Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Preview
With the fourth M:I film coming in December, we sent an agent inside a preview screening.
Mission: Impossible as a film series is an erratic franchise. The first film's stellar cast mostly dispersed in the first half, allowing for some iconic beats, but the second instalment's heavy Cruise focus proved to be the fatal flaw. Whilst Tom Cruise is undisputedly great as a leading action hero, he still needs plot and character to bounce off of, and Thandie Newton and, well, the rest (who can remember?) hardly made good, with John Woo's over-direction going a little past acceptable.
Thankfully JJ Abrams jumped in to steer the train with M:I III and made one of the most exciting, well crafted, entertaining action thrillers in recent years, with cracking set-pieces, a strong focus on an ensemble to help Cruise and best of all, a villain the likes of Academy Award Winner Philip Seymour Hoffman.
But is Mission: Impossible like Star Trek, odd ones bad even ones good, only opposite, or has JJ's superseding power allowed for quality control in a franchise that can so easily be diverted off course?
Well, luckily last Tuesday Paramount presented 20 minutes of IMAX footage - two sequences - of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol for the viewing enjoyment of a gaggle of fans, and as we witnessed Brad Bird's first foray into live action, there was a communal sense of awe.
Seeing IMAX shot footage is always splendid, there's something so glorious about the expanding of a frame to fit a screen so large that you simply can't take it all in without moving your head, and as the camera flew towards the world's largest building, and then evilly flew over instigating bouts of vertigo amongst the majority, the sense of wonder and attraction that cinema's earliest films were designed for kicked in.
Seen in all the trailers, Tom Cruise climbing across this behemoth of a building with the aid of adhesive gloves (blue is glue, red dead), was shown in full, and my word is it tense. With a brief bit of exposition to explain partially why Ethan Hunt is sliding up a window pane, we get a nice amount of humour and some great interaction between Cruise, series stalwart Simon Pegg and newcomer Jeremy Renner, intercut with shots of Paula Patton in a dress walking around. I'm sure she's important, it's not like they'd make an action movie male-centric, right?
But the key shots were Cruise running up, down, and hanging from this building, as the gloves start failing and time runs out, it's tense, brilliantly handled and has a genuine "Oh god" moment towards the end, and in IMAX truly stuns.
Afterwards a second scene opened with Cruise running. And running. And running. Oh yes, he's going for it, as he attempts to outrun a sandstorm and chase after an unknown figure, using only his phone to guide him, a phone which isn't doing too well in the treacherous conditions. It's a 6-7 minute chase that has no dialogue, we had no set-up, but it's spectacular in it's own way. From foot chase to car, Cruise once more proves his action chops and Bird has created a fantastic little action scene, one with a clear beginning, middle and end. Maybe a sandstorm isn't the best image for an IMAX camera shoot, a camera that can take in ever so much detail, but the effect of opening the environment, showing the gorgeous landscapes when the sand clears and bringing the action closer to the audience without resorting to a third dimension, not that there's anything wrong with that, is something magnificent.
With clips as good as this, it seems that Bird has got something special waiting for us in December, something fun, exciting and intense. If it's half as good as the last Mission: Impossible then we have nothing to worry about, and this footage suggests it's at least that.
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