Originally published June 21, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1179
(Spoiler warning: Extremely and serious warning. The following contains serious spoilers for Mission: Impossible. I’m not kidding. If you haven’t seen the film and don’t want major aspects ruined for you, don’t read these comments. But then again, I saw them in context and they ruined the film for me. And there’s no way to explain why they ruined the film unless I tell you what it is. Besides, I figure it’s fair warning, sort of a public service. Like advisories from the Surgeon General on cigarette cartons.)
As we know, movie makers are in the midst of trying to lure audiences into theaters by taking icons of their TV-viewing days and giving them the big screen treatment. The result has been a mixed bag, as is always the case with such endeavors. There have been some hits (The Brady Bunch Movie, which I’m embarrassed to admit I liked, and The Addams Family, although I preferred the less successful but consistently snarkier Addams Family Values) and some spectacular flops (The Beverly Hillbillies, Car 54: Where Are You, Sergeant Bilko). And there will be more to come.
And now there’s the latest: Mission: Impossible. Okay, I confess… it’s probably worth making the movie just so you can sit in a theater and hear the best eight-note theme song ever (courtesy of Lalo Schifrin) pumped through heavy duty theater speakers while the walls shake around you.
Of course, the thing is, when was the last time anyone gave thought to what any of the Impossible Missions Force was up to? When did anyone ponder their further adventures? Mr. Phelps, Barney (pre-coopting of the name by a dinosaur), Cinnamon, Rollin Hand, Paris… did they spend the rest of their lives pulling off one impossible mission after another? Did any of them ever get caught? Killed? Did the secretary disavow knowledge of their actions?
Who cares? Really. No one ever gave it any thought. I know I sure didn’t.
Consider, though, that for long-time comic book readers, they’ve never left the icons of their youth behind. Sure, the landscape is littered with canceled characters, but the heroic lives of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and so many others… they’ve continued. No one has to remake our youthful enjoyment, try to recapture it, because it’s been an unbroken and unending chain.
And yet… there have been such efforts, haven’t there.
The pure, innocent heroic icons of our youth haven’t necessarily remained so pure and heroic. There’s been death, addictions, dark sides and horrors visited upon them. Heroes have been turned into murderers or worse. Batman was crippled, Spider-Man was cloned, Superman killed, Green Lantern went completely nuts, and what they’ve done to Aquaman shouldn’t even be discussed in a family publication.
The one thing you can say about it, though, is that it’s been a steady process. Of course, so is internal hemorrhaging. Our heroes have been there month after month, and if we don’t always like what’s happening with them, we can always hope that things will improve. Or we can even take action to make things improve. Sales are a constant barometer of what the fans think; lynch mobs, it appears, are even more reliable. Just ask the Spider-Man office. In other words, there’s a constant feeling of input, of give-and-take.
Which brings us to Mission: Impossible.
The beginning of the film features the IM Force in the midst of one of their typically byzantine capers, trying to get the goods on a spy who’s stealing a disk with information vital to our own spy efforts. In other words, someone’s going to try and be sneaky and we’re offended because we’re sneakier than anyone.
The mission is spearheaded, as has always been the case (except for the first season of Mission) by Jim Phelps–played here by Jon Voight instead of Peter Graves.
And then everything goes wrong. It turns out there is a mole somewhere within the organization that sponsors the IMF; a traitor to the cause. The result is that everyone dies—blown up, shot, stabbed, spikes through the cranium (that particular fate reserved for an unbilled Emilio Estevez). Everyone, it turns out, except the young hotshot disciple of Phelps, Ethan Hunt (a boyish actor named Tom Cruise; and I predict we’ll be hearing a lot more from this young man in the future.)
The original notion had been that the moribund IMF squad would be portrayed by the original actors. But they all turned down the gig, stating that they felt this wasn’t how they wanted their characters to be remembered.
They were right to do so, and I–for one–appreciate their skipping a quick paycheck out of deference to their fans’ sensibilities.
Unfortunately the screenwriters weren’t quite so sensitive.
Which is where we trip once more into the…
(Spoiler warning. I swear, I’m not kidding here. The deaths’ of the IMF squad take place in the first fifteen minutes or so, so that’s not a major spoiler, but I’m about to give you a key piece of information, so your mission, should you decide to accept it, is not to say I didn’t warn you.)
