This is like, Lessons from, Dead Reckoning. Part One. Not, Lessons from Dead Reckoning Part One. I'd planned on actually talking about Dead Reckoning Part One, but I need to talk about the preparation I made beforehand, beforehand, and it turns out I have a lot to say about, six movies, and besides I'm not even sure what "lessons" I have yet.
Like, the gradual proliferation of IMF technology. I always thought it was weird that Hendricks from Ghost Protocol, nuclear extremist and terrorist with zero ties to the IMF (former Swedish Special Forces in fact, I believe) had IMF technology in the form of that mask he wore to take on the role of his own enforcer Wistrom. There's a lot going on there, which I've already thought through (it needs to be really Hendricks to give a personal connection, but it needs to look like Wistrom and not Hendricks to prevent them from just nabbing the villain then and there, and Hendricks does this because Wistrom was the one scheduled to do so but Hendricks wants to oversee it himself, and he dresses as Wistrom in spite of the fact that Moreau and Wistrom had never met face-to-face because he's still very privative) but the question remained where Hendricks got the IMF technology in the first place- but in Mission Impossible 3 Davian uses an IMF mask to dress his translator/head of security as Julia, which was a little weird but made sense because Davian was working with/for Musgrave. So that (sort of) answers that question. Where Vinter in Rogue Nation got the contact lens camera technology that the IMF had been using in Ghost Protocol I don't know, but the Syndicate is comprised of former members of all sorts of Intelligence agencies; it makes more sense than the mask stuff at least.
But the great thing about these movies is how they manage to make every evolution feel, natural? Like, the first one and the second one and the third and the fourth all have vastly different styles, all the first four gradually honing in toward the latter four McQuarrie flicks; going back and rewatching episodes of the original TV series is like, this feels exactly of a piece with each of the movies. Mission: Impossible 2 was already smart enough early on to know that Ethan Hunt is exactly the kind of guy to free solo for funsies, and with that same scene laying the groundwork for the series' trademark practical stunts which wouldn't really get introduced until Ghost Protocol with the Burj Khalifa sequence- there was a bunch of CG and greenscreen and everything with the action set pieces earlier on, but the grounded approach felt present already. And all that.
This is where we tie into, the Dead Reckoning stuff, which, is just insane how many evolutions that feel natural that film makes. The idea of The Choice, how the IMF recruits, there's this weird gap between Missions 2 and 3 that is now fully logical I think (like I said I need to rewatch 2): Nyah was given The Choice following her criminal past, Ethan trained her as a spy, realized he had a knack for it or something, and that's where he's at at the beginning of M:I:III! Maybe! I don't know anything about the Operation Surma video game other than it slots in around here, maybe it undermines all of that, I don't know. Anyway.
I've been binge watching Alias all day, I don't know how they manage to keep on ending on cliffhangers but they do. (I mean, it's easy to end on a cliffhanger, just, stop right before you resolve something. But I mean, they were like, fifteen years ahead of their time in terms of episode structure; at the end of almost every episode I said out loud, "that was it?!" and just had to continue watching.) Expect a Lessons from Alias post at some point in future??
