Unused Painted Poster For Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

I thought the main 1-sheet poster for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation was quite good. But it turns out it could have been better. It could have been painted! I know, I know, we poster nerds are always complaining that the modern Photoshop montage posters aren't as good as the painted posters of our youth, and always commenting on new photo posters by saying, "I wish it were painted!" But that's usually completely in vain and we know it. (One marketing executive once told me that when a DVD has a painted cover image, all-important WalMart customers think that means the movie is animated, meaning that live action films have to be advertised with photographs.) However, in this one case, it turns out there really was a painted version created by a superstar artist. Steve Chorney, whose iconic movie artwork of the Home Video era included posters for Labyrinth, Coming to America, The Ice Pirates, Lassiter, and Quigley Down Under, painted this spectacular image for the latest entry in the Tom Cruise film series. For whatever reason (see above), the studio rejected it and went with a slick and, admittedly, good looking photo collage. But not as good looking as this! Happily, Chorney's painted version was made available on the Mendola Artists website. If only there were a paper version! I would love to have that hanging on my wall.

© 2015 Mendola Artists Representatives

Paramount Unveils Series of Mission: Impossible Posters Celebrating Cruise's Greatest Dangling

Paramount has released a series of what The Imp Awards describes as "minimalist posters highlighting cliffhangers from each of the films in the series." But with the exception of the image for J.J. Abrams' M:I:iii, they might as well be called "dangling posters!" Because these retro-style images (in the tradition of the Sixties-inspired title sequences for Casino Royale, Mad Men or the new Man From U.N.C.L.E.) showcase the best moments of Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt dangling from a succession of things ever higher off the ground, culminating in the breathtaking airplane stunt seen in the trailers for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, for which the actor actually strapped himself to the exterior of a flying plane. They're pretty cool! I wonder if there are paper versions of these?

Tom Cruise's Latest Death-Defying Mission: Impossible Stunt

It's possible Tom Cruise might be totally nuts, but he harnesses that for our entertainment, which is really pretty awesome. He's a consummate showman, as proven in this utterly insane stunt. We saw some news footage of it when they shot this last fall, but in this new featurette you can see the actual dailies from a locked down camera on the actor (not a stuntman) as he clings to the side of an airplane as it takes off. It's just incredible. (A long way from Roger Moore's green-screened airplane clinging in Octopussy!) I'm sure the finished scene will be fantastic with wide shots and close-ups edited together and Joe Kraemer's version of Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible Theme blasting out of ATMOS speakers... but all that may not be quite as impressive as this simple locked-down camera on Cruise--even without his harness digitally removed. It's stunning. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation opens July 31.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation 1-Sheet Poster Revealed

Paramount unveiled the final 1-sheet for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation on the movie's Facebook page today. And, while I'm not normally a fan of photo montage posters, I have to say, I really like this one! I like the design, I like that it reminds me of the DVD covers for the TV seasons, and most of all I like that it reinforces that the Mission: Impossible film franchise has finally become a team series, like its TV predecessor. While we've seen a set of character posters for this film already (and Ghost Protocol had one as well), all of the previous Mission: Impossible 1-sheets (even the decidedly team-oriented Ghost Protocol), to the best of my recollection, featured only Tom Cruise (usually in his distinctive profile). This poster would seem to represent a full evolution of the film series becoming more like the TV show, which is a great thing! (Rogue Nation also features the return of The Syndicate, the primary antagonist in the final seasons of the show.) Here, Cruise is flanked by Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and Alec Baldwin. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation opens July 31. View the latest trailer here.

Another Trailer for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

A third trailer has dropped for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. There's not a lot of new material not seen in the first two trailers here, but there is some, and it all still looks really awesome. Why can't it be July 31 already? Bring on The Syndicate!

Simon Pegg's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Poster Arrives Late

Sure enough, here's the Simon Pegg character poster for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, oddly absent from the batch released the day before yesterday. Pegg returns for the third time as tech specialist Benji Dunn. Complete your set! Also, watch the new Rogue Nation trailer here.

