A few months back, to the surprise of some, JJ Abrams announced he’d be reteaming with Tom Cruise to produce a fourth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. After appointing TV writers, and “Alias” veterans Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec (“Life on Mars,” “October Road”), many assumed Abrams would be returning to direct. However, in an interview with MTV, Abrams has pretty much nixed that possibility. He tells them “I’m producing with Tom. My guess is, given other things, that I will not be directing the movie,” most prominent among these ‘other things’ being, presumably the sequel to “Star Trek,” although recent reports suggest that movie won’t hit theaters until 2012.
Abrams continues, “I don’t want to give anything away yet, but I will say that it’s a story that will feel consistent with the world that has been created. It’s not a reboot kind of thing. Tom asked if I’d be interested in working with him again. I didn’t have a sense of what the story would be, but very quickly this idea came to mind, and Tom reacted to it in a way that got me excited, and then we got Andre and Josh to come onboard, and they began developing the idea with us.” This suggests that rumors of Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt taking a back seat, or even being absent altogether, are a little premature.
The “Mission: Impossible” franchise is one of consistently thwarted hopes – from the aborted David Fincher and Joe Carnahan entries (both of which sounded pretty interesting), to the disappointing finished films from Brian De Palma, John Woo and Abrams, whose previous entry seems to be generally thought of quite kindly, considering it’s essentially an extended episode of “Alias,” elevated by a well-written villain. While Abrams’ direction of “Mission Impossible 3” was rather pedestrian, he definitely graduated to the big leagues this year: along with its fine cast, Abrams’ confident, fresh, energetic handling of “Star Trek” lifted it above its strike-plagued script. (Plus, his keyboard solo in Andy Samberg’s MTV awards song was sort of brilliant, let’s face it)
Because of this, we’d rather have seen Abrams handle it than handing it off to one of his proteges, like Matt Reeves (“Cloverfield”), which we imagine would be the case. If it has to be someone within the Abrams stable, we’d go with Brad Anderson (“Transsiberian”), who’s directed a good chunk of the episodes of “Fringe,” and could have fun with material like this. But we’re still pretty unconvinced there’s a burning need for a fourth entry in this franchise — does anyone, except Tom Cruise, really care about it?