mission: impossible - ghost protocol, or happy rennsday
in which tom defeats a challenger
GOOD NEWS!
I found it. I finally found it. I had been searching for it for days, so that I could use it in this newsletter. I didn’t know how to. The blog was missing. I couldn’t remember its name. But I found it. Finally, I found it. My Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol review from 2012. It was tucked away on an Internet friend’s blog, called “A TARDIS Traveller’s Guide to the Whoniverse”. I had a brief movie-reviewing gig there. I don’t know why.
I knew the value of brevity back then. These days, you get pages of context on South Park. My Ghost Protocol review is 219 words long, and most of that is the synopsis. Concision, my old friend. I’m sorry to have lost you.
Anyway.
I hadn't seen the first three films, but Ghost Protocol was a standalone story; with hardly any reference to the events of the first three films. From a crunchy pre-titles sequence (I know!) in Moscow to a race to find the nuclear codes for the missile in Dubai, to a party in Mumbai, the film didn't let up. There are some seriously good action sequences (too many to name, but a chase in a sandstorm in Dubai was my favourite), one mind-boggling stunt (Tom Cruise climbs round the Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world, with a rope tied to his waist) and great acting: Simon Pegg as computer-whiz Benji was the stand-out performance, stealing most of the best lines (or maybe just because I like Simon Pegg's films) but the rest of the performances were all solid.
Oh, this is actually coherent.
2012 Louis really understood the principle of Durin. You know, the principle of Durin. The thing that we all know, and say, to each other.
We all say this.
I need to believe more in my past self, man. He was right all the way, and he used big words to say it. I wrote a review of Rogue Nation back when it came out, too, and I’m pretty sure that’s just at my regular writing standard from these days.
Anyway, I thought that was sweet.
Welcome to Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. It is, to quote my twelve-year-old self, “an an exciting, tense edge-of-your-seat thriller, that you really should see. Highly recommended!”
We left Tom in a real bind back in 2006. Let’s see how he’s getting on with five years more on the clock.
Hmm. I’ve seen better.
The mid-2000s were bruising for Tom, and Mission III was only a moderate success. The late 2000s, then, feel like a generally tepid period for the once and future king of Hollywood. He starred in a small handful of mildly-received studio programmers - one of which will become notable later, but wasn’t so much at the time - that didn’t really set the world alight, or expand his creative horizons. Notably, he also wound down his producing work, with a brief in-and-out at flailing studio United Artists marking the end of his collaboration with Paula Wagner.
The only real success of this era for Cruise was his cameo in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder, in which he slapped on prosthetics and let down the guardrails for the sickest work of his career to date.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Alongside his villainous turn in 2004’s Collateral, this is one of the rare occasions where Cruise gets to tap into everything he tries to avoid in the majority of his roles, and be as terrifying and insane as everyone suspects he is. This here is a dog unleashed. This is a man with no fear and no self-consciousness. This is the energy of the sofa jump harnessed for beneficent, artistic purposes. It’s wonderful.
Anyhow, Tropic Thunder helped to keep the juice alive a little. A reminder, however odd, that this guy still had something left to offer. It is interesting, though, that he decided to take the role, and that it ended up working so well with audiences (a spinoff with Cruise was kicked around for a few years) It’s clear that audiences could still enjoy Cruise as a movie star, but in a way that directly addresses and comments on his messy public persona. One could imagine from there that audiences might get used to seeing Cruise in these oddball roles, and start to drift away from the idea of him as a classic, unreconstructed movie star.
All of that made it somewhat harder for Mission: Impossible to come back. Also, the fact that Cruise had broken off his working relationship with Paramount in 2006.
Yeah, we forgot that bit. Thanks to the general omnicrisis that engulfed Cruise’s career around and after the release of Mission III, the studio which had been his primary Hollywood partner decided enough was enough, and cut off the first-look deal they had with Cruise. He was damaged goods, and damaged goods don’t sell. Unless you put them in clearance. Sometimes damaged goods are good, cheap alternatives to regular supermarket prices.
