It’s hard to imagine theMission: Impossiblemovies withoutTom Cruiseas Ethan Hunt (despite not being a character fromthe TV show the franchise is based on). The solemn and determined character that seems to only exist when the IMF needs him to don a mask and go around the globe,barely surviving insane stunts to prevent worldwide catastrophetime and time again.In some ways, Hunt feels like a reflection of Tom Cruise himself: unrealistically intense and going to extreme lengths to provide entertainment before returning to solitude in between movie releases. So it’s only fitting, even if it’s hard to imagine,Hunt was once a cocky and arrogant hot shot just like Cruise himself.Over the 30 years of the Mission: Impossible franchise, Hunt has taken on many personas that the first one we saw him in seems entirely foreign, and it’s all because of what happened inMission: Impossibleback in 1996.
The First ‘Mission: Impossible’ Begins with Tragedy
Aside from being nearly three decades younger, Ethan Hunt is in a different place than what he’s recognizable as now. Rather than the sheer force of will that others can only follow behind, Hunt is just one person on a team alongsideKristen Scott Thomas, EmmanuelleBéart,Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė, andEmilio Estevezworking under Jim Phelps (Jon Voight).Hunt is brash and makes jokes about the coffee because he’s an energetic young man excited to be a super spy alongside his team. He has the confidence and swagger to suggest he’ll be fine with whatever comes his way. Hunt’s rude awakening is swift. However, whenan infiltration mission goes horribly, horribly wrong, with Thomas, Dapkūnaitė, Estevez, and Voight all dying brutally. After a marketing campaign that suggested these would be Cruise’s co-stars for this major summer blockbuster, the audience was shocked, right alongside Hunt, to see the team written off so quickly and violently.
The tone ofMission: Impossibleinstantly shifted, and this is reflected in the following scene. Hunt meets with IMF Director Eugene Kitteridge (Henry Czerny) to debrief, and he is no longer making jokes asking for a cappuccino machine.Hunt’s grave seriousness is born when he confronts Kitteridgeabout a separate team being at the same venue, only to realize the IMF was setting him and his team up to track a mole, which they now think is the only survivor: Ethan Hunt. In this moment, the movie goes from what could have been anotherTop GunorDays of Thunderfor Cruise and heightens the stakes from here on out. So when Hunt tells Kitteridge, “You’ve never seen me very upset,” it’s clear Hunt isn’t joking around.He is serious about avenging his team and will stop at nothing to do it.This trademark is what came to define theMission: Impossiblefranchise.
Ethan’s Loss Has Carried Through Each Mission: Impossible Movie
UntilChristopher McQuarrietook over, theMission: Impossiblemovies were each helmed by different directors with different, sometimes contradicting, takes on Ethan Hunt. He has a torrid affair withThandiwe NewtoninMission: Impossible II, steps into the leader Jim Phelps-role of a team inMission: Impossible IIIwhile trying to protect his new wife Julia (MIchelle Monaghan), only to be a loner again at the beginning ofMission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, having divorced Julia to never put her in harm’s way. As all over the place this may seem, the through line becomes a man not knowing how to fully recover, because losing his team was a loss of innocence for Hunt. He can only try to work with one or two people, as he does inII, or he can try putting it all to the side and live a normal life in the suburbs, like inIII.But what pulls him back into the fold at the beginning of that movie? The death of one of the young agents (Keri Russell) whom he himself trained.
Ghost Protocoltouches on it, butMission: Impossible - Rogue Nationfurther explores that Hunt is defined by his need to save the people he cares about because he can’t live with himself, knowing he may have been able to prevent it.Rogue Nationmakes it explicit that Hunt willneverlet anything happen to his friends. When Benji (Simon Pegg) is strapped to a bomb by Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) to get Hunt to give up a disc with unlisted fully funded bank accounts,Hunt reveals he memorized and destroyed the entire disc’sfull of routing numbers and the only way Lane can get him is by letting Benji go. That is how dedicated he is to ensuring his friend’s protection. As he says to the newly recruited Grace (Hayley Atwell) inMIssion: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, “I swearyour life willalways matter more to me thanmyown.”
Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Mission is to Save Everyone
InBlank Check’s episode coveringMission: Impossible - Fallout(the bestMission: Impossiblemovie), hostsGriffin NewmanandDavid Simsdiscuss how much of this particular entryputs Ethan Hunt up against trolley problem scenarios. The classic psychological exercise that asks if you could pull a lever to divert a runaway trolley from running over five people only to steer it towards one person, what is the right choice? After the loss of his team in the firstMission: Impossible,Ethan Hunt knows his answer. At the beginning ofFallout,he allows the terrorist group of Apostles to capture plutonium to prevent them from killing Luther (Ving Rhames), because he won’t choose between saving one life and millions. The impact of the loss forever influenced him to not only complete the mission,but make sureno oneon his team dies.In short, Ethan Hunt wouldn’t pull the lever, but he wouldn’t let the other five people die. Ethan Hunt’s solution to the trolley problem is toderail the trolley.Impossible, you say? Well, as Angela Bassett’s Erika Sloan (returning as President Sloan inMIssion: Impossible - The Final Reckoning)says in herFalloutdebut, “that’sthe job.”
Mission: Impossibleis available to stream on Paramount+
Mission: Impossible
An American agent, under false suspicion of disloyalty, must discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organization.
