***Originally published on my Letterboxd page after my umpteenth viewing of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation***
I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that Ethan Hunt is a superhero.
If I had to get scientific about it I might say that Hunt is sort of a combination of Batman, Mr. Miracle, and some luck-bending guy (is that what Longshot does?). He's prepared for any situation and when his arsenal of plans go pear-shaped one after the other, he's quick to improvise the Plan Z that gets him and everybody else out of trouble. He can also beat the shit out of basically anyone, which is both super useful (for him) and fun to watch (for me). Add to that the fact that he is a marksman, a driver, a pilot, an athlete, a daredevil (ooooh, there's another superhero), an escape artist, a lip reader, a tactician, he’s really good at math, he has total recall ("I am the disk!"), and has a Christ-like desire to save everyone and you are now fully in the terrain of superherodom.
While I don't think Rogue Nation is necessarily the movie that proves this argument, I do think it puts a really fine point on it. Throughout the film, Hunt's unknowable and seemingly reckless methods are questioned repeatedly, only for him to prove his naysayers wrong by pulling victory after victory from the increasingly toothy jaws of defeat in ways that verge on the superhuman.
Case in point: Hunt's nemesis in Rogue Nation, Solomon Lane, has a very complicated plan to unleash his anarchistic paradise on Earth. In order to defeat him, Hunt must hatch and execute an even more complicated plan of his own, a strategy that culminates in our hero memorizing a 2+ billion dollar super-secret-army-of-assassins-budget and then destroying the original spreadsheet (simultaneously ridiculous and amazing), rendering Hunt into a living hard drive, a vessel for illicit information that only he can control and purify.
What I'm trying to say here is that while Hunt is perfectly capable of using violence and various other physical methods to neutralize his foes, he is equally capable (if not more so) of using his intellect to save the world, only in the most extreme ways imaginable. He is master of both the physical and mental realities that a spy operating at his level must navigate in order to be victorious. In Rogue Nation, this ability approaches both a cosmic and a spiritual level—the movie all but depicts Hunt literally bending reality to his will. He is, as Alec Baldwin's Chief Hunley puts it, "the living manifestation of destiny."
So if Rogue Nation merely reaffirms my first argument, what, if anything, does it do to suggest something new about this enduring character?
My view is that Rogue Nation doesn't just solidify Hunt's status amidst the pantheon of fictional do-gooders, I think it actually situates Ethan Hunt as the premier superhero across the entire history of cinema.
I don't argue this point lightly. I have spent my entire life reading, watching, and imagining the exploits of this or that superhero. I think if we were operating purely in the realm of comic books, Ethan Hunt probably wouldn't stand a chance—in terms of the qualities that make these kind of heroes exciting to engage with—against the likes of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, or the X-Men.
But in cinema? I don't think there's really any other character that meets Hunt's stature (even though he's only like 5'6").
Again, I don't mean this in the sense of playground power rankings. I'm not talking about who would beat the Hulk in a fight. I’m speaking more in terms of what make superheroes vital and attractive to filmgoers.
How can such a thing even be possible in our Marvelized modern condition, you might ask. There are superheroes everywhere these days. You’ve got your Batmans and Supermans and Spider-Mans and Captain Americas and all those candy-colored ubermenchen assaulting our collective psyche on a quarterly basis. How can the diminutive—and let’s be real here, middle aged—Ethan Hunt stand a chance?
Hunt is noble, he’s effective, and he’s incredibly cool. None of these qualities make him unique though. Superman is noble. Batman is effective. Iron Man is incredibly cool.
No, what separates Ethan Hunt from the aforementioned heavy hitters is that he exists in a reality very much like our own. This is what people think about Batman in the Nolan movies, but the more time passes between now and the release of those films, the less “realistic” they seem to me. I think that has more to do with Nolan’s flaws as a director (that’s a whole other discussion) than anything else, but the truth remains, they don’t feel as real to me as the Mission: Impossible movies. Why?
It is precisely because so much of what Hunt does in the Mission: Impossible movies is in actuality Tom Cruise performing for my pleasure in a physical and believable reality. The wedge between character and performer is, if not razor thin, then certainly the thinnest its ever been on the big screen.
The membrane between fiction and reality is highly permeable in a Mission: Impossible movie because we know Tom Cruise is hanging off the side of a plane or speeding down the road on a motorcycle without a helmet on. Not only can we verify the reality of these sequences by watching the film, but we’ve been pre-fed a certain amount of information via the considerable and strategic marketing efforts of Paramount. That material bears out the veracity of Cruise's flights of derring-do. There’s a metatextual element here that most film franchises cannot have at the conceptual level—because they don't have Tom Cruise! Hearing about the crazy shit Tom Cruise is going to do in a Mission: Impossible movie is part of the experience of enjoying a Mission: Impossible film. It deeply informs and texturizes the process of watching the movie.
But there’s also a parasocial element that I can’t properly articulate nor prove. It’s just something I feel. To me, it feels like Tom Cruise is performing for my specific pleasure, like some personal cinematic god. I know that this feeling is not based in reality, but it is hard to ignore when I watch these films. Maybe that says more about me than it does Cruise, but it seems relevant regardless.
Again, I have to return to Christ, another comparison I don’t make lightly (this is only half-true). If movies are religion and the cinema is synagogue, what then can we call Cruise, if not a god? I understand how tortured a metaphor this might seem, but I am, after all, a simple Hebrew.
A man who suffers and risks and toils for the happiness of others is a superhero. Ethan Hunt does that. But so does Tom Cruise. In a rapidly changing landscape that favors expediency and artifice, a landscape that prefers empty spectacle to a nutritious meal, how can we deny this man the crown?