Anyway.
When Paramount eventually found themselves guided back by the lure of the Mission: Impossible IP, they did it nervously and slowly. It only ticked into development in 2009, with the film’s director hired in 2010 - if M:III’s long lead time was because it took so long to come together, this was a straightforward example of the studio simply sitting on the property for a while out of probable anxiety about letting Tom Cruise back on the studio lot.
It’s kind of like putting a child on the naughty step - you just have to wait for an arbitrary period of time, and if the kid is quiet enough, the punishment over. Cruise, for his part, had been on better behaviour since the mid-2000s firestorm. He had settled into his marriage with Katie Holmes and had quietened down about Paxil and Xenu and other things the world didn’t need to hear from him about. He had been, in other words, a good boy, and Paramount eventually decided that it was time to give him another Mission as a treat.
With a minor wrinkle, but we’ll get to that.
They’d need a steady captain of this potentially wobbly ship, and the man chosen for the task was an endearingly weird option. This would, in retrospect, mark the end of Mission’s auteur era, but it went out in a fun way: with the hiring of Brad Bird. To date, Bird had directed three all-time heaters: The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. All masterpieces, or near enough, but all of them animated movies for children. This was a man with multiple Academy Awards under his belt, a veteran of the American blockbuster system, but still felt like an idiosyncratic choice for Mission: Impossible. Would he jump seamlessly from Ratatouille to managing Tom Cruise?
Yes, he would, though it would be his only successful live-action film to date in a career that has mysteriously stalled. Bird would parlay the success of Ghost Protocol into Tomorrowland, a megabudget sci-fi gumbo that riffed vaguely on the original theme park concepts and ethos of Walt Disney. Much like ol’ Walt’s posthumous reputation, the film didn’t fare well, and barely made back its budget. Bird would then return, much like a grown adult man shuffling back to their parents’ house (I’ve been there) to the profitable Pixar well in 2018 with Incredibles 2, a sequel that is - and I hate to say it, absolutely and utterly mid. He hasn’t made a film since, though he’s allegedly noodling around with some animated passion project at Skydance.
There’s nothing much more to say about Brad B-
IS BRAD BIRD AN OBJECTIVIST?
Sorry, we seem to have been hijacked by the warmest pop culture debate of 2015. For those of you who are blissfully ignorant, there has been some kerfuffle about whether Bird’s films - with The Incredibles, and its “nobody is special if everybody is” ideas as a particular linchpin - hew towards the ideology of Ayn Rand, whose ruthlessly individualist worldview revolves around a small elite of exceptional individuals rising above the shitty murk. You’re all caught up.
IS BRAD BIRD AN OBJECTIVIST?
I don’t fucking know. I last watched The Incredibles fifteen years or so ago.
What I can say is that there is little trace of Objectivist thought in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, a film that begins a surprising yet welcome tilt towards a relative egalitarianism in the Mission: Impossible movies. By that, I mean that the franchise starts learning to have an ensemble, albeit one still headed up by Cruise.
Who’s in this ensemble, I hear you ask.
Well.
Insert Thanos “I am inevitable” meme here. Truthfully, I am quite surprised it’s taken this newsletter this long to get to Jeremy Renner. We have skimmed alongside him, but we have never made contact. Now, finally, it is time.
Ceaseless wonders would lie ahead of Renner in the years following Ghost Protocol, but we don’t have time for that. Opening the door a discussion of the Jeremy Renner app would not be a good idea at this time.
Please appreciate my restraint.
I’m allowed to post two screenshots of the Jeremy Renner app. That’s in my rider.
No, we must concentrate our discussion towards turn of the decade Renner, a man who was HOT SHIT!! at the time.
That’s right. It brings me no joy to say it, but I am a reporter of truth, so I must: Jereny Renner was the Paul Mescal of 2010.