Second Trailer For Mision: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Paramount has released the second trailer for Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. While the first one focused on the villainous organization The Syndicate (a welcome callback to the TV series), this one focuses on Ethan Hunt's IMF team and makes it clear that as in Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, teamwork is again a priority. We're treated to snippets of the whole group working together to pull off the sort of impossible caper their TV counterparts always indulged in, though, naturally, heightened for a series known for its outrageous stunts. While Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt is point man, everyone clearly has a role to play. I like this, and I like everything I see here! (And once again those motorcycles remind me of Leonard Nimoy in the classic Season 5 episode "My Enemy My Friend," which is a plus!)

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Character Posters

Paramount unveiled a bunch of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation character posters today, showcasing cast members Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and, in our first good look at the film's apparent primary villain, Sean Harris. Presumably there's a Simon Pegg poster still to come. (Update: Sure enough, a Pegg poster has materialized!) The last movie, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, also advertised this way. I like the character posters because they serve to emphasize the team nature of Mission: Impossible, which was a staple of the TV series, but took a backseat to Tom Cruise action stardom in the first three theatrical films. I was very happy to see it return in Ghost Protocol, and I'm hoping that dynamic continues in the new film, which sees the Impossible Missions Force taking on an antagonist familiar to fans of the show, the mysterious Syndicate. opens July 31. A second trailer is set to hit tomorrow. Watch the superb first one here.

Mission: Impossible: What is The Syndicate?

After watching the trailer for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, many viewers may be asking themselves, "Who or what is this Syndicate?" Longtime fans of the TV series, however, are probably already grinning. The Syndicate has a long history with Mission: Impossible... though not in quite the same context as this new movie iteration.

Although the later seasons of Mission: Impossible are commonly referred to as "the Syndicate years" since the organization became the Impossible Missions Force's primary antagonist, the Syndicate actually first reared its ugly head as early as the very first season. Bob Johnson, the iconic voice on the self-destructing tapes who gives Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) and Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) before him his missions, first mentioned the Syndicate in a mission briefing in Episode 17 of Season 1, "The Frame" (though an "International Narcotics Syndicate" was referenced ten episodes sooner). We're told, "The Syndicate has a finger in every legitimate business. Now they're moving into government." Yes, this Syndicate was organized crime. Essentially the Mafia, though that word wasn't spoken much on American TV in the Sixties. The Syndicate also popped up frequently on another Bruce Geller TV show of the era, Mission: Impossible's sister series the private eye drama Mannix. It was a polite way to talk about the mob on television.

The Syndicate made a big splash going up against Phelps and his IM Force in the second season two-parter "The Council." This was a significant appearance, because the two episodes were edited together into the first theatrical Mission: Impossible movie, Mission: Impossible vs. the Mob, for release in foreign markets, Jim's mission was, according to the recording, to "put an end to [new Syndicate boss] Frank Wayne and his organization." The crew may have succeeded in ending Wayne's career, but clearly they didn't accomplish the objective of smiting the organization, because the Syndicate would return again and again. In "The Council," the scope of the plot is still international (the Syndicate is laundering its money in Swiss banks), keeping the IMF's purview fairly CIA-like and foreign-oriented, but that would change. From the very beginning, the IMF always took on the occasional homegrown criminal between spy missions (everything from large scale con men to armored car robbers), but eventually they would turn their focus more towards domestic crime and the Syndicate behind it.

By Season 4's "Mastermind," the writers had learned to stop having the team go up against the Syndicate's top man every time. You could only take out so many leaders before it all got implausible. Henceforth, the IMF's Syndicate-based missions would mostly be against local leaders or men with specific roles in the vast organization that was the Syndicate. (An organization big enough to have its own convention in "Mastermind.")

It was in Season 5 (the 1970-71 season) that the show's producers made a conscious decision to focus less on Cold War politics with fictional Iron Curtain countries (story consultant Lawrence Heath expressed frustration about not being allowed to use real countries and current events). In his essential book The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier, Patrick J. White explains that the change was a reaction to plunging ratings. The writers felt that the show had become too predictable in its old format. Since only two episodes of Season 4 had taken place in the United States, a decision was made to shift the series geographically. And the primary enemy on the homefront was the Syndicate. Even with this mandate, however, a good chunk of Season 5 episodes still took place overseas and focused on traditional espionage. It was in Seasons 6 and 7, after Leonard Nimoy left, that the Syndicate really came to the forefront.

