It's never explained how Cobalt hacked into IMF's communications during the previous mission or even knew that they would be there, nor why he has access to the same Latex Perfection that they do. A Mole would be suspected, and in fact all three previous films featured one in one way or another, but there isn't one. Given his Oddly Small Organization and that his official position in the Russian government was simply a scientific advisor, and how extreme his theories were, its hard to believe he's that well connected that he even knows who the IMF are, let alone how to play them like a fiddle and manipulate their every move.
Maybe he's just that smart.
Your primary mistake is in thinking that the IMF is the only one with access to advanced technology. A major problem in real-world espionage is that technology is almost never proprietary... some rogue agent would almost certainly have slipped somebody one of their maskmaking machines at some point in return for a hundred million dollars or somesuch, and after it was reverse engineered ever rich terrorist with the right connections could have one. As for hacking into the communications, he presumably did it the same way Ethan does it whenever he has to go rogue: he found a hacker who was better than IMF's hackers, because there's always somebody better.
Who shot up the car with Ethan and Brandt, and why? Sidorov eventually runs up and tells the shooters to stop. Were those guy cops?
Could've been Spetsnaz or something.
Presumably the police were simply aware that Ethan, an escaped man thought responsible for one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in Russian history, was in the car. Hence, they made the mistake of simply choosing to try to eliminate him instead of attempting a capture. As much as it paints the Russian police in a dim light, this scene makes more sense when you remember that they had no idea the Secretary was in the car and not just more dangerous American terrorists.
And it was just after the Kremlin had been bombed. The Russian police are understandably not acting very rationally in trying to catch or kill the guy they think bombed the Kremlin.
They didn't look like regular police, and they seemed far too well-armed for that. I assumed they were all with Russian intelligence. They shot the car because they knew damn well that an IMF agent was in it, and they thought the IMF was responsible for the Kremlin bombing. Quite possibly they knew the Secretary was in there too and decided to kill him because, again, the Kremlin got bombed. Presumably there's some Jurisdiction Friction or some such, with Sidorov ordering everyone to bring in targets alive for questioning while some other official says "Frick it, just kill every IMF bastard you can find."
In Ghost Protocol, how was the cryptographer supposed to verify the launch codes at a glance? He obviously didn't know them already, and giving the codes a recognizable pattern kind of defeats the point of a password.
There aren't many people who can tease out those patterns in their head.
It's simple for codes to be practically impossible to guess but easy to verify. For example, if the launch code was a prime factorization of some number and you knew that number, then verifying the code would be nothing more than a multiplication, but as long as the number is large enough, you could never find the code just by knowing the number.
This. The whole point is that he was the one who designed the cypher. He doesn't have to know the codes himself to be able to look at them and go "Yeah, that's my cypher they're using."
The primes used in cryptography are very large, and the multiplication needed to verify them is not something you do in your head casually while glancing through dozens of codes. If he's able to verify them without a computer, it's more likely he's just looking at a checksum. (It's also possible that he can't verify the codes, but the bad guy thinks he can. And if he says "I can't verify these codes" then the bad guy assumes he's lying and kills his family. In which case his whole plan is to just sit there and act like he's verifying codes, telling him "this looks legit" no matter what he actually sees. But of course Ethan wouldn't know all that.)
What was the point of Hendricks masquerading as his own Dragon for the Dubai deal? There didn't seem to be any reason why the real henchman couldn't have done it instead, and after all that's what henchmen are for. When his face was revealed to be an I.M.F.-style latex mask it seemed they were about to let loose a major plot twist, but it turns out it was just the Big Bad being eccentric.
While withing the context of the movie, it doesn't make much sense (not that eccentricities are unusual for Hendricks), but it seemed like a pretty clear attempt to show the audience, and Ethan, how devastatingly wrong the plan had gone without confusing all the different villains.
In the movie context, it shows (again) that this villain is a step ahead of the IMF. Remember, the plan was deliberately not to capture the henchman so he would lead them to the Big Bad. The villain short-circuits that plan by showing up himself, in disguise.
Hendricks was trying to protect his identity - remember that the reason Ethan and Benji infiltrated the Kremlin in the first place was to discover Cobalt's identity. IMF already knew who Wistrom was and that he was working with Cobalt. Hendricks believed his identity was still secret, at least for a short time. He wanted to obtain the launch codes himself, so he went to the meet as Wistrom.
So who told the Russians in Dubai? Ethan?
Bogdan. That is, I don't think Bogdan told them, but they knew he and Ethan broke out of prison together, and were presumably keeping tabs on him in case he could lead them to Ethan.
Wouldn't NORAD's radar detect an SRBM incoming towards San Francisco?
I was secretly hoping for that too. Perhaps NORAD had just installed a new detection system and when they saw a single nuclear missile heading towards the US they assumed it was an error, since a preemptive nuclear strike would be all-out. They ignored it rather than do a retaliatory launch. It's happened before.
Maybe NORAD did react, but it was all off-screen.
