Let’s Talk About How Mission Impossible Upstaged Quantum of Solace
Mission Impossible is one of many Bond film imposters, but it happens to be one of the finest stand-ins we’ve seen recently.
Bond fans can be very territorial when it comes to other franchises trying to nudge in and steal some of the spy thriller spotlight. We’ve seen a million faux-Bond films pop up over the years, but even fans of 007 can agree that the Mission: Impossible franchise has come the closest to capturing the Bond magic without being a Bond film.
We saw the latest example of that in Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation which actually took something a Bond movie tried to do and did it much better.
If you haven’t seen Mission Impossible Rogue Nation yet, then go out and see it. If you have, then you know exactly what scene is being referred to here — the fight at the Opera.
The setup to the action set is that Ethan Hunt is trying to find out the identity of a mysterious man who infiltrated IMF’s London headquarters, killed a secretary and is toying with the agent’s drive for success. He tracks the movements of this anti-IMF group to an Opera and has to prevent the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor.
What ensues is about 20-25 minutes of action, suspense and just sheer awesomeness that called back to the failed attempt that Bond had at achieving such an action sequence.
This is referring to, of course, the short-lived sequence at the opera in Quantum of Solace where Bond discovers the identities of those involved in Quantum. It was brief, it was forced and after watching Mission Impossible basically do the same scene, it makes you loathe that film a little more than you probably already did.
In Mission Impossible, Ethan tracks down one assassin while discovering that there are two more there to do the job. One of the assassins is someone who saved Ethan’s life, and he needs to decide between saving her from one of the other assassins, saving the Chancellor or saving Benji.
As you remember, Quantum of Solace featured Bond simply listening in on a conversation about oil and water, taking some pictures and then running through a kitchen from gunfire in the briefest of action sequences possible. It was a let down, and even more so after seeing another team of filmmakers do it so much better.
It’s not that Bond is lesser franchise, but it’s hardly perfect even in this golden age it seems to be in. Not every film that is faux-Bond is going to get things right, but we at least have to acknowledge and enjoy it when that does happen. We can’t be Bond homers all the time, and a tip of the hat has to go towards Mission Impossible for righting a wrong that Bond should have corrected from the start.
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