Mission: Impossible, a series following a covert agency dubbed the Impossible Mission Force, has encountered its own seemingly impossible mission: improving its villains. The Tom Cruise-led franchise peaked early on the antagonist front and has since seen a dearth of memorable, effective bad guys. That limitation has become the wildly imaginative series’ most consistent impediment. One might argue that a conceit like Mission: Impossible doesn’t necessitate good villains because that’s technically not what the story’s about; we’re here for the stunts and the silliness. But for Ethan Hunt’s world-saving achievements to be truly impressive, the IMF’s missions should be impossible because of the threat a single person poses as much as the entertaining spy hijinks. After all, what’s a hero without a villain?
Why Did ‘Mission: Impossible III’ Have the Best Villain?
A proper villain has a simple and essential role that’s nonetheless tricky to achieve. Good drama demands they provide the protagonist with an obstacle, preferably through a rare triplicate of emotional, narrative, and performative impact. The first three Mission: Impossible films set a standard with their bad guys that the successive sequels never quite met, let alone developed a step further. Jon Voight as the IMF’s corrupt leader Jim Phelps packed a punch precisely because he was Ethan’s mentor. Dougray Scott‘s Sean Ambrose, a former IMF agent gone rogue in Mission: Impossible 2, served as a dark mirror to Ethan’s stalwart principles and played into the over-the-top mood director John Woo wove throughout his turn at the wheel.
Yet franchise fans and casual viewers alike can agree that Mission: Impossible III is where the magic lies. As an actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman was in a class of his own. As the ruthless arms dealer Owen Davian, Hoffman is an adrenaline shot through the franchise’s heart that reverberates to this day. Davian pursues a lackluster MacGuffin the script never explains and doesn’t need to: it’s Hoffman’s effortlessly menacing presence that elevates Mission: Impossible III from a competent, run-of-the-mill spy thriller into another ballpark entirely. And it’s a ballpark so superior to the rest of the series, it might as well be in outer space.
Unlike the routinely bland or delightfully goofy villains that populate the other Mission: Impossible movies, Owen Davian is the walking personification of apathetic evil. Even when he’s tied to a chair and dangled out of a moving airplane as an interrogation tactic, he’s utterly unruffled. He has no personal vendetta against Ethan or the IMF. He’s just a for-profit pencil pusher who’s nonchalantly annoyed at the inconvenience Ethan’s thrown his way. Yet such a minor irritation prompts Davian to instantly threaten any hypothetical woman Ethan loves simply because the IMF agent dared to get in Davian’s way. Hoffman interjects Davian’s controlled demeanor with moments of petrifying unpredictability, and his goals are precisely measured; that’s far more terrifying than yet another attempt at world destruction. And up until the recent Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, Davian was the only villain to make good on his threats and rip Ethan’s heart out without hesitation. He renders our hero helpless and broken. The fact that Davian remains far and away the best Mission: Impossible nemesis is a testament to Hoffman’s lightning-in-a-bottle performance and how smartly the script breaks from established tradition.
Why Do Mission: Impossible’s Other Villains Fall Short?
The baddies of Mission: Impossible installments four through seven are serviceable enough but stock figures in comparison to Hoffman’s Owen Davian. Each represents a fanatical global threat that can’t be reasoned with, which isn’t a poor starting point for an espionage series. Yet they lack flavor and force their movies to work overtime to compensate for such generic threats. For example, Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) of Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible – Fallout aren’t too dissimilar in methodology and motivation. Both want to stir up enough discord to collapse the world into war. Hendricks is a science-based peril; watching Ethan and Company race to stop a nuclear missile from hitting San Francisco provides the thrills expected of the series, but the script gives Nyqvist, a dependable actor, little to work with that’s of unique substance.
Rogue Nation and Fallout, meanwhile, benefit from sharing the same villain. It’s a first for the franchise, and Harris’s role as a rogue MI6 agent harkens back to Mission: Impossible 2. Lane is an anarchist force of nature Harris infuses with a chilly menace. Nevertheless, Rogue Nation and Fallout recycle the threat of nuclear war first with the Syndicate and then with a version of the Syndicate that went through a rebranding campaign after Lane’s imprisonment. Nuclear warfare remains an ever-present real-life tension, but its narrative pervasiveness results in an unfortunately dull plot.
‘Dead Reckoning Part One’ Tries Something New but Recycles Past Mistakes
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One boasts the most ambitious and unique premise and then backs itself into a corner with the idea’s inherent limitations. The IMF has always faced human obstacles, so squaring off a technologically-reliant agency against a sentient AI poses bold new challenges. (In 2023, this science fiction-esque plot has never felt more viable.) However, despite the Entity’s nearly omniscient powers, its lack of a grounded presence fails to evoke any true menace. It’s a good excuse to return to some old-fashioned analog spy routines without the wallop required of such a wide-ranging danger.
Enter Gabriel (Esai Morales) to do most of Dead Reckoning‘s baddie heavy lifting. Morales oozes cool confidence and a detached yet vindictive hatred as an old nemesis from Ethan’s past. Everyone is a disposable tool in Gabriel’s chess game, and his disdain is palpable. Wanting world domination might be old hat, but Morales’ performance and Gabriel’s emotional tether to Ethan significantly enliven the proceedings even if Morales is unfairly limited to serving as the Entity’s human mouthpiece.
Mission: Impossible’s Villains Should Be as Fun as Its Heroes
Interestingly enough, Gabriel proves an interesting paradox: Mission: Impossible‘s secondary villains are often superior to their leading counterparts. Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux) of Ghost Protocol is the coolest of cool-headed blonde assassins and sparks a revenge arc for IMF agent Jane Carter (Paula Patton). It’s impossible to look away from Pom Klementieff‘s Paris in Dead Reckoning, a gleefully violent henchperson who finds her morals challenged by Ethan’s kindness. Fallout sees Henry Cavill deliver a career-best as August Walker/John Lark, the extremist who infiltrated the United States’ highest security echelons. Not knowing if Cavill’s playing a villain in disguise or if Walker’s just a profoundly annoying jerk is one of Fallout‘s best moves, and makes him taking that hook to the face even more satisfying. Seydoux, Klementieff, and Cavill’s roles all have more personality, a greater sense of immediacy, and freedom from any narrative requirements beyond being fun obstacles for our heroes.
Even for a series as consistently satisfying as Mission: Impossible, going through the required motions isn’t enough. Relying so heavily on tropes (and not bringing something new to the table with them) leaves a story cold. If the franchise continues past Dead Reckoning Part Two, it desperately needs a defibrillator shock worthy of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
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