The original opening scene of Mission: Impossible was changed because of George Lucas, according to director Brian De Palma. The 1996 film reestablished the Mission: Impossible franchise for the modern era and introduced IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to the action movie world. Cruise has since starred in five Mission: Impossible sequels over the past 25 years, with Mission: Impossible 7 set to release in 2022.
Though the modern Mission: Impossible film franchise began in 1996, it’s gone through some major changes since then. 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol has been widely viewed as a major revitalization for the franchise, and since Christopher McQuarrie took over directorial duties with 2015’s Rogue Nation, the series has become one of the biggest movie franchises in history. In the beginning, however, Mission: Impossible wasn’t the huge-budget, absurd practical effects-driven juggernaut it is today. It was just another unproven reboot, which apparently got a little help from the creator of Star Wars himself.
Per Collider, De Palma discussed his work on the first Mission: Impossible film on a recent installment of the Light the Fuse podcast. The director revealed that he brought in Lucas for a screening of an early version of the film and that his peer had some feedback on the movie’s opening scene. Apparently, it was good advice, as De Palma ended up doing some reshoots to restructure the beginning of the film accordingly. Read De Palma’s full quote below.
When George saw Mission: Impossible he said, ‘There’s no setup to this thing. You’ve gotta set this thing up! You’ve gotta have that scene where they’re all sitting around the table and everybody gets their instructions about what’s gonna happen… In the beginning we had this very strange scene – it’s hard for me to remember now – with [Jon] Voight and somehow the jealous thing with the wife and Tom, and then we got into the first mission. And when George saw the movie it’s the first thing he said, ‘What are these people doing? This is Mission: Impossible, it’s a group of guys going to do something! So you’ve gotta get them all around a table and tell the audience what they’re supposed to do,’ and that’s what we did. We went back and reshot it. So that’s an example of us helping each other.
De Palma and Lucas are two of the most successful filmmakers of the late 1970s and 1980s, so it’s fun to hear about the ways they helped each other forward in their respective careers. By 1996, De Palma had already made a big name for himself with films like Scarface, Carrie, The Untouchables, and Carlito’s Way. But despite the clout he’d garnered over the years in Hollywood, he still respected the professional opinions of his peers enough to order reshoots on his own movie.
Lucas’ own directorial reputation has been somewhat muddied since the release of Mission: Impossible, primarily due to his questionable creative decisions for the critically panned Star Wars prequel trilogy. Public sentiment these days generally holds that Lucas was far better as a big-picture storyteller than as an actual director, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still largely responsible for the success of the Star Wars franchise. If nothing else, Lucas is certainly an expert on genre fiction in film, which is exactly what the first Mission: Impossible was always going to be.
Source: Light the Fuse (via Collider)
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July 07, 2021 at 12:35AM
