the Russian agent trying to apprehend Ethan following its bombing are both named Anatoly.

** When Ethan busts out of the Russian prison, one of the guards says "yob t'voyu mat", which, literally translated, means "f*cked your mother" but is here used as a sort of generic "f*ck it" expression. A subversion - it is actually illegal (though practically never enforced) to say in Russia, but is included in the film, with the subtitles render it as "%@#!"

* [[Product Placement]]: ''Ghost Protocol'' has the team using iPads, iPhone 4s, MacBooks, driving BMWs, dealing with Dell servers (complete with otherwise pointless closeup), and drinking Dos Equis beer.

** Although in the case of Benji Dunn, he is still less competent than the rest of the group by far though he has passed his field test since the third film.

* [[Utopia Justifies the Means]] - Hendricks/Cobalt's excuse for trying to set off a nuclear war - he figures the survivors will rebuild a stronger civilization.

{{quote| '''Kurt Hendricks''': ''How will the world finally end? It is my job to predict the unthinkable. To treat the deaths of billions as a game. After 20 years of this, I was numb. Until a new question crossed my mind. What happens after the end of the world? Every two or three million years, some natural catastrophe devastates all life on Earth. But life goes on. And what little remains is made stronger. Put simply, world destruction is an unpleasant but necessary part of evolution. What happens then, I wondered, when mankind faces the next end of the world. I looked to Hiroshima, Nagasaki... thriving cities rebuilt from the ashes, monuments to the unimaginable, dedicated to the concept of peace. It occurred to me here that nuclear war might have a place in the natural order. But only if it could be controlled. Only if it touched every living soul equally. May there be peace on Earth.''}}

** In other words, Cobalt believes that a planetwide Hiroshima would initiate a permanent [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo]]. The question of his sanity is left open-ended (Brandt just thinks he is insane), but [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ccLG8JqY78 one] [[Deleted Scene]] makes him sound a lot less like a sociopath and a lot more like a man who's just broken from the stress of his job.

* [[Wolverine Publicity]]: That's what Anil Kapoor has been doing at public appearances in India and abroad, for his role in this film. Those who eventually saw the film, and his role in it, will have something to tell.

* [[Women in Refrigerators]]: Ethan Hunt was {{spoiler|in a Russian prison after he killed the Serbian nationalists who killed his wife}}, and the analyst with him {{spoiler|left field duty because he felt he failed his mission. In a subversion, it turns out her death was faked to protect her from any such attempts in the future; the Serbians only kidnapped her and died when Ethan went to her rescue.}}