ABSTRACT
In Part III of this book, I propose to test the coherence and plausibility of the way of understanding film’s relation to philosophy that I originally developed by reference to the Alien series, by examining the only other sequence of movies I know of that holds out some prospect of matching the unusual combination of features that made the Alien quartet so suitable for my purposes – the three Mission: Impossible films. The first (released in 1996) was directed by Brian De Palma, the second (released in 2000) by John Woo and the third (released in 2006) by J.J. Abrams. Each film in the sequence centres on the same protagonist,
Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise), an experienced member of the IM force, a covert offshoot of the CIA; two of the three are scripted by Robert Towne; and each has a different director, who brings to bear an established and highly influential body of work (even if, as in Abrams’ case, that work is not cinematic). The structural analogies of continuity and discontinuity at the level of character, author and director are thus evident; but so, it might be thought, are the differences. For first, concerning content, there is no obvious correlate in the Mission: Impossible series to the thematic preoccupations of the Alien quartet – nothing apparently concerning human identity, embodiment and individuality of the kind so familiar to modern philosophy. Second, unlike the Alien quartet, the Mission: Impossible series owes its existence to a prior television series. And, third, one director involved in this series of films has no cinematic track record at all (let alone one of dis-
tinction), and the other two have a reputation for, let us say, valuing surface sheen over human and artistic depth. David Thomson, for example, in his New Biographical Dictionary of
Film,1 suggests that John Woo’s early work supplies ‘evidence of how a culture like that of Hong Kong had become degraded, long ago, by the attempt to live up to American models’, characterizes his later work in America as not so much ‘streamlined poetry’ but rather the kind of film ‘that make[s] hay with the idea of a nuclear explosion’ and goes on more specifically to say that Mission: Impossible II ‘is – and isn’t – the new version of ‘‘Chinatown’’’.2
Beyond its reminder of Robert Towne’s illustrious past, the precise point of that comparison remains unclear, although clearly to the detriment of the new version. However that may be, Thomson reserves his real, unambiguous venom for De Palma:
