With Tom Cruise’s reckoning upgraded to “final” in the imminent instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, it seems a strong probability that the curtain is about to fall on cinema’s leading daredevil. Unless his Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt expires mid-battle like 007 in No Time to Die, it seems likely the character will be gracefully retired. Cruise, now 62, can’t reasonably be expected to suction-cup himself to landmark architecture for much longer. Which begs the question of his IMF colleagues: what to buy the departing espionage hotshot? There’s always the trusty carriage clock (fitted with disarmable neutron bomb, just to keep his skills ticking over).
The office comparison isn’t just fanciful. Along with envelope-pushing stunts and concierge-class glamour, part of the reason for the Mission: Impossible franchise’s resurgence over the last 15 years is something far more relatable: how it reflects modern office dynamics. Compared with lone wolves Bond and Bourne, the series was always more of a team endeavour, rooted in the collective ethos of the 60s TV series. Since 2011’s fourth film Ghost Protocol, Hunt’s collaborators have stabilised into a dependable unit: the stalwart Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) present since the original 1996 reboot, wisecracking techie Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), rogue MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and, to a lesser extent, Jeremy Renner’s analyst/agent.
Hunt’s posse can invariably be relied upon to drum up a very identifiable brand of workplace comedy as they labour to project-manage whatever impossible situation they are tasked with. “This very conversation is an act of treason,” says Stickell at the start of 2023’s Dead Reckoning. “Or, as we call it, Monday,” quips Dunn. Their characterisations map neatly on to stereotypical office roles: voice of experience Rhames is the work BFF, on hand with sage counsel when the inevitable hits the fan; Pegg is the chirpy IT assistant and – also out in the field since Ghost Protocol – beta-male foil for Cruise’s heroics.
Naturally, there are office romances – or at least hints of them. With Ethan Hunt’s wife mostly sequestered since the third film, he’s been free to engage in mild flirtations with a number of what you might call “work rivals”: woman of ambiguous morality and allegiances which seem to encroach on his goals – but, like Ilsa Faust, they sure look good touting a high-calibre rifle in a saffron cocktail dress. Often, as with Thandiwe Newton in the second film, Vanessa Kirby in the last two, and Hayley Atwell in Dead Reckoning they are thieves or fences; in work terms, out to steal Hunt’s business.
And then there is Hunt himself: the ultimate company go-getter, indisputably client-facing and front office where his colleagues have the dread back-office taint about them. Master of the art of the calculated risk, he exudes the main character energy that only fleetingly splutters in most of our working lives. Who among us, in the words of Hunt’s CIA boss in Rogue Nation, hasn’t wanted to be the “living manifestation of destiny” when requesting that pay rise?
Mission: Impossible’s team-espionage dynamic has proved influential, with spy films now often looking like the new office comedies. Bond recalibrated in its wake, assigning more active roles for Moneypenny and Q from Skyfall onwards. At the same time as Mission: Impossible borrowed Fast & Furious’s sense of one-for-all solidarity, the latter franchise has pivoted away from pure petrolhead adrenaline to something closer to an international spy jolly. Guy Ritchie has bet heavily on spook ensembles in The Man From UNCLE, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. And the format continues to proliferate – in the likes of the Kingsman franchise, and Netflix’s Heart of Stone and Lift. All because they couch clandestine realpolitik in familiar terms: breezy capers of camaraderie on a deadline.
Concealed behind Mission: Impossible’s sexy conspiracies is the great corporate conflict of the era: between the siloed national interests of the 20th century and the great supranational organisations that increasingly rule 21st-century life. Whether it’s Russian goons in Ghost Protocol pursuing Hunt after he infiltrates the Kremlin, or the CIA kill squad tailing him in an airport in Dead Reckoning, the former are generally portrayed as buffoons – always one step off the pace.
They are the envoys of out-of-touch bosses – such as Alec Baldwin’s CIA honcho, who testifies against the IMF and Hunt at a Senate committee at the start of Rogue Nation – whose parochial mindset means they can never grasp the need to flamboyantly impersonate Russian generals and recklessly endanger civilians in extended car chases. They are the forces of conservatism and, an even worse crime in the Mission: Impossible universe of seamless excitement, boring cynicism. “Killing to keep things as they are”, in the words of Rogue Nation’s villain Solomon Lane, a disaffected former MI6 operative.
These patriotic throwbacks frown on the radical methods of the supranational IMF – which, like many a global corporation, operates with a borderless, legally nebulous remit (though it is nominally answerable to the US president). But there’s an inherent fascism in omnipotent, unaccountable outfits, something tacitly acknowledged by the series in rigging up equally supranational enemies that are mirror images of Hunt and co. First there’s Lane’s terrorist super-group, the Syndicate; an “anti-IMF” born out of UK government over-reach in attempting to create an extra-judicial agency. And to close Cruise’s tenure, there’s the rogue AI the Entity. Hoovering up national intelligence databases, deploying flesh-and-blood people like pawns, it’s essentially Elon Musk’s ego in blockbuster form.
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This national-supranational tension is the corporate-suite backdrop to Mission: Impossible’s supercharged parody of office politics. Dedicating his life to black ops, constantly going rogue, regularly endangering his team with high-stakes risk-taking, Hunt seems to belong to the new amoral space beyond oversight; the breathable air in which modern digital business is apparently conducted. That is Hollywood blockbuster double-dealing for you: letting the protagonist indulge in a multitude of sins, while offering up cautionary warnings through the villain.
How Mission: Impossible squares this circle is by ensuring that the supranational maverick Hunt remains a people person. In fact, increasingly so as the series has worn on: the more dead-eyed terrorists and faceless AI target his teammates, the harder he busts a gut to protect the human element of his operation. Cruise has become sentimental in his old age, with “friends” becoming the franchise catechism uttered with almost the same brain-numbing frequency as “family” in Fast & Furious. True friendship can only exist, the series seems to say, in response to the anonymous and rootless modern business climate.
In real life, the actor also pins his colours to team humanity – infallibly committed to physical stunt-work and championing the communal theatrical experience over streaming. But while the Entity will surely submit to Cruise control in Dead Reckoning, the franchise’s future is less clear. Not only will it be difficult to find a star crazy enough to take on the derring-do, the office experience at the heart of Mission: Impossible has dissipated since the pandemic. In a world of remote working, the Entity now clearly has the upper hand. Mission: Impossible – Zoom Eminence, anyone?