Renner was a hardworking jobbing actor for over a decade before his big break. He graduated from TV guest spots to reasonable supporting roles in the likes of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and 28 Weeks Later, but he really popped off in 2009 when he played the leading role in Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Bigelow’s Iraq thriller shot down her ex-husband’s Avatar to win Best Picture, and Renner rode the hype to a Best Actor nomination. He followed it up two years later with a Supporting Actor nod for Ben Affleck’s The Town.
Suffice to say, Renner was HOT SHIT. The man was practically on fire. Naturally, he used this success to pivot to franchise filmmaking, and the blockbuster world welcomed him with a bear hug. In a dizzying year, Renner gained a spot on the The Avengers and was anointed the heir apparent to both the Bourne and Mission: Impossible franchises.
Ah, yes, that’s us. The weird thing about Renner’s franchise breakout era is how he carved, briefly, a hyper-specific niche of playing a mooted successor to major action stars who might look to move away from their career-defining franchise roles. It’s easier than it looks to explain this, I think - Renner’s secret weapon as an actor is a kind of weaponised blandness, a solidly reliable aura that could become a canvas for something genuinely interesting. He’s the guy you call when you’re just tired of all that fuss from the A-listers.
The idea that Renner was cast here as an heir apparent to Cruise has assumed a kind of folkloric status, though the actual evidence from the time is a little ambivalent. A note on Renner’s casting from a 2010 Variety article states that “While Paramount envisions Cruise returning for subsequent films, Renner could play the central character in future installments”. Renner himself, meanwhile, mused from the set: “It’s a franchise to potentially take over. I can’t predict the future and what they want, but that’s certainly the idea.”
It all sounds like the Renner takeover was an idea, but not necessarily a definitive plan plan. Certainly, it’s less of a clear-cut succession scheme than Bourne, where Renner was catapulted into the lead role right away.
(Side note: it’s a personal dream of mine that we cover the Bourne movies some day. I’m putting these words down as a commitment to the future.)
The question of how Cruise felt about all this was an interesting one. Clearly, Tom was still driving the bus - Renner makes it clear in interviews that he was personally offered the role by Cruise, so it wasn’t like Paramount were doing an end-run around their star to appoint a new heir apparent. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, all this just looks like part of the wider move the later Mission movies took towards a more ensemble-focused approach, where Cruise is the ringleader, but who happily offers up the spotlight to a supporting cast of characters.
At the time, though, you have to imagine Cruise felt a little chastened. This was his franchise, damn it! Across his decades-long career, no character has defined Cruise more than Ethan Hunt. He could - and would - step back from a lot of his Hollywood activities, giving up the meaty dramatic roles and bit-part performances that used to run alongside his big action tentpoles. This - Mission - was the epicentre, though. This was the heart of the beast, and somebody was poking around at that heart and wondering about a transplant. This is the one thing that Cruise couldn’t lose if he was going to remain a relevant Hollywood big dog.
You know the old adage about pressure, though? It doesn’t just create carbon. It does create carbon, actually, but the form carbon takes is often that of a diamond. I’m not fully certain about diamond chemistry, but I think that’s right. Anyway. Pressure can be motivational, especially if you’re a fundamentally insane actor driven by a seemingly endless quest to one-up yourself on screen. For the first time in this safe space he had made for himself, Cruise could feel breath on his neck. He had someone - consciously or subconsciously - to compete against. A reason to strive for better, to try harder.
Pressure makes diamonds. Pressure makes Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, goddammnit.
There are some schools of thought that argue Ghost Protocol is the best Mission.
These people are wrong. It’s not.
I get why they think that, though. This is a remarkable act of resuscitation from a franchise that was rapidly slipping out of cultural significance. The only comparison I can think of, funnily enough, is Fast Five: in both movies, you’re suddenly reminded of everything the franchise can be.
