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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning wrapped up Tom Cruise’s most iconic role as Ethan Hunt, capping off a spectacular 30-year cinematic journey. But the story doesn’t begin on the big screen. Though the film series launched in 1996, it builds on a legacy stretching back another 30 years to a classic television show. Cruise’s Hunt didn’t emerge in a vacuum — the entire Mission: Impossible universe, from covert ops to gadgets, draws directly from the 1966 show. It’s a lineage that original cast members watched with growing disdain as Hollywood hijacked their turf.
The Mission: Impossible Universe Explained
The unofficial Mission: Impossible universe dates to 1966, when Peter Graves debuted as secret agent Jim Phelps on CBS. The series introduced iconic elements that still resonate today: elaborate disguises, pulse-pounding theme music, and the self-destructing tape recorder in each episode. The show ran seven seasons, then returned briefly in the late 1980s when Graves came back for a revival — extending the original run nearly 25 years.
Soon after, Cruise stepped into Paramount’s vault and picked his favorite 1960s episodes as inspiration for his affair as a producer, and the rest is history.
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How the Mission: Impossible Movies Clashed With the Original Cast
Talk about pouring gas on old wounds — when the 1996 film cast Jon Voight as the villainous Jim Phelps, fans of the original TV series nearly had a cow. The idea of turning a beloved hero from the small screen into a traitor left the original ensemble seeing red. Peter Graves, arriving in the early scripts as a cameo, dropped out in protest. He even turned down a cameo in Mission: Impossible 2 because “betraying Phelps was a dagger to the heart.”
By turning the TV hero into a villain, the franchise ended up striking a deal with the devil. The move ignited an old-fashioned feud between generations, though it did manage to expand its fictional universe astronomically.
How the M:I Saga Comes Full Circle in The Final Reckoning
At first glance, killing off Jim Phelps in a helicopter crash at the end of the Mission: Impossible seemed to close the chapter on the TV legacy. But the franchise didn’t let that storyline fall by the wayside.
Shea Whigham is Briggs. Tickets for #MissionImpossible – Dead Reckoning Part One drop TOMORROW. pic.twitter.com/hetwLz6Wcl
— Mission: Impossible (@MissionFilm) June 13, 2023
In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and its sequel, The Final Reckoning, the legacy finds a new anchor: Shea Whigham’s character Jasper Briggs. Briggs, a U.S. intelligence officer hunting Hunt’s team, is revealed to be the son of Jim Phelps’s former protégé. So, the story circles back to that original betrayal, tying the TV roots to the present-day saga and offering a wink to long-time fans that the past never truly stays buried.
In the end, though, Ethan Hunt’s story ended up paying tribute to the original Mission: Impossible that started it all — even if some heroes had to sacrifice their character for that to happen.
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