The film moves through its labyrinth plot, which seems fairly straightforward although a number of people stated that they couldn’t follow it. They probably wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of the original series, in which we’d see events take place ten minutes into an episode, have no idea why they took place, and learn the reason for it in the last five minutes.
The original series was a masterpiece of non-linear storytelling; the movie version is Sesame Street in comparison. Indeed, the major gag involves Hunt snatching a computer disk in a room so sensitive that even a bead of sweat will set off an alarm.
Lowered down on a suspension rig, Hunt is so busy swiping the disk that he doesn’t notice the writers swiped the sequence itself from Topkapi. Then again, Vanessa Redgrave in turn steals the movie from Cruise as a wonderfully drawn information trader named Max.
And then the film unleashes its big surprise: The traitor turns out to be… drum roll… Jim Phelps. Faking his death in the usual IMF style, the IMF’s leader was willing to murder his own people for the purpose of obtaining a multi-million dollar payoff.
I’m sorry. No.
It’s not enough of an insult that the filmmakers wanted to cavalierly slaughter the rest of the characters whose complex adventures impressed and challenged us so many years ago. But now we are being told that Phelps, the mastermind, the planner, the hero of the Cold War, the Rube Goldberg of the spy strategy set, has become so cynical, so cold, so dámņëd rotten, that he’s willing to sell out his country, his own team, and umpty-ump other agents whose names are on the computer disk and will be executed once the information gets in Max’s hands.
Again, I’m sorry. No.
Make no mistake: The original Mission was not exactly a hotbed of characterization. For the most part the characters were ciphers. We didn’t know all that much about their background, their preferences, their hopes, dreams, desires.
That’s not what the show was about. They were human chess pieces, moved through the complicated game in hopes of checkmating their intended victim. No one watched the show to see if… I dunno… Lesley Ann Warren and Peter Lupus were going to start making eyes at each other.
But Phelps was the hero. He was The Man, the Master Planner. The guy that you could count on to have anticipated every contingency with supernatural proficiency. He was someone you could count on.
The film of Mission: Impossible, however, asks us to believe that Phelps has become a traitor and murderer. Victimized by cynicism, twisted by the creative notion that any hero who existed years ago must have feet of clay, must have a dark underside.
The rationale from a creative standpoint is hard to comprehend. Anyone born within the last couple of decades has no emotional attachment to Phelps, and therefore won’t care. Those who remember the series fondly, like myself, are going to be really angry. Phelps a traitor? Phelps a murderer? Why? Why, we ask ourselves? The usual Mission: Impossible dearth of characterization is not acceptable this time. If Phelps has turned on us like badly prepared pork, we’ve got to know why.
The token answers we’re given don’t wash. Phelps feels like a relic. Phelps feels underpaid. It’s preposterous. That might fly with your standard issue secret agent, but Phelps is a genius. Are we seriously supposed to believe that a man of Phelps’ smarts, if he feels unappreciated or old hat, would be incapable of finding something else he could do with his life?
If nothing else, he could probably make a fortune as the most formidable practitioner of industrial espionage in the world… not exactly ethical, but at least it doesn’t involve betraying one’s country and murdering one’s team mates.
One could try to go The Prisoner route for explanation… that Phelps, because he was “in,” could never get “out.” Resigning, shifting careers… none of this was an option. Except that doesn’t hold up because we see other past IMF members who have left government employ. They seem rather hale and hearty. They’re not imprisoned, they’re not dead. One has to assume that departing the IMF under legit means was an option.
For that matter, even if it wasn’t an option: If Phelps wants to leave, who in hëll would be able to stop him? Stop him? They probably couldn’t even find him.
Oh, there’s lots of flashy stuff to make Mission: Impossible a fun enough ride. Major set pieces, Cruise’s charisma, Redgrave’s laugh, and the use of computer morphing so that the Mission trademark–someone pulling off their face to be revealed as someone else–is believable in a way that TV cutaways and rubber masks never quite sold.
Ultimately, though, it comes back to fidelity to the series and to the characters therein. Phelps is betrayed by the creators of the film because they displayed the one thing that is anathema to the core of Mission: Impossible… a lack of imagination. And with Phelps so betrayed, the long-time fans are as well.
