Everyone knows Leo Tolstoy’s line about unhappy families, but few are familiar with his lesser known first draft: every insane PhD student goes insane in their own special way.
In my case, this involved watching about 15 different Hollywood action movies over and over again; by the final fortnight before submission, I had the same films playing in a separate tab while I wrote, like background music. A major aspect of my PhD (explaining my exact thesis would take longer than this particular mission briefing has time for) involved exploring the different ways in which Hollywood action films convey emotion through spectacle. Among the films I watched and rewatched were the Mission: Impossible films, which ended up being perhaps the key-est of my key works – for no other Hollywood franchise does action, or emotion, better.
What sets the Mission: Impossible series apart from other action franchises is that behind the explosions – and during them – is a very human story about connection. IMF agent Ethan Hunt may be one of the world’s greatest spies, but he’s also a man with a job that makes it hard to maintain a relationship. Tom Cruise’s performance as Hunt has come to be characterised largely by his stunts, but the Mission: Impossible films are also, at their heart, something closer to domestic drama.
This is occasionally overt: in John Woo’s gloriously melodramatic (and wildly underrated) Mission: Impossible II, many tears are shed over the enigmatic thief Nyah (Thandiwe Newton, with whom it is entirely believable to take five seconds to fall completely in love). In JJ Abrams’ course-correcting Mission: Impossible III (2006), Ethan’s attempts to enjoy married life are undone by the usual challenges (biological warfare, Philip Seymour Hoffman).
Action films are often about finding a chosen family and Mission: Impossible is no different: Ethan’s fellow IMF agents Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) are not just his co-workers but his friends. The tension between his willingness to protect them and his desire to save the world is, by now, stretched to breaking point. And Ethan meets his match in the form of MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) in the fifth film Rogue Nation (2015). Their meet-cute – kicking the shit out of a room full of terrorists – is one for the ages. Their relationship has deepened from Howard Hawks-esque screwball caper to something more complex: a true meeting of equals.
The Mission: Impossible films helmed by writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (Rogue Nation, Fallout and Dead Reckoning Part One, so far) have been met with critical acclaim and box office glory. Cruise and McQuarrie’s symbiotic creative relationship has revitalised action, stripping away the brain-numbing, physics-defying CGI seen in many blockbusters in favour of making movies the old-fashioned way: strapping a big star to a fast-moving object and praying you don’t capture a snuff film.
But the ongoing Cruise-McQuarrie collaboration is also notable for its focus on the emotional stakes of Ethan and his team’s adventures. Key to this is its star’s generosity in sharing the spotlight. One gets the sense that he won’t rest until the franchise has been taken over by women, making the series an outlier in a masculine milieu. (By comparison, Fast and Furious’ female stars have reported their frustration over their characters being sidelined.) These women are complex and morally ambiguous, more like Joan Crawford’s Vienna in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar than any of the interchangeable girlfriends of 21st century action. The camp charge of Vanessa Kirby’s arms dealer White Widow, cut through with knowing pain; or Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff’s debut turns in Dead Reckoning Part One, delivering performances so captivating that I now regret not pushing my submission date back a month.
Over the last four years, I have seen more of Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby than some members of my family. When I sat down at my desk each morning, I felt I was clocking on for another day with particularly beloved co-workers. And as I reached the finish line, a carrot dangled: a new Mission: Impossible movie, premiering mere moments after I was due to submit.
I travelled to Sydney for the premiere of Dead Reckoning Part One, and dressed the only way I know how: by paying tribute to Ethan’s best look (his all-black ensemble in Mission: Impossible II) with my PhD dangling from my ear on a thumb drive. (There’s always a USB stick in a Mission: Impossible movie.)
If Top Gun: Maverick was a metatextual ode to making movies like they used to, Dead Reckoning Part One has a lot to say, allegorically, about the rise of algorithm-powered streaming and misinformation. The fact it was filmed during Covid-19 lends its quieter moments (and some of its louder ones) an eerie quality that recalls the paranoia of Brian de Palma’s early-80s thrillers; many nods are given to De Palma’s Mission: Impossible (1996), including one throwback line of dialogue that nobody else in my giant cinema laughed at. There is a thrilling sword fight almost operatic in its intensity. And, yes, that motorcycle stunt, the stress of which will age you 15 years. It’s everything you could want from a blockbuster.
The PhD’s reputation for psychic damage precedes it. When you respond to polite inquiries about your day job with, “I’m actually doing a PhD”, people say things like “Oh no” and “God, I’m sorry”. My PhD “journey” began in 2019, weathered a global catastrophe and a 7.1-magnitude earthquake, and ended in the most perfect way possible: being blasted back in my seat and hanging on with a white-knuckle grip while Ethan Hunt and his team try to save the world.
