YMMV / Mission: Impossible (1996)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Phelps betray his country because he simply thought they weren't paying him enough (with spy work not living up to his expectations), or was Phelps on the verge of a psychotic breakdown during his missions as a field agent, before eventually snapping and becoming a treacherously delusional, Ax-Crazy, sociopathic mole that led to the events of the first film?
• Better on DVD: When it was released in theaters, many people regarded the film as being extremely difficult to follow, albeit with a great final act making up for things, which in no small part was responsible for the Actionized Sequel nature of the second film. With the benefit of home video releases however, a lot of people have come to appreciate the more nuanced plot of the first film.
• Broken Base: While it's since toned down as the film series has branched out into its own thing separate from the TV show, many fans of the show at the time were absolutely livid that Phelps was turned into a traitor.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: After the series has become best known for Tom Cruise throwing himself into gratuitously dangerous stunts, it's pretty funny to revisit the first film's climax where the whole sequence on top of the train is obviously done with bluescreens.
• Magnificent Bitch: "Max" is an Arms Dealer who's an expert not only at keeping her identity a secret to the point that no one knew she was a woman, but in turning American agents to her side as well. For two years, Max employs a treacherous IMF agent she calls "Job"—really Jim Phelps—and plans to pay him for achieving the NOC List which protects deep cover American agents. Knowing Job killed for her to get it, Max trusts Ethan about the list she actually got being a decoy—while also correctly suspecting that he was pretending to be Job—and then hires him to get the actual list for her. Nearly accessing it in the end only to be caught, Max at first starts planning legal strategies to get away with everything, but then quickly becomes interested when Eugene Kittridge offers her a deal instead.
• Moral Event Horizon: Jim Phelps has two potential crossings. The first is his murder of Jack, personally sending him to get a spike through his head in the elevator shaft. The second is his murder of his wife Claire subverting Even Evil Has Loved Ones.
• Narm: In the final scene, the camera starts on a television news program reporting that a mysterious helicopter followed a train into the Channel Tunnel and exploded. The on-screen headline simply reads "Crash."
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Jon Voight turns out to be the villain.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The LEGO Dimensions Level Pack has received praise as an enjoyably lighthearted adaptation of the movie. It helps that Ethan possesses a wide assortment of skills, as well as Henry Czerny returning with all-new in-game dialogue as Eugene Kittridge, years before he would reprise it in live-action.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The Nintendo 64 game. It was a stealth adventure that very loosely followed the movie's plot. Though a fairly decent game with some neat ideas, it had a tumultuous development, resulting in bland dated (and often Off-Model) graphics, numerous bugs and glitches, and frustrating Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
• Signature Scene: The cable drop scene, to the point where we named a trope after it.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The movie was obviously intended to be a "Mission Impossible about the new digital era," but many things have become quite dated.
  • Jim masks the smoke from the self-destructing film by lighting up a cigarette, something you can't do on commercial flights anymore (smoking was already banned on flights by then, but even bringing matches or a lighter on a plane nowadays is strictly verboten).
  • Planes have futuristic movie screens mounted on swivel arms. Attendants distribute cassettes of movies to watch. Jim uses a hardwired remote control to play the movie. Modern screens on planes are embedded into the back of headrests, have either digitally-stored films or streaming services that use the plane's built-in WiFi services, and typically use touch controls or buttons wired into the arm rests. Assuming, of course, that the passenger hasn't downloaded something to watch on their own mobile device or tablet.
  • Computer hardware is all of the 90s era, including bulky laptops, floppy disks and CRT screens.
  • Ethan logs into Usenet to do research, something no one uses anymore.
  • The script was written before people had much understanding of basic internet concepts:
    • Ethan connects to the internet by typing "internet access" into a text box.
    • Ethan searches for a "Max" by trying to go to "Max.com," and he's told that internet address doesn't exist. He'd be getting HBO and WB's streaming service these days.
    • Knowing that his Max might be associated with the Biblical verse Job 3:14, Ethan sends an email to the address "Max@Job 3:14", is obviously not a viable email address on top of being a blind guess. Rather than send it from an email address of his own, Ethan is able to simply type "Job" into a "Message From:" text box.
    • The Viewer-Friendly Interface as a whole bears little relation to how computers functioned in the 1990s or today.
  • The film was made toward the back end of when you could do a viable story about former secret agents disgruntled about losing their power after the Cold War ended. Witness how just two years later, Ronin (1998) is about a bunch of them having moved on to other work.
  • When everything goes horribly wrong in Prague and Ethan has to call for backup, he uses a pay phone. Nowadays everyone uses smartphones, and while Spy Fiction does still hold onto the cell phone-esque Burner Phones trope with an iron grip, payphones have almost completely disappeared outside of England (where they too are a dying species) and rural areas.
  • Calling Ukraine "The Ukraine" and its capital city "Kiev" instead of "Kyiv" especially after the mass scale invasion of the country by Russia in 2022. The first is an archaism, the second is romanized Russian, and both have become much less tolerable.
• Vindicated by History: After getting a mixed reaction from critics and general audiences and an outright vitriolic response from fans and cast members of the TV series on its initial release, it's now considered the best of the first three films by fans of all stripes (albeit with Mission: Impossible III providing close competition), and a solid spy thriller in its own right. Praise is given for its intelligent plot, the iconic heist sequence near the end, and some solid action sequences. Its original reputation for having a confusing plot also evaporated in the decade or so after it was released thanks to the increased proliferation of Spy Fiction in movies and TV, and was found to be quite an intelligent film. It also helps that by now most fans of the franchise are fans though the movies rather than the TV show, thus lessening the They Changed It, Now It Sucks! angle.

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