Mission: Impossible (film): Difference between revisions

* [[Fan Service]]: It's remarkable how many IMF operations involve their female operatives wearing revealing cocktail dresses (especially noticeable in the third and fourth films). On the other side of the coin, Tom Cruise's physique usually gets some sort of exhibition, whether it's going sleeveless, or tight shirts, or both.

** Jeremy Renner joins in ''Ghost Protocol'', wearing very fitting suits, and doing a whole series of stretches and bends to accentuate his physique.

* [[Guile Hero]]: The team, like actual spies, tries to accomplish their missions with as little fuss as possible, preferring to infiltrate and deceive. While typically this goes drastically wrong, this is most notable ''Ghost Protocol'': during it Team Hunt expends ''less than ten rounds'' of ammo.

* [[Hero Insurance]]: In three of the four films, Ethan is forced to become a rogue agent and perform all sorts of criminal actions, but since he brings in the bad guy he's exonerated. (This is [[Played With]] in ''Ghost Protocol'' - he deliberately {{spoiler|leads the Russian spy to him right after he kills Hendricks so that his name will be cleared}}.) It might be also that IMF is an extremely secret organization, so much that the agents themselves don't explain everything they do to the agency, so Ethan is not acting entirely different than if he wasn't cut off.

* [[Impossible Mission]]: Were you expecting anything less?

* [[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.

* [[Theme Music Power-Up]]: During Ethan's jump onto the helicopter in the first film, and his escape from the Bare Island complex in the second

* [[Twofer Token Minority]]: One mixed-race woman has been on each of Ethan's teams since M:I-2 - Nyah ([[Thandie Newton]]), Zhen ([[Maggie Q]]) and Jane (Paula Patton).

* [[Unspoken Plan Guarantee]]: The final gambits of the first two movies.

** Krieger and Ethan share one when Krieger drops his knife down the shaft, thus revealing that they were in the vault.

* [[Pop Star Composer]]: The theme was rearranged by [[U 2|Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.]].

* [[Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome]]: {{spoiler|Jim Phelps.}} The cast of the original show along with its fans were most certainly not pleased.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[Contrived Clumsiness]]: An accidental-on-purpose spill is used to force a kidnapping victim into the bathroom, where he can be abducted through the vents.

* [[Cutting the Knot]]: The third mission has most everything set up as typical cloak-and-dagger style, but Ethan didn't have time to plan out a more complex escape method and so he just had to fight his way out.

* [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]]: {{spoiler|It doesn't work out, but give credit to Owen Davian. He has Ethan handcuffed to a chair in a hideout, has a gun, and has Ethan's wife bound and gagged as a hostage. He knows that after a quick interrogation, he'll be allowed to kill Ethan. Yet he still takes the time to implant an explosive charge in Ethan's brain just in case he escapes, which he does. Then he even leaves the hideout and goes to where Ethan's real wife is being kept, where he knows Ethan will go if he escapes, so in the event that an escape happens he gets the satisfaction of beating and killing a weakened Ethan in front of his wife. In hindsight it's almost as if he planned for Ethan to escape. However, he's just barely careless enough to get killed in the end.}}

* [[Hoist By His Own Petard]]: {{spoiler|Davian has Ethan confirm that the Rabbit's Foot is real by using the [[Latex Perfection]] Ethan has used throughout the series to threaten and kill "Jules".}}

* [[In Medias Res]]: Combined with [[How We Got Here]], the opening sequence of the third movie is one of the best scenes of the series. Note the subversion of the [[Action Prologue]]. No stunts, no explosions, and two or less gunshots, but the tension is ''higher'' than comparable scenes in most other movies.

* [[Jittercam]]: The camera jitters around quite a bit in action scenes and at few other tense moments, but stays still otherwise.

* [[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.

* [[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 Don't You Just Shoot Him?]]: Enemy soldiers in direct a UCAV... By surveilling the situation with a ''[[Sniper Rifle]]''. However: {{spoiler|they were trying to frame Ethan, and the rifle was presumably for point defense, not the distracting explosions they really wanted}}.

* [[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.

* [[Action Girl]]: Jane Carter

* [[Actor Allusion]]: Teddy Newton, one of [[Brad Bird]]'s friends and an artist at Pixar, makes a cameo as a voice over the phone that gives Ethan Mission instructions. He also voiced a literal phone in ''[[Toy Story 3]]''.

* [[The Atoner]]: {{spoiler|Brandt, to some degree. He has some personal demons regarding what he thought to be a mistake he made in the field}}.

* [[Ax Crazy]]: A possible interpretation of Cobalt:

* [[Spanner in The Works]] / [[Didn't See That Coming]]: {{spoiler|Trevor's death failing the mission in the beginning of the movie, Ethan not leaving without Bogdan in the prison, Wistrom showing up at the Dubai with someone that can see through the fake launch codes, and the nuclear missile being launched sooner then expected.}}

* [[Spiritual Successor]]: Numerous elements in the film parallel ''[[The Incredibles]]'' - nefarious diabolical plan, in-team arguing, paralleling action and a fondness for gadgets. It's done by the same director, [[Brad Bird]].

* [[Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome]]: {{spoiler|Revealed to have happened to Ethan's wife before the start of Ghost Protocol. But by the end of the film it turned out to be a subversion as Ethan faked her death to protect her from his enemies, and she appears alive and well in a brief cameo in the final scene.}}

* [[Symbology Research Failure]]: Of sorts--{{spoiler|:the bombing of the Kremlin consists largely of the obliteration of the actual geography of Red Square, Spasskaya Tower, and maybe some buildings on the edge of the Moscow Kremlin, but ''not'' the Grand Kremlin Palace, Kremlin Senate, or State Kremlin Palace.}} A news broadcast in the immediate aftermath displays this.