During the final two seasons, we hear Bob Johnson talk about "the Syndicate" so often that it becomes a whole new trope for the show. It's almost as familiar as "your mission, should you decide to accept it," or "this tape will self-destruct in five seconds." Because of that familiarity, it came as a delight to many fans of the TV show when the fourth Tom Cruise film, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, mentioned the Syndicate in an offhand manner. At the end of the movie, once the action is over, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) gets a new mission briefing about "a new terrorist organization calling itself 'The Syndicate.'" This is only one of many Easter Eggs in that movie for TV fans, but it made me clap out loud in the IMAX theater. Still, the question remained. Was it just an Easter Egg? Or was this briefing laying the groundwork for the next movie? Happily, we now have an answer. It was laying the groundwork alright, for a ferociously reinvented Syndicate who's back in a big way in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

Appropriate to our times, the new Syndicate feels a lot more threatening than the old one, which eventually boiled down to a lot of sweaty men in ill-fitting Seventies suits who sometimes seemed beneath the talents of the IMF. But the reinvented Syndicate is an equal to the IMF. It's a "rogue nation" unto itself according to the trailer, "trained to do what we do," in Ethan's words. "An anti-IMF," as Benji (Simon Pegg) puts it. Furthermore, it's shrouded in secrecy. According to Alec Baldwin's character, "the CIA has never discovered any intel regarding this Syndicate." When he poses the possibly rhetorical question as to why to Agent Brandt (Jeremy Renner), Brandt brashly asks, "Do you want the polite answer, or the truth?" Does this exchange indicate that the Syndicate might have infiltrated the CIA itself? Or just that it's so good at covering its tracks it's managed to elude them? I tend to favor the former. This new Syndicate certainly seems to owe a lot to Marvel's Hydra (particularly as seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where the evil organization had managed to fully penetrate intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D.) and James Bond's SPECTRE. But with that resonant name, it still holds a uniquely Mission: Impossible identity. I love every twist that manages to bring the movies closer to their small screen antecedent, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how this new Syndicate plays out.

Read my reviews of the Syndicate-heavy seasons of Mission: Impossible:

DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Seventh TV Season
DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season
DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Fifth TV Season

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Teaser Revives The Syndicate!

Paramount provided our first look at Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (formerly known only as Mission: Impossible 5) today, and it is awesome. This is a minute-long TV teaser, with a full trailer due to hit tomorrow. Take a look!



There are many, many things to love about this teaser, especially for fans of the TV series. Chief among them is that it delivers—big time!—on the tantalizing promise that concluded Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: the big screen IMF are now taking on The Syndicate! But this isn't the organized crime Syndicate of sweaty, balding men in bad Seventies suits from the TV show. ("Syndicate" was a popular and more acceptable term than "Mafia" on television back then.) This new Syndicate was introduced (to the delight of long-term fans) at the end of the last movie as "a new terrorist group calling itself 'The Syndicate,'" and in this trailer we learn even more about it. It's the "rogue nation" of the title, an "anti-IMF" with the same extraordinary skill sets. This version of The Syndicate certainly seems kin to Hydra (as seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier), SPECTRE (returning for the first time since 1971 to antagonize James Bond in the next movie), KAOS, and THRUSH.

