ABSTRACT
Where John Woo made it his business to inherit the Mission: Impossible universe as a wholly cinematic phenomenon, Mission: Impossible III (2006) was always fated to return the series to its televisual point of origin. For its director – J.J. Abrams – had never previously worked in the medium of movies, and was invited to contribute to this franchise solely as a result of his highly influential, awardwinning work on the television series Alias (2002-06) – a series that Abrams not only devised and executive produced, but to which he regularly contributed as writer and director throughout its five seasons. And, from the outset, Alias all but declared itself to be a contemporary reincarnation of Mission: Impossible – quite as if it were the same programme under another name. Accordingly, just as one would expect of any recuperation of a thirty-five-yearold original (particularly one effected in light of that original’s intervening cinematic appropriations), its continuation of the format necessarily embodied a critical rethinking of its determining conditions, and so an answer to the question of how a new instance of the spy genre must revise its understanding of itself if it is to compel conviction from its audience.
