10 Unbelievable Mission Impossible Facts
Bold and daring pieces of trivia from Tom Cruise's flagship franchise..
The Mission Impossible series of films is one of cinema's most consistently entertaining and reliable film franchises around, due to its stylized direction, accessible tone, increasingly risky set-pieces and commitment to incredible stuntwork by its leading man, Tom Cruise.
Some naysayers see Cruise's stunts as mere forms of showboating and publicity, and while that may be true to some degree, there is no denying that the actor's willingness to endanger himself time and again for the entertainment of audiences everywhere is both insane and admirable.
Despite an impressive box office haul of over 3.5 billion dollars and its tropes having found a place in the pop-culture consciousness (the face masks and cable drop come to mind), a good deal of information is not known about the action spy franchise to most audiences.
This list will cover those little-known factoids that detail the impressive amount of thought and attention to detail put into the creation of the films.
10. Rogue Nation's The Man Who Knew Too Much Inspiration
Brad Bird may have begun the franchise's upward with his 2011 effort, Ghost Protocol but Christopher McQuarrie's Rogue Nation is the film that well and truly established the Mission Impossible series of films as one of the more high-concept action franchises around. He built upon Bird's penchant for stylish set-pieces, and this was evident in his debut's opera-set sequence.
The set-piece was an inspired callback to a similar sequence in the classic 1956 Hitchcock thriller, The Man Who Knew Too Much, down to the films' protagonists' attempts to prevent the assassination of a political dignitary. Both directors even cue audience members to brace themselves for the leaders' deaths during the performance's climax through showing them the musical notes and connecting them to the actions of the key players (Ethan, Ilsa, Lane's back-up henchman, and the Austrian chancellor).
The operatic musical choices do not end with the set-piece as the film's composer, Joe Kramer, weaves the opera's motif into the film's score, especially in scenes with Ethan and Ilsa to accentuate their strong connection forged during the film's events.