Brad Bird could (or could not - the jury’s out!) be a political weirdo, but he’s a king for what he did here. From those oddly speedy studio logos Ghost Protocol just hums. There’s no throat-clearing, no self-aware apologia, no tentative “remember this franchise?” preamble. The first impression is just total confidence. That confidence emanates from Cruise, too. He gets a proper movie star introduction here, with a musical prison break sequence that plays like a showreel for everything he’s capable of as a screen presence.
Ghost Protocol gets a lot right in ways that would be hugely useful for the ongoing franchise, but maybe its most important success is how it clicks Cruise into the right position in these movies. Both movies two and three sweat to try and make Ethan Hunt into a romantic lead, a grounded figure capable of complicated emotional relationships. Especially in III, there is an attempt to sell him as a hero in a classic tradition - if not an everyman, then at least a man of the people. Because Cruise is Cruise, those efforts always creaked. It never felt right. Watching him in suburbia was uncanny valley material.
There are no such pretensions here. Rather than rejecting it, as III tried to do, Ghost Protocol embraces the core truth of Tom Cruise that we had all come to accept as a culture: the man is a fucking freak. It’s why he is both compelling and repellent in equal terms. He doesn’t exist in the same realm as you or I. He doesn’t subscribe to the same worldview or lifestyle or way of being. He’s an absolute weirdo.
Reader, that’s his superpower. Nobody is a freak like Tom Cruise, and for the first proper time in the franchise, Ghost Protocol uses that. It refashions Cruise - and Hunt, the character who has always most closely reflected his own self-mythology as he would be for the majority of the following movies - a man capable of participating in the mortal realm, but who is fundamentally detached from it also. Cruise/Hunt is an ascetic monk of impossible mission solving. He has foresworn love and sex and friendships outside of work. In a world where nobody could take Cruise seriously as a relatable movie star anymore, Ghost Protocol figures out how to sell him: it doesn’t bother trying to convince you otherwise.
Also, he climbs a dang huge building!
The Burj Khalifa sequence needs no real description. In its fully practical, IMAX-sized oh-shit grandeur, it is a franchise and a movie star rediscovering themselves in about ten minutes of perfect cinema. This is the guarantor for what comes next. It’s perfect.
It’s so perfect, actually, that the rest of the movie doesn’t need to work as hard. On the point that Ghost Protocol isn’t quite the franchise pinnacle, that’s a reflection of how Cruise et al hadn’t quite worked out how to channel the madcap perfection of the Burj Khalifa stunt (or the Kremlin sequence from the start, a much less discussed sequence that offers its own immaculate pleasures) across the full span of a movie.
Ghost Protocol is an enterprise held up by manic surges of energy and wit, which are enough to smooth over the stilted dramatic tension surrounding Jeremy Renner’s mysterious backstory, or Michael Nyqvist’s anonymously motivated villain, or the relatively generic stylings of the obligatory final set-piece. When it is at its best, it is peerless. Often, it’s just merely fine, competent and witty-enough action filmmaking to run alongside the majority of the genre. It would take time and effort to add consistency to the genius.
But really, for now, the genius was enough.
Jeremy Renner is quite good, really, in Ghost Protocol. He has a nice deadpan-everyman thing going on. He slots nicely into the wider ensemble dynamic that the franchise began to build here. But his presence stands out, ultimately, less for what he does and more for what he illuminates: that, try as hard as you will, there is simply no substitute for the main man. Renner isn’t Tom Cruise. He knows he’s not Tom Cruise.
When Tom Cruise climbs out of a window and begins to climb the world’s biggest skyscraper, Jeremy Renner catches. When Tom Cruise leaps back into the window and nearly falls out, Renner is there to catch his foot, while somebody else holds onto his pants leg.
And you know what? Jeremy Renner should be so grateful to catch Tom Cruise’s foot. It’s more than the rest of us get to do.
Next time: Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat. Live die repeat.
That’s what we call a secret clue.