Trivia / Mission: Impossible (1996)

• Ability over Appearance: Max was originally a man before Vanessa Redgrave was cast.
• Acting for Two: Ethan studies a US Senator in order to impersonate him. The Senator is himself played by Tom Cruise under heavy "old man makeup."
• Actor-Inspired Element: The scene that takes place in a glass-walled restaurant with a big lobster tank in the middle and three huge fish tanks overhead was Tom Cruise's idea. There were 16 tons of water in all of the tanks and there was a concern that when they detonated, a lot of glass would fly around. Brian De Palma tried the sequence with a stuntman, but it did not look convincing and he asked Cruise to do it, despite the possibility that the actor could have drowned. This would become a running theme in the production of the sequels.
• All-Star Cast: Unique for an American-driven film at the time, half of the star power beyond Tom Cruise is actually from the other side of the pond; Jean Reno, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Emmanuelle Béart were esteemed, well-known European actors making their American big-budget blockbuster debuts.
• California Doubling: The exterior shots of the train scene, supposedly with the train in Kent, were mostly shot in Scotland.
• Deleted Scene: Initially, there was a sophisticated opening sequence that introduced a love triangle between Phelps, his wife and Ethan Hunt that was removed on the advice of George Lucas because it took the test audience "out of the genre", according to Brian De Palma.
• Disowned Adaptation: The cast of the original TV series and its revival strongly disliked the film because it made Jim Phelps the villain. Peter Graves was offered the part of Phelps in the movie, but turned it down in disgust (not to mention how Phelps became similar to Graves' past role as Price from Stalag 17, who was also The Mole and the Big Bad). In addition, Martin Landau (Rollin Hand) and Greg Morris (Barney Collier) were also quite critical about the villain's identity, with Morris actually storming out of the movie theater in anger before the film actually ended.
• Doing It for the Art: Tom Cruise deferred his $20 million fee for a percentage of the box office takings.
• Fake Nationality: Frenchman Jean Reno as the Swiss Franz Krieger.
• Hostility on the Set: There were rumours that Tom Cruise and Brian De Palma did not get along and they were fuelled by the director excusing himself at the last moment from scheduled media interviews before the film's theatrical release.
• Life Imitates Art: Inspired by the film, a helicopter successfully flew through a tunnel in Brazil in 2006.
• Missing Trailer Scene: A shot of Ethan and Claire kissing passionately is shown in the trailer (and indeed in the brief excerpts from the film at the start of the film itself) but doesn't feature within the movie.
• Money, Dear Boy: Brian De Palma said that one of the reasons why he agreed to direct the film was because he needed a commercial hit at that time. Amusingly, his last commercial hit was also a TV adaptation, The Untouchables.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Jean Reno, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emmanuelle Béart performed their on-camera roles in English and would later go on to dub them for the French release.
• No Stunt Double: The filmmakers delivered the film on time and under budget with Tom Cruise doing most of his own stunts.
• On-Set Injury: Tom Cruise twisted his ankle and received cuts on his legs from broken glass during the scene where the fish tank is blown up.
• One-Take Wonder: The fishtank explosion was done in one take.
• Orphaned Reference: In the third act, Jim Phelps talks to Ethan and makes an accusation of a Love Triangle regarding Claire. This was a subplot that was removed in the final edit, with the only reference being a fairly chaste moment with Claire shortly after the Langley heist. A shot in the trailer did imply something more had happened.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Jon Voight was cast as Jim Phelps because the producers thought that nobody would ever suspect him of being the villain.
  • At the time, Ving Rhames was usually cast as tough guys or gangsters. Here, he plays a computer hacker completely removed from any of the physical action in the missions.
• Production Posse: Ving Rhames had previously worked with director Brian De Palma on Casualties of War.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Tom Cruise was an avid fan of the TV series.
  • Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton were fans of the series and did their own version of the theme song.
• Release Date Change: Reshoots, location conflicts in Prague, and complications with filming and visual effects made Paramount's proposed December 1995 release date unviable.
• Uncredited Role: Emilio Estevez is uncredited.
• Wag the Director: In earlier drafts of the screenplay, Luther Stickell was originally the hacker character on the IMF team in the doomed opening mission, but Ving Rhames convinced Brian de Palma to let his character live due to a tendency for black characters in action movies to die first. Consequently, his character was switched with Jack Harmon played by Emilio Estevez, and has become the only actor other than Tom Cruise to reprise his character in every movie in the franchise.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Martin Landau, in an earlier treatment for the first film the original plan was to bring back the entire original cast of the TV series just to kill them all off in the first act, which was changed instead to wipe out the current team when the original cast members refused to come back. Considering how may fans reacted negatively to the change regarding Phelps in the first movie, one can only imagine how they would have responded had this plot happened.
  • Also, Peter Graves was originally set to reprise his role as Phelps in the film. He turned it down, displeased with his character turning traitor.
  • George Clooney was offered the part of Ethan Hunt but he turned down due to work in One Fine Day. Nicolas Cage, Ralph Fiennes, Mel Gibson, John Travolta and Bruce Willis were later considered for the part before Tom Cruise got the role.
  • Michael Douglas, Al Pacino and Robert Redford were considered for Jim Phelps.
  • John McTiernan was originally considered to direct.
  • The role of Claire was originally offered to both Juliette Binoche and Geneviève Bujold (from De Palma's Obsession).
  • Alan Silvestri was originally hired to score the film, and had written roughly twenty-three minutes of music before he was taken off in favor of Danny Elfman. Bootleg copies of Silvestri's "Mission: Impossible" score are in circulation.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The film went into pre-production without a script that the filmmakers wanted to use. Brian De Palma designed the action sequences but neither David Koepp nor Robert Towne were satisfied with the story that would make these sequences take place. Towne ended up helping organize a beginning, middle and end to hang story details on while De Palma and Koepp worked on the plot. Towne rewrote scenes literally between takes during filming.

---