When the team realized the Russian cryptographer/scientist/nuclear codes guy was in Dubai, why not just let the meeting take place, then follow Wistrom and Moreau and capture them later, rather than take the risks of being recognized by following the original plan?
Because they might lose them. The fact that they had to let the cryptographer see the actual codes only makes them need to capture them sooner- you are, after all, talking about people who are trying to destroy the entire world, and to stop them you've just let them attain the means to do it. Following them and capturing them later is extremely risky because you might lose them and, if that happens, everyone might pay the price.
By that point they have the security cameras controlled in the hotel, making following much easier. (And any other tricks that the targets could have used would also be usable in the plan they did do in the movie.)
The real question is: Why didn't they just abduct the guy as soon as he showed up?
Because they wanted Cobalt/Hendricks, not his known associate Wistrom. The IMF already knew who Wistrom was and where he was going to be at a specific time, but they had no idea where Hendricks was. The plan was to make Wistrom think he had obtained the launch codes and then follow him to Hendricks.
Is this movie just assuming there are absolutely no missile defense systems in the United States? And why even attack the United States with ONE nuke? If your goal is nuclear holocaust, wouldn't it make more sense to deploy multiple missiles to targets that don't have any defense systems or organized teams set out to foil you?
The goal with the first nuclear weapon was to get the U.S. and Russia to start fighting each other, Which presumably wouldn't take much. (The missile did in fact come from a Submarine, and with the kremlin bombing, Russia would be the obvious attacker.) (Of course, I have no experience with how nuclear policy works, so it may be the the one stray missile wouldn't have lead to anything, but the movie explanation makes sense even with working missile defenses and one weapon.)
Maybe he didn't have the opportunity. If each set of codes only contacts a limited number of missiles, and if each "launch device" contacts a limited number of launchers, and if that old satellite can only contact a limited number of locations, it just might work out that there's exactly one sub that fits inside all those limitations.
Also, fun fact: The United States actually doesn't have missile defense systems. For one thing, there are treaties that make such systems illegal. (The fear is that a nuclear nation with a strong defense system might feel bold enough to just nuke all its enemies, knowing that it could survive any retaliation.) For another thing, it turns out that shooting an ICBM out of the sky is insanely difficult. Those things are fast, and the sky is huge. What the U.S. actually has is missile detection, so we can retaliate. So the question isn't "Why didn't the U.S. shoot it down?" but rather "Why didn't the U.S. nuke the Russians in response?". Presumably the answer is that they thought a single missile like that might be a false alarm, which has happened before IRL.
A magnet strong enough to carry the weight of a full grown man! Near COMPUTERS! How exactly does that work?
Highly-concentrated narrow angled electromagnetic field. Picture it as a wedge of magnetic force, rather than a bloom outward. If it helps any, the guy who owns the place was said to have made his fortune off of stolen military-grade stuff, the computers were probably all hardened because, hell, the guy clearly had money to burn.
Is there actually such a thing as a highly-concentrated narrow angled electromagnetic field, or did you make that up? As far as I understand it, magnetism can't exactly be channeled as if it were water coming out of a hose.
At the beginning, Benji accidentally releases all the prisoners in an entire cell block and ends up having to open more to cover Ethan's escape. It is Played for Laughs but these are hardened criminals attacking the guards. They will likely kill them or worse. By the time Ethan and company leave, it looks like the Russian guards are taking control of the situation but it is still a very dangerous and reckless act. What if the criminals took over the cell or even the entire prison? What if some of these guys escaped and were set lose on the public? The heroes kinda shrug it off. Does that bother anyone else?
It wasn't an accident. Ethan told him to open all the doors in the cell block deliberately to give him cover.
There is a reason that the secretary will disavow all knowledge of their actions if they get caught: he can't afford to be associated with the crimes they commit. The IMF kills people. A little prison chaos is hardly an issue if it is necessary to get the job done, by IMF standards.
Thing is, there were Riot Police entering the block as Ethan and Bogdan were making their escape. So the situation was getting under control when they left.
When driving to Dubai, the team agrees that Jane will impersonate Moreau and Benji will impersonate Wistrom, while Brandt will just be "the helper". When they realise that Wistrom doesn't come alone they have to change plans in that Ethan impersonates Wistrom and Brandt impersonates the cryptographer. At this point they didn't know that Brandt is actually an agent and still believe he's just an analyst, so wouldn't it be safer to stick to that Brandt will just be "the helper", in case something during the transfer goes wrong and let Benji impersonate the cryptographer, who is admittedly a newbie, but is at least in their knowledge the one who has the field training?
The original plan was that Carter would double Moreau and Ethan would double Wistrom, while Benji worked the elevators and cameras, and ferried the diamonds, and Brandt was the 'helper'. Wistrom bringing the cryptographer to validate the codes was the spanner in the works; as Benji still needs to handle the hacking stuff, that means Brandt is the only one left able to double the cryptographer. They couldn't just take the risk and not double the cryptographer for Moreau on the chance that the two parties had not met previously, as she could have information that two people, not one, were coming to complete the transaction.
