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