4 Things Writers Learn From Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol
It’s evident that Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol saved the franchise. Stellar reviews and enormous box office returns set the series up for the success that followed. But while it’s clear that the film had excellent stunts and exciting action, how does it measure up from a writing perspective? Let’s look through this film and see what it can teach us about writing.
1. Memorable Characters
The first thing writers can learn from Ghost Protocol is having memorable characters. Something very important for stories featuring a main team is that the side characters are developed in addition to the main character. In Ghost Protocol, especially compared to the MI films before it, Ethan Hunt is developed no more than any of the other characters, which comes down to the fact that each of the four main cast is well-developed, forming a central team that the movie can focus on. Let’s look at each member of this team and break down their role in the film.
Firstly, there’s Benji Dunn. Of the four members of the team, Benji is the least developed, but for this movie, that’s fine. Benji doesn’t have much depth, but he’s certainly likeable and adds plenty of humour to keep things lively. He’s an especially good bridge between the newcomer agent Brandt and the much more experienced Ethan Hunt. In essence, he becomes the one to hold the team together. He’s an old friend of Ethan’s, he’s worked closely with Carter on past missions and he has a humorous dynamic with Brandt. What Benji does is tighten the knots between everyone in several key moments, ensuring that the team doesn’t fall apart.
Next, there’s Jane Carter. Carter’s deal in this movie is that she’s haunted by Hanaway’s death and wants to avenge him. During the Burj Khalifa sequence, she’s forced to choose between the mission and killing Moreau. She ultimately makes the wrong move, unintentionally throwing Moreau out of the window. This divides the team at the start of the third act and complicates things as they lose their only witness. While this revenge story isn’t essential to the plot, it serves as a catalyst that creates internal conflict, which supports the story in a big way. It also makes Carter arguably the best supporting team member in a Mission: Impossible movie who didn’t return in future installments. She’s not quite as interesting or developed as someone like Ilsa or Grace, but she gets enough time in the spotlight to leave an impression and, unlike Billy, Zhen or Declan, is three-dimensional and goes on a small character arc. Overall, she neither steals the show nor fades into the background, making her the perfect supporting character to flesh out the team.
Then, we have William Brandt. While Jeremy Renner is fantastic in this role and it’s a shame he didn’t return after Rogue Nation, I’m here to talk about writing, not acting. Much of why Brandt is so fun is thanks to Renner’s performance, but he’s also a very well-written character and plays his part in the story effectively. By giving Brandt a personal conflict with Ethan, the story feels more connected and aligned with its main character. Instead of Brandt having an issue with how he failed some other character we don’t get to see, the writers decided to have him believe he’s failed Ethan, forming drama between them that, quite frankly, carries the last half of this film in terms of writing. Brandt suffers from a story device called a ‘ghost’. A ghost is generally a memory or past event that haunts a character. It’s something they either fear or regret and they can’t rest until they’ve dealt with it in some way. Often, their ghost is what drives their actions in the story. For example, in Iron Man, Tony Stark’s ghost is the fact that his company’s weapons are being used by terrorists. He seeks to overcome this ghost by making the Iron Man suit so he can track down and stop the terrorists. I’ve also recently been playing Batman: Arkham Knight, and in that game, just like every Batman story, the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents is a ghost. Their death haunts Bruce’s past, shaping his view of crime and compelling him to become Batman. In Ghost Protocol, Brandt’s ghost is the supposed death of Julia and how he failed to protect her. He’s worried that his failure will be brought up in conversation, especially since Ethan is unaware that Brandt was responsible for protecting him. Having this barrier between two main characters creates a void to separate them. This kind of internal conflict contrasts nicely with the external conflict of the imminent nuclear war. While the nuclear war is certainly suspenseful, it’s easier for the audience to relate to the characters’ internal struggles and makes the emotional resolution much more powerful.
Finally, there’s Ethan Hunt himself. As I’ve already touched on, his conflict with Brandt is the heart of this movie, as little screentime though it gets. But while Brandt is an excellent character, I can’t say that Ethan is too. He’s almost taken a backseat since the last movie, where he was front and center. Here, he’s certainly great, but he doesn’t get much development. We don’t learn anything new about him. We don’t even get an explanation as to why he and Julia split up until Fallout. Sure, we get a line about how she’s not safe, but that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense as, in the last movie, the only reason Julia was in danger was because Ethan was in the field. If he retired to live with Julia, she should have been fine. Fallout eventually clears this up, and the ending of this movie is still great as Brandt’s arc is concluded and Ethan seeing Julia is a nice moment. But looking at the film as a whole, Ethan doesn’t do much. It’s a very small nitpick, however. Part of it comes down to the idea of replacing Ethan with Brandt as the studio was preparing for Jeremy Renner to potentially take over the franchise. Ghost Protocol started that process by developing Brandt and his potential to be the main character as well as hinting that Ethan might be sidelined in the future. But, as we all know, they made four more movies with him, so that didn’t go anywhere. In Ghost Protocol, Ethan is still his great self and is certainly more interesting than some other action heroes, but if we had just a bit more time devoted to developing him, this film could have been that much stronger overall.