After they give Wistrom the codes in the hotel, Wistrom takes an elevator to the lobby. Wouldn't this be a perfect time to just stop the elevator dead in its tracks? They seem to have complete control over it, but all they do is mildly delay the elevator by making it stop every few floors. They don't stop it permanently, they don't reverse it, and they don't lock Wistrom inside. They can't even be bothered to make it stop on every floor; it's just like 4 or 5 stops in a 130-floor trip!
They want Wistrom to be delayed but stay where they can keep an eye on him. If they stopped the elevator completely he would simply leave the elevator and go somewhere they might not be able to keep track of him.
When Ethan is climbing up the outside of the hotel, are we just meant to assume that absolutely nobody is looking out the windows on that side of the building? You'd think that someone would call security.
It's the middle of the day; how many people stay in their hotel rooms in the middle of the day? There might be the occasional member of the cleaning staff in one room, or a guest having a rest in another, but overall the chances of anyone looking out at the right moment to see Ethan are comparatively slim for various plausible reasons.
Why were they willing to give Wistrom the real nuclear codes? They knew full well that he might get away with the codes and then he might use them to blow up the world. That's a huge downside, so what's the upside? Suppose they give him fake codes and the cryptographer says "Nope, these are fake". Then what? Then it's possible he gets the codes from some other source someday, but it's also possible that he never gets the codes ever. Stealing nuclear codes is a rather hard thing to do! And soon enough the Kremlin will notice that one of their nuclear launch devices is missing and they'll update their security so you can't use that device anymore. And in the meantime you can just arrest Wistrom, which takes at least one of Hendricks's henchmen out of commission. (It later turns out that Wistrom is Hendricks, which solves everything immediately!) You can also film Wistrom trying to buy the codes, and then you can send that clip to the Russians to help convince them that (a) the IMF didn't bomb the Kremlin, and/or (b) that the Russians should really update their nuclear security. The only upside to giving Wistrom the real codes is that maybe you can tail him to Henricks somehow, but there's no guarantee of success and and massive consequences if you screw it up.
Considering their limited resources and contacts at this point, they probably don't have the resources to film Wistrom making the deal or access to any contacts that will believe them if they submit such footage in the first place. As Ethan observed, this was the only scenario where they could control Hendricks' access to the codes and follow him with their available resources; if he got away now, it was still possible that he'd find another way to get the codes that they couldn't anticipate and intercept.
They've got high-tech gear from that train car the Secretary left for them. They've got a thing that scrambles codes on demand and gloves that climb up walls; it's hard to imagine that they don't have a simple video camera. And they could submit the footage anonymously, heck maybe even send it to news agencies or put it on Youtube. And regardless, giving Hendricks the real codes with the hope of tracking him is still way riskier than simply not giving him the codes. Yeah, it's possible that he'll get the codes some other way, but it's much more likely that he won't.
They might have video cameras, but they likely don’t have any means of concealing a camera in a manner that can guarantee it won’t be spotted by Wistrom or his associates when they enter the room. As for the Kremlin realising that the launch device has been stolen, that all depends on other parties realising that IMF weren’t responsible for the bombing; the investigators aren’t going to look for other suspects when they believe they already know who did it and why. On top of that, Ethan points out and Brandt concedes that there’s still no guarantee that Hendricks and Wistrom won’t find the codes some other way; when the team only have limited resources and this one shot to stop Hendricks, they have to keep control of the situation rather than risk him trying something they can’t anticipate and don’t have the resources to track.
They make a big deal about how Brandt has to jump down a shaft and then Benji will catch him with a magnetic robot. Wouldn't it be way easier to descend that shaft with some sort of rope?
I'm fairly sure part of what they were dealing with in that shaft were fans, which would almost certainly cut any rope they might have used.
No, the fan was at the very bottom. Brandy could have easily used a rope to get down to a spot just above that fan, which would be the same spot he arrived at with the jump-with-magnets option in the movie. (If there had been a fan along the path that Brandt actually traveled, it would have killed Brandt!)
The robot is also required to maneuver Brandt into the proper position to access the server, without touching all of the rapidly heating-up metal around him.
At the end of the film, why didn't the new iPhones that Ethan handed to his team self-destruct? Don't all mission briefings do that?
They only self-destruct after the briefing is viewed, and at the end everyone but Ethan walks offscreen before they even start viewing their briefings on the phones.
Why didn't Hendricks toss the suitcase off the ledge and keep fighting Hunt to buy time?
Because he knows that he can at least theoretically match Ethan in a straight fight, but if he tosses the briefcase he can't be sure that Ethan won't find some way down to the case that Hendricks won't be able to follow (or at least, he won't be able to follow and be in a condition to stop Ethan afterwards).
He also already tossed it once and saw Ethan quickly retrieve it. Jumping off with the case in his hands ensured it went straight to the bottom of the building.