With at least three of those villainous organizations active on screen this year (Hydra is set up to return in The Avengers: Age of Ultron), it's clear that evil agencies are enjoying a comeback. Why is this? Is it because of real world terrorist groups like ISIS? (In the face of actual, seemingly insurmountable evil, perhaps audiences crave acronyms that can actually be destroyed by heroes.) Or is it because of increased distrust in our own governments? (Concocting conspiracies of cabals that have infiltrated all levels of government seems preferable to admitting that giant bureaucracies are inherently fallible.) Or is it just because Marvel had huge success adapting a kind of silly SPECTRE rip-off for the big screen and making "Hail Hydra" a $700+ million cultural meme? Whatever the case, I love the idea of reviving The Syndicate in the Mission: Impossible movies. I'm a big fan of the so-called "Syndicate Seasons" from the show's later years, even though that term is really a misnomer. The Syndicate showed up as early as the first season (and in the second, two Syndicate episodes were stitched together for overseas release as the feature Mission Impossible vs. The Mob), and even in the last season it wasn't all organized crime; the IMF was still taking on spies and terrorists as well. And hearing Bob Johnson's tape recorded voice say "The Syndicate" dozens and dozens of times in his mission briefings for Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) conditioned me to crave it in the movies.

Based on trailers, between this and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (and hopefully SPECTRE by the end of the week!), spy fans have quite a lot to look forward to this year.

Read my reviews of the Syndicate-heavy seasons of Mission: Impossible:

DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Seventh TV Season
DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season
DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Fifth TV Season

Christopher McQuarrie Offers Mission: Impossible Updates on Twitter

Director Christopher McQuarrie offered an impromptu Q&A on Twitter this weekend in which he revealed a number of tantalizing details about the fifth Mission: Impossible film. Collider provides a nice recap of what he revealed, but it's still worth digging through McQuarrie's tweets (#McQAndA) for some choice nuggets. As someone who appreciated the steps that Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol took to course-correct the film franchise by emulating the classic TV show, I was particularly interested in what McQuarrie had to say with regard to the original series. My number one hope for this film is that it delivers on the promise at the end of the last one to introduce frequent TV series nemesis "The Syndicate." Based on McQuarrie's responses, maybe it will! When a user asked if his movie would have the feel of a TV episode, the director answered, "Promise." When asked if he was a fan of the show and who his favorite character was, McQuarrie tweeted, "Loved the show. Morris was the man," referring to the great Greg Morris, who played electronics expert Barney Collier in all seven seasons. (Great answer! Sadly, though, the director declined to pick a favorite season.) Asked if there would be "many nods to the original like the last one" (meaning Ghost Protocol, which was packed with delightful Easter Eggs for fans of the series), McQuarrie promisingly answered, "nods to the fans abound." (He also said, separately, that there would be nods to Brian DePalma's somewhat misguided first Mission: Impossible movie, which is less promising.)

Beyond discussion of the TV show, it seems like Ghost Protocol (the series' top earner to date) is the model for the next film, which is also good news. Asked, "are you aiming for a darker tone than Ghost Protocol, or will it have the same sense of humor/fun?" the director enigmatically replied, "We were aiming for Ghost Protocol, but Mission has a life of its own and goes where it wants." Hm. Well, I'm glad they started out, at least, aiming for the somewhat lighter tone of Ghost Protocol, which I prefer. I was worried that McQuarrie's Mission might have a darker tone, like his last Cruise collaboration, Jack Reacher. I guess we'll have to wait and see to determine the true answer to that one. McQuarrie told another fan (not entirely convincingly) that previous female IMF agents from the film series Paula Patton (Ghost Protocol) and Maggie Q (M:i:III) were unavailable. (Oh well. In its way a rotating roster of female agents could be an oblique reference to the series, which followed exactly that model for Season 4 after Barbara Bain left.) The director also revealed that we can expect a subtitle and trailer (as well as official publicity stills) imminently! So, following the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol model, they are not reverting to numbers, which is good, as M:I-5 would be too easy to confuse with the British Security Service, or the TV series Spooks which was known in America as MI-5, and also has a feature film spin-off due out this year! Finally, he confirmed that Michael Giacchino, who scored the last two movies (quite fantastically at that!) would not be returning for this installment. Instead, McQuarrie's regular collaborator Joe Kraemer (Jack Reacher, Way of the Gun) will handle the score and is "playing with something retro, of course." Kraemer doesn't have much mainstream experience outside of his work with McQuarrie, which means that along with The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s Daniel Pemberton (whose prior work is mainly television), we'll be getting two major spy scores this year from relatively fresh voices. That should be exciting!

