The British comedian, actor and author Charlie Higson is famous internationally for being one of the writers that has carried on the mantle of Ian Fleming by writing novels and stories that continue James Bond’s adventures, most recently On His Majesty’s Secret Service, published to coincide with King Charles III’s coronation.
Yet in a recent interview with the Sunday Times of London, Higson was openly dismissive of the recent Daniel Craig-starring 007 films. He said “I went to see No Time to Die with my oldest boy, Frank, who is thirty, and he said, ‘That felt like a Bond film made by people who are embarrassed to make a Bond film.’ You had to watch two films in advance to know who such-and-such is and you think, ‘Oh, fuck off with that.”
Higson has a preferred film series instead. “The best ‘Bond films’ now are the Mission: Impossibles. There is no inner life, it’s just, ‘Whoa! Look at that building — I’d love to climb it and blow things up.’” Judging by the release of the full trailer for the latest in the Tom Cruise-starring series, Dead Reckoning: Part One, there is now no comparison between the Bond franchise — currently in abeyance after (spoiler) killing off its protagonist at the end of the last film, for reasons best known to Craig and the producers — and the increasingly high-octane Mission: Impossible films, which have rapidly established themselves, in a post-Bourne and Bond era, as the thinking man’s blockbusters of choice.
It seems strange to think that, when Cruise made the first Mission: Impossible film in 1996 with Brian de Palma, he was still considered predominantly a dramatic actor, rather than an action star. Yes, he had been in Top Gun, but he was perhaps best known at that point for big-budget literary adaptations such as The Firm and Interview with the Vampire, and the then-thirty-three-year-old actor had established himself as Hollywood’s go-to leading man for cerebral mainstream pictures.
Now, however, he is something quite different: nothing less than the savior of the film industry following the success of Top Gun: Maverick, which brought audiences back to cinemas after the pandemic shut them all. And so the latest Mission Impossible film comes with an impressive weight of expectation riding upon it.
Judging by the trailers that have been released, his latest collaboration with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie delivers the goods, and then some. Plot details are sketchy, but the awe-inspiring preview teases some of the most jaw-dropping set-pieces of the franchise so far, including a car chase through the streets of Rome, a ferocious battle on a train and Cruise throwing himself off a cliff on a motorcycle, for reasons that will presumably become clear when we all go to see the film when it is released in July. There is an impressive cast in support — including the return of Henry Czerny, who last appeared as Cruise’s nemesis Kitteridge in the first Mission: Impossible film — but make no mistake: audiences will be going to see the latest picture because it promises something that the Marvel and DC films cannot. Real stunts, done by a leading man who apparently has no care for his own safety or wellbeing as long as his loyal audiences are entertained.
Although Casino Royale and Skyfall are both terrific films, the rest of the Craig Bond era now must be seen as a disappointment, because the pictures were so mired in dour self-regard; as Higson says, they were intended as a five-film arc, and God help you if you came in just to be entertained, as in the old days. No such problems await the Mission: Impossible viewer; the films are shamelessly high-octane entertainment, with the most fearless star since the glory days of Buster Keaton. (No wonder he broke his ankle filming the last one; the shot where he did so remains in the finished movie.)
There are intended to be two more pictures in the series, and then Cruise and McQuarrie will move onto pastures new. We can only hope that the peerless level of quality control has remained high. Assuming that it has, we are in for a treat without parallel.
And that is a lot more than can be said for James Bond these days.
