‘Mission: Impossible’ Succeeded by Destroying the Original

Amazingly it’s been 25 years since the first Mission: Impossible movie hit theatres; that’s a quarter-century of exploding briefings, rubber masks, and epic stunts that somehow haven’t killed Tom Cruise … yet. How has this one series succeeded when so many other adaptations of classic TV shows from that time failed miserably? No one’s eagerly anticipating the seventh installment of Paul Hogan’s Flipper franchise, for example.

Looking back at the original film, we can’t help but speculate that part of its success is due to the fact that it not only deviated from its source material it aggressively attacked it. For starters, the whole opening sequence in which Ethan Hunt and the IMF gang steal a floppy disk full of, like 1 MB of highly-sensitive information. The opening scenes ape the traditional set-up of a classic Mission: Impossible episode — but instead of coming out on top and wrapping up the story in time for an episode of Hollywood Squares, most of the IMF team is violently murdered faster than you can say, “Wait, is that Coach Bombay?”

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Right from the jump, these movies upended what we all thought of as a Mission: Impossible story, concocting a scenario in which a lone surviving hero actively works against the IMF and the U.S. government. The most memorable set-piece literally involves Ethan breaking into CIA headquarters like a sweaty marionette.