And so Jim Phelps, anticipator without peer, falls victim to the one thing that he could not have anticipated. The need to destroy heroes, to drag them down, to show that no one and nothing can be trusted… and to make anyone who did believe in those heroes feel like fools.
Frankly, if you want to see a big-screen version of Mission: Impossible, it was done better two decades ago. It starred Paul Newman, Robert Redford, it was called The Sting, and it won an Oscar. And it was all done without having to destroy heroes.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. By the way, Mission: Impossible rates a 1:05 on the Cokemeter. One hour and five minutes into the film, we see a Diet Coke machine in a CIA cafeteria.)
• 
I remember when the movie came out, I was too young to have been a fan of the original series, and a friend of mine explained it thusly…
Imagine they made Star Trek the motion picture, today instead of 1977. And in the first 15 minutes, they kill off Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. Young Will Decker is introduced… and in the last act of the movie, it is revealed that Kirk faked his death, because he was the one who killed his crew, and he’s been a Romulan traitor all this time.
I think I understood then, why the set pieces didn’t matter. The movie was just “bûllšhìŧ” as far as my friend was concerned.
It actually won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. (It was nominated for ten).
If I remember 1996 correctly, you didn’t really *have* to go into the theater to hear the theme on heavy duty speakers. Just go to any club, bar or Best Buy in America and wait for them to play one of the umpteen remixes that were hauled out as part of the pre-movie hype. Or buy the CD and take it home.
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And I, all of 14 at the time, had never seen an episode of Mission: Impossible in my life, but even I knew who “Mr. Phelps” was, and yeah, him turning rat never sat right with me, either.
I never had a chance to see the original show. (I will soon, I’m working on it.) However, there was a revival in the early 90s that had Peter Graves and a team of new spies. One of the new actors was actually the son of one of the original actors, playing a similar role. I loved it and agree with everything that PAD says about this movie betraying the Phelps character.
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My main impression of the movie was that it missed the thing that I loved most about Mission Impossible, the team aspect. In the show, each spy had his strengths and they worked together. I guess that’s harder to do in a movie, where they want one big star and a few supporting characters.
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Right now I’m getting my fix of that kind of team action in a cable show called Leverage. I highly recommend it.
Yeah, “Leverage” is kind of the MI of the 21st Century. Plus there was the wonderful episode where they went undercover at a costume party with a mystery theme, and the group’s leader, Nathan Ford, played by Timothy Hutton, attended as Ellery Queen. And he was dressed identically to the way that his dad, the late, great Jim Hutton, was outfitted in the short lived, but fondly remembered, 1975 series of the same name.
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PAD
Actually, that was Jim Hutton, according to IMDB.
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At least, that was his billing name. He was born Dana James Hutton.
Yes, I’m aware of that, Luigi. It was a typo, which I’ve since corrected.
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PAD
You were so right about that movie, Peter. It so offended me that I have refused to see any further installment of the franchise.
Now, I would like to answer to what one of CBG’s letter-writer wrote about your column. In short, he was saying that Phelps’ betrayal was not unexpected, given all the dirty tricks he had pulled during his career. Except that those dirty tricks were part of his _job_. He was _expected_ to pull them. But he (and Dan Briggs) were quite different outside of their job. I can’t count the times when they went above and beyond the call of duty to save one of their agents who had gotten into trouble. Or the times where they used all their resources to help one of their friends.
So no, Jim Phelps would never have acted the way he did in the movie. Period.
Please let neither the Phelps offense nor the fact that the first two Mission Impossible movies were crap keep you from watching MI-3. As a fan of Brad Bird, I’m fully looking forward to MI-Ghost Protocol.
Can I let the Phelps offense, the fact that the first so-called Mission: Impossible movie was crap (so much so that I skipped the second one), and the fact that I can’t stand Tom Cruise keep me from watching the third one?
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–Daryl
In some ways, the recent Ocean’s movies had more to do with the original Mission: Impossible than the movies of the same name. They certainly inherited the ploy of showing snippets out of context, only to explain them all at the end.
Thank you. Thank you so much. I saw M:I2 before I saw M:I1, and so I wasn’t at all expecting Jim Phelps. It was a nice little blast from the past… and then he turned out to be the villain, and I have been unable to even look at Entertainment Weekly stories about Tom Cruise or Jon Voight without gnashing my teeth, let alone watch that abysmal excuse for a film again.
