The Mission: Impossible franchise might not be entirely over; it’s virtually a guarantee we’ll see another movie at some point, but the one thing we know with some certainty is that any future movies will not include Tom Cruise. That means no other great collaborations with great directors from Briand DePalma to John Woo to Christopher McQuarrie.
It also means that new collaborations between Cruise and other great directors will never happen, which, as it turns out, is the real travesty, because apparently, Cruise’s Magnolia director, Paul Thomas Anderson, would have loved to direct Cruise in a Mission: Impossible film. He tells Le Figaro (translated from French via The Playlist)...
I would have loved to, but I never received his phone call. I was very disappointed. I think he’s done with ‘Mission: Impossible,’ so it’s not going to happen.
Hang on, wait a damn minute. Are you telling me that if somebody had just made a phone call, we could have gotten a Mission: Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson? I’m going to need Cruise to unretire from playing Ethan Hunt right now so that we can make this happen.
If there was a fault in the fact that the last four Mission: Impossible movies were directed by the same man, and it’s a fault even the man himself, Christopher McQuarrie, recognized, it’s that every other Mission: Impossible movie had a different director, which gave each movie its own unique identity. The main character was the same, but everything else was different.
Not every movie was a winner, but each one certainly felt different. If you wanted to see Mission: Impossible as a psychological thriller, you had De Palma’s take on the original. John Woo made it a straight action movie with highly choreographed setpieces. J.J. Abrams created a mystery box in Mission: Impossible III that wasn’t fully opened until the final film in the franchise.
I would love to have seen Paul Thomas Anderson’s take on Mission: Impossible. It’s an admittedly odd pairing, but then that’s what’s so great about it. Knowing Anderson’s previous work, it likely would have been a more character-driven take on the material, but it could have been quite impressive to see such a major franchise done like that.
Considering the success of Mission: Impossible, it seems unlikely we won’t get another movie at some point, be it a sequel to Cruise’s movies with new characters or a complete franchise reboot. Maybe, if they do start over, they can go back to the old formula and let different directors put their stamp on Mission: Impossible. If that happens, will somebody please call Paul Thomas Anderson?
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