Warning: FULL SPOILERS follow for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has landed, and returning writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has made sure every detail of this mission counts. The seventh installment of the Mission: Impossible saga has debuted to rave reviews, with praise for the cast, storyline, and adrenaline-fueled action sequences that have become a staple for the Tom Cruise-led franchise.
Even though McQuarrie and Cruise are now saying that Dead Reckoning Part Two likely won’t be Ethan Hunt’s last outing, there is a sense of coming full circle to the first half of this two-parter, as it references its predecessors and acts as a nostalgic, bittersweet reflection on the simplicity back at the beginning of Ethan’s journey in 1996’s Mission: Impossible.
The threat at that point was physical, tangible and required force to challenge it. The object of Ethan’s mission was straightforward. Now, the weaponized autonomous AI outsmarts him, slips through his fingers, and predicts his every move, while its chosen messiah is the man who already haunts Ethan’s nightmares, Gabriel (Esai Morales).
The film unites previous storylines to pay tribute to the characters and sequences that have built this franchise into the phenomenon it is today. Die-hard M:I fans will have spotted the easter eggs, but in the middle of the nail-biting action it’s easy to miss a few, so we’ve outlined some of our favorites for you.
A mid-chase greeting
Mission: Impossible is no stranger to a car chase, though we haven’t seen anything quite like a Fiat 500 tumbling down the Spanish Steps in Rome.
However, this sequence slid in a reference to 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation as Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) turn and slam sideways into agents Briggs and Degas who have been chasing them, along with every other intelligence agency and The Entity’s entourage.
The humorous acknowledging look is similar to Benji (Simon Pegg) and Ethan’s encounter with their teammates Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Luther (Ving Rhames) mid-chase in Marrakech, as they slam into the side of them, share a quick wave and resume the action.
Fighting on top of a train
Dead Reckoning Part One shares several parallels with the first Mission: Impossible we’ll get into below, including a big fight scene on top of a fast-moving train.
In the 1996 movie, Cruise climbed along the top of the train, as he attempted to foil Jim Phelps’s (Jon Voight) escape on a low flying helicopter, which resulted in a near-fatal collision in a tunnel.
The latest movie takes this to a whole new level, as Ethan and Gabriel enter into a full-blown fight, with knives on the runaway, unstoppable train, all while they try to avoid oncoming obstacles.
Kittridge’s deal with Max
Almost 30 years later, Henry Czerny reappeared as Eugene Kittridge in Dead Reckoning Part One as the Director of the CIA. Last seen in Mission: Impossible, Ethan’s old adversarial colleague remains a recruiter for the IMF, and liaises with the late Max Mitsopolis‘ daughter, Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby).
During their supposed negotiation (when Grace actually poses as Alanna), Kittridge references the deal he made with her mother back in the first film, to keep her out of prison and work together to share information that was of mutual benefit. Notably, this entire exchange happens on a train, similar to Kittridge’s first meeting with Max in Mission: Impossible (and, as mentioned above, Ethan once more ends up fighting a bad guy on top of that train).
Kittridge’s return is a well-timed reminder of Ethan’s origins, as this familiar face assigns Ethan his biggest mission to date to capture the key to The Entity.
Ethan & Kittridge’s Upset Journey
After a disguised Ethan gases a room full of directors, Kittridge comes face to face with his old nemesis and has a callback to their first heated encounter in Mission: Impossible.
In the first movie, Ethan is incredibly distressed and bleary-eyed as he comes to terms with the loss of his entire team, only for a seemingly detached Kittridge to tell him, “I know you’re upset,” with Ethan coldly responding, “Kittridge, you’ve never seen me very upset.”
Dead Reckoning Part One makes a direct callback to this famous line, as Kittridge says: “I know you’re upset.” This time, Ethan replies, “Upset? I’m not upset.”
Alias: John Lark
Even though every intelligence agency knows Ethan Hunt, if not by name, then by reputation, the White Widow only knows him as John Lark. In Mission: Impossible – Fallout Ethan had to impersonate Lark to meet with the Widow aka Alanna, and it turns out she still isn’t privileged to his real name, only the extremist alias.
In Fallout, it was revealed that Lark is actually CIA agent August Walker, who orchestrated the syndicate and employed terrorists such as Solomon Lane to commit his international crimes.
While Ethan has concealed his true identity, it seems likely that in Part Two his name will be dropped and Alanna will piece together the connection with her late mum as an enemy turned ally.
More Masks, More Problems
Espionage movies are teaming with gadgets, but for Mission: Impossible there is one staple, a machine that prints latex masks.