And it’s another one of those flicks that you kinda wanted to see the pitch meeting for. “We’ll bring back Jim Phelps! He’s, like, iconic!” “Yeah, yeah!” “And then… he’s the bad guy!” “YEAH, YEAH!”
No.
I guess the reason I didn’t have a problem with the twist was because it was Jon Voight, who looks and sounds nothing like Peter Graves, so I never thought of them as the same character. So to me it wasn’t akin to Captain Kirk turning traitor, but more like, say, Danny Ocean turning traitor in the remake (if he hadn’t been the main character, that is).
I enjoyed Mission Impossible; I thought it was interesting, if a little convoluted. But then I’d never heard of Jim Phelps or any of the other characters (which is probably why I felt it convoluted). I’d say on its own terms, it probably works. (I hated the second film though.)
Hadn’t thought about the industrial espionnage bit, but, yes, he’d be formidable indeed at that. Which makes killing Phelps off even sillier. But it wasn’t just that which I hated about the first film. It was also the fact that the writers were unclear on the concept of the original series which was about a TEAM of agents. If I wanted to see a solo act, I’d catch reruns of DANGER MAN or MACGYVER. Killed me off the rest of the films.
Well, I just avoid remakes and reimaginings on general principle. I just don’t see the reason for them. I watched BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, but that’s because it was pratically a remake in name only, and got rave reviews.
The problem is that most adaptations/remakes/reinventions simply try to hang a plot on a nostalgia hanger with no effort made to actually tell a good story. That’s the difference between BEWITCHED and THE FUGITIVE.
In a somewhat tangential vein, I still wish Hillary Clinton had called a press conference the day after Peter Graves death to disavow any knowledge of his actions.
Having been a teenager when the movie released, and thus having no familiarity with the original series, I was fine with the film, and actually followed the plot fairly easily (unlike others). But it was far from being one of my favorites, and I knew the Phelps thing was bogus from old-TV-geek friends of mine.
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As with most Hollywood-izations of existing properties, they tend to deconstruct and rewrite until there’s little or nothing left of the original, and then call it an homage, or “based on the concept and characters,” or some other nonsense. My usual response is to just assume, “Ok, this probably has NOTHING to do with the source, so watch it, then go look up the real thing and watch that.” Basically, I treat it as an alternate universe. The original series is M:I-616, while the movie series is M:I-295.
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I DO think it would be nice if they could make a GOOD adaptation/continuation/reboot of the series (i.e. horrible Star Wars prequels, followed by excellent Clone Wars cartoon), but apparently Tom Cruise made a pact with Satan (again) and owns all the rights or something, so we can’t frakkin’ get rid of him.
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Speaking of, I would like to once again comment on the incredibly coincidental timing of these posts. M:I Ghost Protocol hits theaters, and up pops the 15-yr-old review of the first film in the series. How do you guys keep doing that?
This entry actually reminded me a little of one of the few retcons that I actually liked: Grant Morrison’s treatment of the Chief on his DOOM PATROL run. Morrison revealed, near the end of the run, that the Chief was actually a heartless manipulator who put his teammates in danger to see how they would react and improve (along with a tossaway mention of others who apparently died instead of changing or becoming heroes). Morrison didn’t change any of the facts of the DP history, but gave it a new perspective by having Niles Caulder not facing dangers with his team, but guiding them into them. Heck, the Chief even revealed he didn’t need that wheelchair! And, in some poetic justice, the “new” Chief who so welcomes change and looked forward to it — got killed by a change he didn’t predict.
As for MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (yup, I remembered the point of the posting), the “I did it for the money” reason for villains usually falls apart in these sort of movies and stories. Characters who are absolutely brilliant and often have a talented crew wind up doing the equivalent of blowing up a bank wall and grabbing bags of money. (I also loved the comment about mad scientists in Evan Dorkin’s FIGHT MAN: “How come guys who can afford to build giant robots need to rob a bank?”) It may make for a more entertaining movie than seeing them sit at a computer terminal or make a fake business — but it’s quite unbelievable that some of the most brilliant people in the world can only get money by doing something that’ll have some deadly adversaries chasing them.
(I’m also amazed that Simon Pegg has gone from a slacker and “fatboy” into a field agent of the IMF.)
And in one of those strange bits of serendipity that has linked both series since the beginning, the Doom Patrol reveal happened at the same time as the Onslaught business. Strange world, that.
