Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol 2011

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is a 2011 American spy film, and the fourth installment in the Mission: Impossible series. It stars Tom Cruise, who reprises his role of IMF Agent Ethan Hunt, and is director Brad Bird's first live-action film. Ghost Protocol was written by André Nemec and Josh Appelbaum, and produced by Cruise, J. J. Abrams (director of the third film) and Bryan Burk. It is the first Mission: Impossible movie to be partially filmed using IMAX cameras. The film was released in North America on December 16, 2011, to positive reviews and box office success. The film is currently the highest-grossing film in the Mission: Impossible series both overseas and worldwide.

Plot

On assignment in Budapest to intercept a courier working for a person of interest code-named "Cobalt", IMF agent Trevor Hanaway is killed by assassin Sabine Moreau. Hanaway's team leader, Jane Carter, and newly promoted field agent Benji Dunn extract Ethan Hunt and Hunt's source Bogdan from a Moscow prison. Hunt is recruited to lead Carter and Dunn to infiltrate the secret Moscow Kremlin archives and locate files identifying Cobalt. During the mission, someone broadcasts across the IMF frequency, alerting the Russians to Hunt's team. Although Dunn and Carter escape, a bomb destroys the Kremlin, and Russian agent Sidorov arrests Hunt, suspecting him as part of the attack.
The IMF extracts Hunt from Moscow. The Russians have called the attack an undeclared act of war, and the US president activates "Ghost Protocol", a black operation contingency that disavows the entire IMF. Hunt and his team are to take the blame for the attack, but they will be allowed to escape from government custody so that they may track down Cobalt. Before Hunt can escape, the IMF's secretary is killed by Russian security forces led by Sidorov, leaving Hunt and intelligence analyst William Brandt to find their own way out. The team identifies Cobalt as Kurt Hendricks, a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist who believes the weak must die for the strong to survive, so he plans to start a nuclear war to initiate the next stage of human evolution. Hendricks bombed the Kremlin in order to acquire a Russian nuclear launch-control device; however, he now needs the activation codes from the Budapest courier in order to launch a nuclear missile at America.
The exchange between Moreau and Hendricks's right-hand man, Wistrom, is due to take place at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. There, Hunt's team-members separately convince Moreau and Wistrom that they have made the exchange with one another. However, Moreau identifies Brandt as an agent. While Hunt chases Wistrom—only to realize that Wistrom is actually Hendricks in disguise, escaping with the codes—Carter detains Moreau. Moreau attempts to kill the inexperienced Dunn, and Carter throws her out a window to her death. Brandt accuses Carter of compromising the mission for revenge against Moreau, but Hunt accuses Brandt of keeping secrets from them, as he has displayed fighting skills atypical of an analyst. While Hunt seeks more information from Bogdan, Brandt admits he was assigned as security detail to Hunt and his wife Julia in Croatia. While Brandt was on patrol, Julia was killed by a Serbian hit squad, prompting Ethan to pursue and kill them before he was caught by the Russians and sent to prison.
Bogdan and his arms-dealer cousin inform Hunt that Hendricks will be in Mumbai. Hendricks facilitated the sale of a defunct Soviet military satellite to Indian telecommunications entrepreneur Brij Nath. The satellite could be used to transmit the order to fire a missile. While Brandt and Dunn infiltrate the server room to deactivate the satellite, Carter gets Nath to reveal the satellite override code. But Hendricks has anticipated Hunt's plan and turns off Nath's servers before sending a signal from a television broadcasting tower to a Russian nuclear submarine in the Pacific to fire at San Francisco. Hunt pursues Hendricks and the launch device while the other team-members attempt to bring the broadcast station back online. Hunt and Hendricks fight over the launch-control device before Hendricks jumps to his death with it to ensure the launch. Dunn kills Wistrom, allowing Brandt to restore power to the station and enabling Hunt to deactivate the missile. Hunt is then confronted by Sidorov, who sees Hunt has stopped the missile, proving the IMF is innocent in the Kremlin bombing.
The team reconvenes weeks later in Seattle. Hunt introduces the team to longtime colleague Luther Stickell and then issues new assignments. Dunn and Carter accept, but Brandt refuses. Hunt reveals that Julia's death was staged, as he knew he could not protect her, and used her death as a pretext to infiltrate the prison and get close to Bogdan, an IMF source on Hendricks. Relieved of guilt, Brandt accepts his mission while Hunt watches Julia from afar. They share a smile before he embarks on his next mission.