In Dead Reckoning Part One, Ethan brings out the well-referenced equipment to create masks of the White Widow and her brother, Zola Mitsopolis, to infiltrate the Orient Express and switch places with them for the deal of the key. However, with the number of times the machine breaks throughout the franchise, it’s surprising that Ethan and his time still rely on them.
In 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the software is fried, and Ethan is forced to meet Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux) as himself, without a mask. Similarly, in Dead Reckoning – Part One it fails them again as The Entity hacks the system and stops the machine mid-print. Once again, Ethan has to improvise and find another way onto the train, which leads to that epic stunt.
Seriously, IMF needs to work on this mask machine equipment. In Fallout, Ethan has to meet Alanna without a mask, after another mishap, which started their relationship. Walker even rips off Benji’s mask of Lane, as he reminds himself that the IMF is “Halloween, a bunch of grown men wearing masks.”
Ethan’s sleight of hand
It’s been a while since Ethan demonstrated his low-key art of deception with sleight-of-hand tricks, which previously led him to steal the drive out of Franz Krieger’s pocket and pinch his knife in the first Mission: Impossible, but this particular skill set returns in Dead Reckoning Part One.
Inspired by notorious international thief Grace, Ethan showcases his own impressive pickpocket skills that come in handy in a pivotal moment, as he steals the key from Gabriel’s pocket just before the antagonist escapes.
The Ol’ Ethan Run
Mission: Impossible wouldn’t be the same at this point without Tom Cruise showcasing his iconic run. Dead Reckoning Part One even captures a similar shot to Mission: Impossible III, the film where Cruise and Hunt’s running skills really ramped up, when Ethan sprints down alongside the river, giving viewers a tracking side view of his high-speed pursuit on foot.
Famously, Cruise ran faster than the camera in this sequence, as the crew underestimated his ability to sprint at speed. In the new movie, a very similar shot sees Ethan flee from an exclusive party hot on Grace’s trail, and sprint in the exact same manner alongside a row of candles.
The IMF choice
After six movies, Mission: Impossible finally gives more context to the all-important line “Your mission, should you choose to accept it.”
Ethan explains that every member of the IMF – himself, Benji and Luther included – was approached for their specific skills and given the ‘choice’ to leave behind their life, become a ghost and work for the secret spy agency, with the implications that they all had led a dangerous, likely criminal, life up to that point, just as Grace has.
In every film, Ethan has been given a mission and a choice whether to accept the near-impossible task, so this vital part of his backstory and Grace’s origin in the IMF was a golden easter egg to include.
A Troubling History
In a moment of poetic tragedy, Dead Reckoning Part One sees Ethan’s close friend (and perhaps more), Ilsa Faust, die. Ahead of murdering Ilsa, Gabriel acknowledges a grim pattern that has emerged — which he oh-so darkly keeps contributing to — where nearly every woman who gets close to Ethan has their life uprooted at the least and endangered or outright ended at the worst, all through their association with him.
And looking at the franchise’s history, this does seem true, given Ethan’s love Nyah Nordoff-Hall nearly died from the Chimera virus in Mission: Impossible II, while his protégée Lindsey Farris was killed in action, and his wife Julia Meade-Hunt was kidnapped and nearly killed in Mission: Impossible III. Julia and Nyah ultimately survived, but notably, neither of them ended up with Ethan, and even prolonged distance from him didn’t guarantee safety, as seen with Julia in Fallout.
In Dead Reckoning Part One, Gabriel warns Grace to stay away from Ethan, saying that, despite his promises, he won’t be able to protect her, all while bringing up the history of the women in his life. Of course, what we know, and Grace doesn’t, is Gabriel seemingly began this pattern himself, murdering Ethan’s first love, Marie, which was the catalyst for him to join the IMF all those years ago. A pattern Gabriel now makes sure to continue by killing Ilsa.
Luther’s Handles
Ethan isn’t the only IMF agent who adopts an alias from time to time. In Mission: Impossible, Luther is revealed to have the memorable online handles of the Net Ranger and Phineas Phreak, which is how he monitors everything and anything online, without being detected.
These online alter egos were never mentioned again, until Dead Reckoning Part One that is, when fellow tech-whiz Benji mocks Luther for his somewhat silly previous handles (hey, it was the mid-90s, Benji!) When Luther then impresses Benji by showing off programming Benji hasn’t seen before, making it appear as though random strangers are Ethan to tracking equipment, Luther boasts back to him that no one can escape Phineas Phreak.