Now I'm just holding my breath for this trailer....

Tradecraft: Cruise's Next Mission Moved Up

The fuse has been lit early! Usually when tentpoles are dramatically shifted into another season, it's a move backwards. (See: Warner Bros.' The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which has been pushed back twice now.) But today Deadline reports that Paramount is shifting Mission: Impossible 5 up from its previously announced December berth to July 31. Yes, that's this July 31... 2015! So spy fans will get to see the movie sooner than expected. And in terms of genre competition, Ethan Hunt is retreating from James Bond's crosshairs (SPECTRE opens in November and will likely still be in theaters come Christmas) and setting the more vlunerable Napoleon Solo squarely in his own. (U.N.C.L.E. is currently slated for August.) The spacing is good and there's more than enough room for all these spy franchises to coexist... but it's still considerably safer to be the first of the biggies out of the gate than the last, since it's possible the public may burn out a little on the genre after a whopping fifteen spy movies have opened from January to December. (I hope not! And Bond, being practically a genre unto himself, seems pretty safe from such a scenario.) The most surprising thing bout seeing a major action movie shift up by five months is that post-production on these big would-be blockbusters tends to take a long time. But the movie obviously indicates that the studio is confident director Christopher McQuarrie will have all his effects shots finished in time. (This also strengthens the Mission: Impossible series' boasts about relying on practical effects and real stuntwork over time-consuming CGI.) The move means that Paramount's publicity team will have to leap into action, Tom Cruise-style, to build awareness faster than thought. It likely means we'll be seeing a poster and even a teaser trailer quite soon. (Could they even whip up something in time for next week's Super Bowl?) Assuming the effects are in good shape and the marketing folks are up to the challenge, the move makes a lot of sense for Paramount. Currently, the trade points out, the only competition in the weekend of July 31 is Warner Bros.' Point Break remake, Focus Features' sci-fi thriller Self/Less and The Weinstein Company’s Jake Gyllenhaal boxing drama Southpaw, none of which are likely to pose too big a threat to the venerable Mission juggernaut. The move kind of sucks for Point Break, though, since Cruise & Co. will probably poach the very audience its aiming for. I wouldn't be surprised to see it shuffled. The question for spy fans, of course, is what will that mean for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. if Warner Bros. starts shuffling its tentpoles again? If they'd already begun their publicity campaign, it would make sense for the studio to move it up if there's an available frame earlier in the year, but since they haven't it would be more likely to shuffle backwards... yet again. I really hope that doesn't happen.

Tom Cruise Performs More Crazy Stunts in Mission: Impossible 5

In each Mission: Impossible movie, Tom Cruise seems to like to top whatever crazy stunt he performed in the one before it. Dangling from the side of the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol seemed pretty hard to top—terrestrially, anyway. Obviously once you've scaled the tallest building, if you still want to go up, you've got to dangle from an airplane. Or at least cling to one. And that's exactly what Cruise did last month while filming in the UK. ABC News reports (with pictures and video) that the 52-year-old actor had himself strapped to the side of an Airbus A4005 and clung to fuselage of the massive transport plane as it took off and reached an altitude of 5000 feet (putting him almost twice as high off the ground as he was in Dubai) at a speed of 340mph. So, yeah, maybe that tops running down the Burj Khalifa. And earlier today, according to the London Evening Standard, he filmed a chase scene in London's Piccadilly Circus shoving his way through real crowds. Okay, so that one's not quite as death-defying, but it does sound pretty harrowing if you happened to be stuck in traffic in the area. As previously reported, Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher) is directing, and Cruise is joined by returning team members Jeremy Renner (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, The Bourne Legacy), Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible III and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and (per Dark Horizons) Ving Rhames (veteran of all the Mission: Impossible films to date), along with newcomers to the series Rebecca Ferguson (The White Queen) and Alec Baldwin (The Hunt For Red October). Mission: Impossible 5 opens Christmas Day next year.

