Can Tom Cruise revive old Hollywood with ‘Mission: Impossible’?

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it,” is how most of the missions are sold to every IMF agent in the Mission: Impossible universe.

However, as in the movies, it often feels as if both Agent Ethan Hunt and Tom Cruise, the actor who brings him to life on screen, take this statement more seriously than their peers.

On closer inspection, most of Hunt’s background and storylines in the massively successful action series greatly mirrors those of Cruise’s real life crusade; where Hunt saves the world, the actor who plays him is saving the world of movies.

Literally standing for Impossible Mission Force, the IMF agency recruits Hunt and their other agents in a bid to follow up a new, seemingly impossible task, in every installment of the series.

But is it in his real life that the 62-year-old actor and producer has undertaken the most impossible mission he could’ve ever chosen?

Saviour or God?

Three time Oscar nominee, Cruise, recently revealed that he specifically chose to adapt Mission: Impossible into a feature length film after gaining special look into Paramount’s archives, the studio company which produced and owned the rights to the original TV series of the same name.

Lo and behold, what Tom Cruise wants, he gets; the mega Hollywood star indeed made his production debut with the very first Mission: Impossible movie, in 1996.

Seeing Ethan Hunt’s journey as a cocky young agent to a weary and betrayed one and ultimately, to a professional who finds his footing back in his field, the Brian De Palma-directed first Mission movie was one long franchise within itself.

As time went by, however, Cruise resurrected Hunt’s storyline again and again, eight times over at this point, to include more thrills, more loss, and way more stunts and set pieces.

One of the cornerstones of the franchise is the infamous Cruise-certified stunt work which just grows bigger and bigger in every new installment.

Something, the star of the series has defined time and again as the intent to “entertain” the audiences, attract huge crowds to the cinema, he is almost uncompromising on the quality of his work.

What is more important is that the audiences and critics go right along with his white knight routine of being cinema’s lone saviour.

“Mr. Movies” is the tongue in cheek colloquialism by which the star is referred to via his many fans online and world over.

The fourth Mission: Impossible movie titled Ghost Protocol proved to be the turning point, in the series as much as in its star’s public perception.

The 2011 movie, where he famously scaled the Burj Khalifa, catapulted Cruise back into the superstar domain and showed him a path through which he can channel his explosive energy to more popular ends.

Since then, he has taken the role of saving cinema very seriously, and for the most part, it must be conceded that he did succeed in his efforts.

Mission accomplished

The Mission: Impossible films and Hollywood’s action genre owes its success to Cruise in no small part.

Being the star of original action films like 1986’s Top Gun and 1990’s Days of Thunder, it is absolutely commendable the way the acting thespian has not compromised on the quality of a long-running franchise.

Where so many promising series like the Terminator, Die Hard, Ghostbusters, and many others, start out dominantly and begin to fizzle until completely falling off the audience’s radar, it must be acknowledged that Tom Cruise has in fact kept the “fuse” alive.

Indeed, every time Ethan Hunt tells members of his team to “light the fuse” or throws a soon-to-be exploding object into the camera, and the action follows a fiery montage of scenes from the films or a list of credits, while that unmistakable Mission: Impossible score croons in one’s ears, it does feel like cinema is forever. Hollywood is here to stay and movie magic will never die.

If the price of saving Hollywood comes at the expense of continuing to stroke the ego of a man with many powerful, as much as they are shady, connections, would it all have been worth it?

As the latest, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, made its way into cinemas eventually, it is the audience who has to make a choice: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it.”