Cast

• Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, the team's leader
• Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, an IMF technical field agent and part of Hunt's team
• Jeremy Renner as William Brandt, IMF Secretary's chief analyst and former IMF field agent
• Paula Patton as Jane Carter, a member of Hunt's team
• Michael Nyqvist as Kurt Hendricks, a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist and the primary antagonist.
• Vladimir Mashkov as Anatoly Sidorov, a Russian intelligence operative following Hunt and his team.
• Samuli Edelmannas Marius Wistrom, Hendricks' right-hand man
• Ivan Shvedoff as Leonid Lisenker, a nuclear-code expert who is forced to work with Hendricks
• Anil Kapoor as Brij Nath, a rich Indian businessman
• Léa Seydoux as Sabine Moreau, a French assassin for hire
• Josh Holloway as Trevor Hanaway, an IMF agent
• Pavel Kriz as Marek Stefanski
• Miraj Grbic as Bogdan, a Russian prisoner freed by Hunt
• Ilia Volok as the Fog, an arms dealer and Bogdan's cousin
• Tom Wilkinson as the IMF Secretary
• Ving Rhames in a cameo appearance as Luther Stickell, Hunt's colleague
• Michelle Monaghan in a cameo appearance as Julia Mead, Hunt's wife
• Mike Dopud as Kremlin subcellar hallway guard
• Ivo Novák as Russian agent
• Brian Caspe as British News anchor
• April Stewart as Swedish translator
• Nicola Anderson as Julia's friend

Production

The film was originally announced with a working name of Mission: Impossible 4, and codenamed Aries during early production. By August 2010, title considerations did not include the Mission: Impossible 4 name, and thought was given to omitting the specific term "Mission: Impossible", which Variety compared to Christopher Nolan's Batman sequel film, titled simply The Dark Knight.

The film was partially shot with IMAX cameras, which made up approximately 30 minutes of the film's runtime.[11][12] Bird insisted that certain scenes of the film be shot in IMAX, as opposed to 3D, as he felt that the IMAX format offered the viewer more immersion due to its brighter, higher quality image, which is projected on a larger screen, without the need for specialised glasses. Bird also believed that IMAX format would bring back "a level of showmanship" to the presentation of Hollywood films, which he believes the industry has lost due to its emphasis on screening films in multiplexes as opposed to grand theaters, and vetoing "first runs" in favor of wider initial releases.

Principal photography took place from October 2010 to March 2011. Filming took place in Dubai, Prague, Moscow, Mumbai, Bangalore and Vancouver. Tom Cruise performed a sequence where Ethan Hunt scales the outside of the Burj Khalifa tower, which is the tallest building in the world, without the use of a stunt double. Although Cruise appears to be free solo climbing in the film with the help of special gloves, in reality he was securely attached to the Burj Khalifa at all times by multiple cables. The cables were then digitally erased in post-production by Industrial Light & Magic. Following Cruise's example, Patton and Seydoux also chose to forego the use of stunt doubles for their fight scene at the Burj Khalifa where Carter exacts her revenge upon Moreau for Hanaway's death.

Many of the film's interior scenes were shot at the Canadian Motion Picture Park in Vancouver, including a key transition scene in a specially equipped IMF train car and the battle between Hunt and Hendricks in a Mumbai automated multi-level parking garage (which was constructed over a six-month period just for the film). The film climax scene was shot in Sun TV office, Bengaluru, India. However, the film's opening Moscow prison escape scenes were shot on location in a real former prison near Prague. The film also features a BMW i8 concept car.