Additionally, The Mail Online posted this amateur video of the stunt in progress. (McQuarrie, obviously, will make it look considerably more exciting, no doubt with the aid of Lalo Schifrin's famous theme music!)

McQuarrie Tweets First Team Photo from Mission: Impossible 5

Director Christopher McQuarrie has Tweeted (via Dark Horizons) a candid shot of the latest iteration of the IMF team from the set of Mission: Impossible 5. Comprising a sort of all-star roster from the previous film entries, Jeremy Renner, Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames would be the 8x10s on Jim's desk if the movies ever did that classic TV "team selection" scene... and if the film series hadn't stupidly made Jim Phelps a traitor. (Come on, McQuarrie, please undo that misstep with a throwaway line about how the agent who assumed Phelps' name after his retirement turned out to be a real asshole or something... ideally delivered in a cameo from Martin Landau or Leonard Nimoy or Peter Lupus!) Notably absent is Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol's female lead, Paula Patton. I guess the film series is emulating the TV show's fourth season, when rather than replacing Barbara Bain with another female regular, the producers opted for a guest actress each week. But the important takeaway here is that in his first photo from the set, McQuarrie has chosen to focus on the team, and not on Cruise alone! While the first three movies were mostly solo Cruise vehicles, Brad Bird's Ghost Protocol made huge strides in steering the films back in the direction of the classic show—which was always team-oriented. I hope this is a sign that McQuarrie intends to continue along a similar course. His caption would seem to indicate so!

The team is back. @Renner4Real @TomCruise @simonpegg #VingRhames #MI5Diary pic.twitter.com/ai3J6dYMaC
— ChristopherMcQuarrie (@chrismcquarrie) September 11, 2014

Mission: Impossible 5 Sets Cast, Begins Filming in Austria

The cast is coming together for Mission: Impossible 5, and we've got our first notion of what Tom Cruise's hair will look like (always the biggest question as an M:I movie gears up for production) thanks to a photo of the actor scouting locations. Austrian paper The Local (via Dark Horizons) published this picture. They report that the age defying star/producer was up on the roof of Vienna's State Opera House, where he'll be shooting an action scene at night. (Austria is fast becoming the location for spies to attend operas; James Bond also spent a night at the opera in that country in Quantum of Solace's most memorable scene.) Cameras start rolling on Saturday.

In his fifth outing as IMF superspy Ethan Hunt, Cruise is joined by returning team members Jeremy Renner (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, The Bourne Legacy), Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible III and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and (per Dark Horizons) Ving Rhames (veteran of all the Mission: Impossible films to date), along with newcomers to the series Rebecca Ferguson (The White Queen) and Alec Baldwin (The Hunt For Red October). Deadline reports that Baldwin will play the Director of the CIA. Swedish actress Ferguson is still a relatively fresh face, but I was quite impressed by her in this summer's Hercules and look forward to her spy debut! Her role is as yet unknown.

Mission: Impossible 5 will also shoot in London, where the Houses of Parliament themselves are rumored to be a possible filming location. As previously reported, Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher) is directing, and he's got his work cut out for him if he wants his film to live up to the benchmark set by Brad Bird with the fourth film, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (by far the best entry in the film series to date). Personally, I'm hoping McQuarrie continues in the promising direction Bird pointed the franchise, making the films more like the classic television series. While the first three films were largely star vehicles for Cruise, Ghost Protocol truly felt like a team movie, a hallmark of the series. It was also packed with clever references to the show, and even established the TV IMF's longtime nemesis The Syndicate (re-dressed as a terrorist organization instead of the mob) as a potential enemy in the fifth film. I hope that comes to pass! While previous films in the series have gone by the shorthand "M:I-2" or "M:I-iii," this one will have to find a different moniker. (Hopefully it will get its own subtitle like Ghost Protocol.) Not only is MI5 the name of the British internal Security Service, but in America it's also the title of the TV series about that service that was known as Spooks in the UK. And Spooks has its own movie coming out soon, which will also presumably utilize the MI-5 title on this side of the pond. None of that, however, has stopped McQuarrie from hashtagging his Tweets "#MI5Diary."