“Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” was not the film that turned the “Mission: Impossible” film franchise into the “Tom Cruise Stares Death in the Face” show.
No, that honor belongs to “Mission: Impossible II,” which opens with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt free solo rock climbing in Moab, Utah (which Cruise did for real wearing a harness …
because of course he did).
“Ghost Protocol” was, however, a pivotal turning point in the series in terms of both its storytelling and technical elements.Where director John Woo tried to turn Ethan into an American James Bond with “Mission: Impossible II,” director Brad Bird brought the character down to Earth a little in “Ghost Protocol,” making him the sort of plucky hero with a knack for evading disaster by the skin of his teeth.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film’s crown jewel — the sequence in which Ethan scales the tallest building in the world,…
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