Marketing

In July 2011, a teaser trailer for Ghost Protocol was released illustrating new shots from the movie, one of which being Tom Cruise scaling the world's tallest building in Dubai, the Burj Khalifa building. Moreover; prior to its release, the studio presented IMAX footage of the film to invitation-only crowd of opinion makers and journalists at the BFI IMAX theater in central London. One of the many scenes that were included was a chase scene in a Dubai's desert sandstorm.
During November 2011, Paramount released a Facebook game of the film in order to promote it. The new game allowed players to choose the roles of IMF agents and assemble teams to embark on a multiplayer journey. Players were also able to garner tickets to the U.S. premiere of the film and a hometown screening of the movie for 30 friends.

Soundtrack

The score for the film was composed by Michael Giacchino, his second for the franchise and his third collaboration with Bird following The Incredibles and Ratatouille. The soundtrack was be released by Varèse Sarabande on January 10, 2012.

Release

Following the world premiere in Dubai on December 7, 2011, the film was released in IMAX and other large-format theaters in the U.S. on December 16, 2011, with general release on December 21, 2011.

Critical reception

The film has received critical acclaim, scoring 93% on the film-critic aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 192 reviews, making it the best-reviewed entry of the series. The site's critical consensus is, "Stylish, fast-paced, and loaded with gripping set pieces, the fourth Mission: Impossible is big-budget popcorn entertainment that really works. Metacritic gives the film a score of 73 based on 38 reviews.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying the film "is a terrific thriller with action sequences that function as a kind of action poetry Philippa Hawker of The Sydney Morning Herald gave the film three stars out of five, and said it is "ludicrously improbable, but also quite fun. As Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly analyzed, the movie "brims with scenes that are exciting and amazing at the same time; they're brought off with such casual aplomb that they're funny, too. ... Ghost Protocol is fast and explosive, but it's also a supremely clever sleight-of-hand thriller. Brad Bird, the animation wizard, ... showing an animator's miraculously precise use of visual space, has a playful, screw-tightening ingenuity all his own.
Dan Kois of Slate.com, commenting on the film's craftsmanship and context, said, "Along with [being] many other things — a crackerjack action picture, a smoothly operating product-endorsement machine, a useful guide to the obscuring of Cruise's annoying persona via millions of dollars of special effects — the fourth 'Mission: Impossible' movie also functions as a primer on how to use IMAX technology to immerse an audience. The scenes on the Burj gave me more vertigo than Vertigo.

Box office

Ghost Protocol has grossed a worldwide total of $653,114,768 with $206,514,768 (as of 12 February, 2012) from North America and $446,600,000 (as of 12 February, 2012) from other countries. It is the highest-grossing film worldwide in the Mission: Impossible series, and the 6th highest-grossing film of 2011. It is also the highest-grossing movie worldwide starring Tom Cruise, eclipsing War of the Worlds from the top spot
In a limited IMAX release of just 425 locations in North America, it earned $12.8 million over its opening weekend which topped Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason's record of $8.7 million for the highest-grossing opening weekend in fewer than 600 theaters. After five days of limited release, on its sixth day it expanded to 3,448 theaters and reached first place at the box office with $8.92 million. The film reached the #1 spot at the box office in its second and third weekends with $29.6 million and $29.4 million respectively. After 20 days of release, the film became the highest-grossing December release of 2011 in North America. Though only 9% of the films screenings were in IMAX theatres, they accounted for 23% of the films box office revenue.
In countries outside North America, it debuted to a $69.5 million in 42 markets representing approximately 70 percent of the marketplace. In the United Arab Emirates, it set an opening weekend record of $2.4 million. In two countries outside the U.S. in which filming took place, its opening weekend gross increased by multiples over the previous installment: in Russia, more than doubling to $6.04 million; and in India, quadrupling to $4.0 million. On January 21, 2012, the movie surpassed Mission: Impossible II's $384,988,072 million gross to set a new franchise record overseas. It topped the overseas box office for three consecutive weekends and five weekends in total