2. Memorable Villains
The second thing writers can learn here is how to have memorable villains. This is perhaps the biggest criticism toward this movie and has certainly been talked about before, so I’ll keep it brief to not repeat what’s already been said. Essentially, the main villain, Hendricks, is hideously underdeveloped. Not only is he a generic, uninteresting bad guy with generic, vague motivations and a generic, bland right-hand man, but he doesn’t even get any cool moments showcasing his villainy. If you don’t count the sequence in Dubai, the only scenes he’s in are the bombing of the Kremlin and the battle in the parking garage. He doesn’t get much screen time, so while we know what his goal is, we don’t know the steps required or why he personally wants to achieve it. What I think could have fixed this is if, instead of a random subplot about a Russian cryptographer, we had a scene or two where Hendricks talks with his henchman about why he wants to obliterate the world. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, but it would be the minimum passable development for the villains of any story. The reason for having Lisenker in the story is so that there can be a transition from the exchange scene to the chase scene, having Ethan go from chasing two bad guys to one. This isn’t much of a problem, though, as Lisenker can instead be a random goon who flees in another direction or is killed offscreen. Maybe Ethan could make a decision to pursue Wistrom, showing how he prioritizes the mission over catching the bad guy, contrasting him with Jane Carter.
3. Microconflicts
Thirdly, this film is a masterclass in microconflicts, most notably in the Burj Khalifa sequence. I’d go so far as to say that this is the best part of the film. It lasts for half an hour, starting with the arrival in Dubai and setting up in the Burj Khalifa and moving to the famous scene where Ethan climbs the outside of the building before crescendoing in the pivotal exchange scene and the subsequent chase through the sandstorm. This entire sequence is excellently done from start to finish, particularly with how it builds tension to an explosive resolution.
This sequence builds tension through its microconflicts. The team has a plan, but they’re constantly facing additional obstacles. The cryptographer, the server’s firewalls, the malfunctioning glove, the destroyed masks, etc. Each time Ethan’s team faces one of these obstacles, it brings them closer to the breaking point where their mission fails, but they work together to overcome these conflicts. They manage to hold the two meetings successfully, but at the last second, Moreau sees Brandt’s contact and chaos ensues. All the tension of the sequence has been building to this, meaning we quickly and effectively transition from a tense espionage plan to a high-stakes action scene. Ethan runs to catch Wistrom, but he faces one last major obstacle as the Russians catch up with him. All of this is how the Dubai sequence effectively builds tension, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats until everything comes crashing down.
This theme of microconflicts is all over this movie and helps keep the pacing brisk. While the film itself is a bit lengthy, it feels much shorter than it actually is in part because of the constant obstacles Ethan and his team are facing. In addition to the large action scenes, they also have to face an angry Russian in a hospital, a creepy Indian billionaire, a crowd of pedestrians, comms issues and Ethan deviating from the plan to save his new best friend, not to mention that their safehouse even tries to run away from them at one point. Oh, and camels.
4. How to End a Story
Lastly, Ghost Protocol is an excellent example of how to end a story. This film’s finale doesn’t quite have the choreography of Rogue Nation or the spectacle of Dead Reckoning, but it’s certainly an excellent ending from a writing perspective. This is because of how it builds tension and incorporates the entire team, which is something this movie has been taking to heart. Of all of the Mission: Impossible films, this one puts the most emphasis on the team of spies instead of just Ethan, so it’s only natural for the movie to end with an action scene where everyone works together. The scene, much like Fallout, has a ticking bomb that everyone must work together to stop. The fact that they’re too late to stop the launch raises the stakes exponentially as they find themselves having to remotely abort the launch, taking everything to the last possible second. Everybody has to work together to disable the warhead, which is super satisfying to see as everything comes together for the big finale.
Something interesting about Ghost Protocol is that, while the bad guys have been stopped and the mission is successful, the story isn’t over. The final scene in Seattle deals with the unresolved internal conflict between Brandt and Ethan that was set up earlier. Brandt tried to tell Ethan the truth in Dubai, but Ethan told him to focus on the mission. So with the mission over, Brandt is finally able to tell Ethan what happened and how he failed him. It seems like it’s going to be a sombre moment as Brandt confesses, but Ethan assures him that Julia is alive. Not only does Brandt show his trust in Ethan by revealing his ghost, but Ethan does the same by trusting Brandt with the truth that Julia’s death was faked. Their relationship is restored in an emotionally satisfying way. One major complaint I had about Mission: Impossible II was that there was no ending to the story, just an ending to the plot. The external events climaxed in the fight on the beach, but there wasn’t any character conflict, just mindless action. Something I praised Mission: Impossible III for was that it did the opposite, seamlessly weaving plot and character to form a cohesive story that climaxed when Julia saved Ethan. What Ghost Protocol does is neither. It doesn’t neglect the story of its main characters, but it doesn’t have the story climax take place during the plot climax, either. Instead, it separates the two, having the external plot come crashing down with the climax in the parking garage and the internal story reach its climax during the Seattle scene between Brandt and Ethan. Ghost Protocol shows how to do this well, letting Brandt and Ethan’s conflict be left unresolved since Dubai until they both finally come clean.
The difference between this scene and the end of Rogue Nation helps clarify how this is the story climax, not the resolution. In Rogue Nation, Ethan and Ilsa share a few lines as they part, but there’s no conflict. It’s simply them saying goodbye. It resolves their story together, but it doesn’t add anything. A climax is the final breaking point of the conflict before the resolution. In the scene in Seattle, there’s conflict as Ethan and Brandt begin without telling each other the truth. But when Brandt confesses and Ethan tells him the truth, the conflict ends. The resolution would be when they shake hands and Brandt takes the phone. That’s how Ghost Protocol identifies the difference between a story’s climax and its resolution.
It’s something you can do in your writing; ensure that your characters are memorable, build tension through microconflicts and ensure your finale has a climax for both its plot and its story.
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