The only cinematic betrayal of a 60s television character to eclipse what they did to Jim Phelps in the first M:I film would be turning DA Scanlon into the bad guy in THE GREEN HORNET this year. That, to me, was like making a BATMAN movie and having Commissioner Gordon turn out to be the bad guy.
Everything I’ve read about “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol indicates that it’s pretty well done. Among other things, director Brad Bird returns to the concept of the IMF as a team, instead of focusing mostly on tom cruise. and i just had a wild idea, one that might never see light of day — what if Time Warner raided DC’s vaults and had the IMF meet the original Secret Six for a crossover that i’d see, though maybe not the majority of the comic book tv show fanboys.
oh, and one other thing about MIGP — if you see it at an imax theater, you get to basically see the first six minutes of next year’s Dark Knight movie, It mostly features bane turing into bane. i helped elevate the movie to the number three movie for he week, when it was sjown exclusively in imax theaters. when the hëll tthat is chrismas at the post office ends, ill probably check the movie out
, so its going to be a few dys yet.
my body is cllapsig from mdeds i’m taking every dy, but today’s really got me fling. someone should do a comic bout wht an ordinatly erseon does just with thepills they take to get by everu dau/ m y dreams for flying in kansas are interestingand gfrustratihhg as o camt get far beciase tje wimd blowing agaimst ,el i think its bedtime. and i suspect im contructing for mor nonsense than sense.
Geez. I’d like to apologize for posting the above message. As you MIGHT’VE been able to guess from looking at it, I work for the Post Office. Since the Saturday before last, I’ve so far worked a total of 95 hours, with only sunday off. i think i was actually kind of sleep-keying when i wrote this message. ive got three more days to go, probably at least 28 hours ahead of me. i promise, i wont post anything else until the holiday mail is done.
bah, humbug.
Kim:
I can sympathize. I was in the retail business for over 20 years before heart problems took me out of “the game”, and I haven’t even reached my 50th birthday yet! 😛 🙁
I agree wholeheartedly about the key problems with MI “1” being the Phelps-traitor thing and the lack of teamwork. At the time, I thought it would have been a perfectly decent thriller, if they had simply not called it “Mission Impossible.” If I had been an appropriately placed movie executive, I would have had the movie end with Peter Graves stepping out of the shadows and executing the traitor who had assumed the “Jim Phelps” nom-de-guerre after the original retired from the IMF. Ah well…
All reviews of MI: Ghost Protocol, however, make it sound as thought the estimable Mr. Bird may have gotten the franchise back on track. Let us hope…
Or a double-double cross, where Mr. Phelps faked his death and betrayal in order to discover the real mole and Ethan Hunt figuring that out along the way, thereby proving himself worthy of being Phelps’ successor.
I agreed with your review when it was first published and I stand by that opinion today.
I understood and even appreciated the concept of “Phelps” (note quotes) and company still doing their thing.
I could have accepted a whole new team being featured from the start, and maybe some of the original cast coming in for a cameo to lend a hand during the caper.
But for it to turn out the way it did… 😛
If the people behind the first film wanted “Phelps” guilty, why couldn’t they have done that sooner and then reveal that it wasn’t the REAL Phelps behind it all? Like maybe someone using Phelps as a codename/alias to make the enemy think they were still competing against the original, or maybe turn the second half of the movie into a rescue mission to recover the real deal because the bad Phelps was actually someone in disguise working for the enemy.
Because of how they did the first one, I have yet to see another since.
But there’s always reruns and DVDs of the original!
I used to keep waiting for Tom Cruise’s character to remove his mask and reveal Peter Graves’s face beneath it. 🙂
Even the combined talents of Messrs. Hand and Paris couldn’t successfully disguise Jim Phelps as Ethan Hunt. The sources I’ve been able to find list Mr. Cruise as 5’7″, while Mr. Graves was a strapping 6’3″ (not as big as his brother, James Arness, who was 6’7″, but still well above average!)
Off topic, but your run on Hulk ended up in a Cracked list today:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19589_the-6-most-unintentionally-hilarious-superhero-reinventions.html
The notion that Voight-Phelps was not the real Jim Phelps but a successor who assumed his name (for which there could be many reasons, deception being the IMF’s specialty, after all) is the only thing that’s allowed me to sit through the sequels in this series– which is still not quite M:I to me, as it lacks the team concept and intricate scams of the original. As others here have noted.
