20 Movie Scenes That Should've Been Cut
18. Briggs Is Jim Phelps Jr. - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
In the penultimate Mission: Impossible film, Dead Reckoning Part One, we were introduced to Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham), a US Intelligence agent tasked with hunting down Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team.
However, in the series' recent finale The Final Reckoning, it was revealed that Briggs' name is an alias, and he's actually called Jim Phelps Jr.
As in, he's the son of Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), the IMF leader from the original Mission: Impossible who was ultimately revealed to be a secret turncoat.
Despite Shea Whigham's solid-as-ever performance in the role, nothing about this revelation hits at all - it feels like nothing more than contrived, substance-devoid fan service in a film that's already bloated to the brim with excess of all kinds.
It's an even more peculiar inclusion given that director Christopher McQuarrie called fan service "poison" during the film's press tour, despite indulging in a fair amount of it himself in this rather underwhelming franchise send-off.