Although, J.J. Abrams at least made an effort to reintroduce those elements in the third one, along with “The Plot”, the TV show’s second-most familiar piece of music.
Personally, I was always okay with the M:I movie because I figured that guy was “Jim Phelps” like George Lazenby was “James Bond”. Someone else using the same codename, perhaps, but clearly not the same person.
That might have worked if it had been Phelps from the beginning. With the first season leader being Briggs, that kinda threw that out the window.
Except that George Lazenby was the same James Bond Sean Connery was. If not, why would he gather mementoes from past missions from his office when he gives his resignation ?
Peter, yes, I too was royally ticked off also. I mean why not just create a generic spy team and have the lead turn traitor? If your target demo is too young to remember or care about the originals, then why use IMF at all? If you’re using IMF to hook the older generation who do remember and care about them, then why are you stabbing them in the hand like that?
The rest of the trilogy strayed in which Ethan Hunt became more of an Americanized version of James Bond (before Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer or any other spy with the initials “J.B.” popped up on the screen) and really limited the TEAMwork element with clockwork timing that was key to the original series, or the ’90s reboot. Worse still were remixes of the great theme that MUTED the PERCUSSIVE BEAT that was the driving force of the theme.
At least the new movie, GHOST PROTOCOL gets back to focusing on the TEAM element (including an opening stunt featured in the trailers that if you froze would reveal is NOT Tom Cruise).
— Ken from Chicago
P.S. Yes, LEVERAGE is like a more humorous version of the IMF, where BURN NOTICE (with Michael, Sam, Fiona, Jesse and occasionally his mom, Madge, joining in the hijinks), while funny, is a more serious take. Altho both seem to specialize in sob stories from their clients.
Or, alternatively, have the mole be Jim Phelps JUNIOR.
Peter Graves was born in 1926 and would have been 70 when the movie debuted, so he could have easily played a 70- or 60-something Jim Phelp Sr, who could have plausibly had a 50- or 40-something son, not only working for IMF but who had the time to rise up to the ranks of leadership.
Then the movie could have ate its cake and have it too. No one would suspect Jim Phelps Jr. His heel turn would have been a surprise. Peter Graves could have been furious and heartbroken as Jim Phelps Sr learned about his son–or Jr could have ranted that at his eyes were “opened” at his father’s funeral, that all those values of duty, country, loyalty, while the fat cats were raking in dough and power and women, etc., the usual villain-justification rant #3.
THAT old and new fans of Mission Impossible would have loved. But, nooooooooooooooooo!
— Ken from Chicago
P.S. Or as the kids would say: “Darth Vader: NOOOOOOOOOO!”
I recall when I watched it prior to the big reveal that on some level I’d considered the possibility of Phelps being the traitor but then dismissed it because it was Phelps. I think the only way to make it work is to treat it like a separate reality like Earth-3 or the Mirror Universe. Which could be interesting if it means that in the TV universe *Ethan Hunt* is a bad guy…
So nice to see I’m not the only one who doesn’t accept that Voight was the same character. While I do see the movies as being in the same continuity as the original and the revival series (and even one episode of DIAGNOSIS: MURDER), I just don’t personally accept Voight is Peter Graves’ Phelps. I know an explanation will never be given in the movies but simply believing that it wasn’t the REAL Jim Phelps in M:I-1 is the only way I can watch the films. I enjoyed immensely the third and fourth installments.
… like the son idea….
I’m in wholehearted agreement about the awfulness of MI. I remembered being baffled all through it that they had a “Jim Phelps” who wasn’t Peter Graves, and thinking, in the end, that not only was it a sure thing Graves had turned them down, but that phrases like “Go tell hëll” were likely involved, that I suspected that whoever presented Graves with the script had more guts than sense, and that Graves made very much the right choice.
I felt, in the end, personally insulted: The new producers had, as far as I was concerned, gone way out of their way to pee all over my fond memories, and to disprespect me as a viewer. It was enough to prevent me from watching II or III, and only a combination of amazing reviews and Brad Bird as a director got me into the theater for Ghost Protocol. (I’m glad I overcame my initial reluctance, BTW. It’s a wonderful movie, and very much in the spirit of the original series.)