YMMV / Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

• Alternate Character Interpretation: When The Fog tips off the Russian cops about Ethan, was he double-crossing Ethan, or had Ethan asked him to do that in order to get the Russian in the area to witness their heroism and fully clear his name.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: When Benji and Ethan are in the hallway at the Russian archives, they use a "sound projector" to distract a guard, and use a paper-thin TV screen to make the hallway seem empty.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Mission: Impossible III had performed below expectations at the box office, as well as Tom Cruise's last few films, and many prognosticators were surprised the studio had approved a fourth film. Box office analysts thought it was a bad move for Paramount to schedule the film for Christmas weekend, already crowded with other releases, and a season that wasn't known for being fertile ground for action films. Strong word of mouth, with many calling it the best film of the series, propelled it to strong box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of the year and easily leading Christmas weekend.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Hendricks impersonating his own dragon for one scene doesn't really move the plot forward in any significant way, and his reason for doing so is never explained.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • While it's an accident and the team needed her to be able to learn more information about what happened, Moreau literally getting kicked out the window by Jane is a pretty cool karmic moment—and that it comes from Jane doing so in self-defense rather than revenge as well also works too.
  • Ethan successfully stopping the missile in time despite Hendricks' best efforts—to the point that he dies watching his own failure—is a pretty cool climactic moment for the movie.
• Complete Monster: Sabine Moreau is a cruel contract killer who introduces herself by shooting Agent Hanaway to swipe his briefcase, leaving him on the cusp of death so he'll die in his lover's arms. The contents of the briefcase are nuclear launch codes that Moreau plans to sell to Kurt "Cobalt" Hendricks, so he can use them to kickstart a nuclear holocaust. When she meets who she believes to be Cobalt, Moreau tries to have his henchman executed to prove she's serious about the deal. Moreau doesn't care about Cobalt's cause or the billions who will die from the nuclear codes, simply wanting diamonds for her services.
• Even Better Sequel: This was easily the best-reviewed film of the series at the time, with 93% on Rotten Tomatoes; III, the previously-best-reviewed, only managed a 71%. Cinema Wins even sums up his review with, "So apparently, no one told Tom Cruise or Brad Bird or J. J. Abrams that this was a 4th movie in a franchise and it's supposed to suck."
• Growing the Beard: This film is what took the franchise from "popular, but critically divisive" to "one of the most critically acclaimed film franchises of the decade".
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The trailer for the film shows the bombing of the Kremlin, a major symbol of the Russian government. The trailer was played on the same day as the terrorist attacks in Oslo, Norway.
  • Ethan breaking his ankle during his fight with Cobalt, after Tom Cruise actually broke his ankle during the filming of Rogue Nation.
  • "Tensions between the United States and Russia haven't been this high since the Cuban Missile Crisis." Look back at this line in Spring 2022, when Russian troops have invaded Ukraine and America is supplying the defenders... ^note  Also technically incorrect - the most tense it ever got was actually the early Reagan era, around the time of the "Evil Empire" speech, culminating in an incident on September 26, 1983, when the Soviet air defense HQ received alerts detecting missile launches from the United States. Only Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov's gut instinct held off a retaliatiory launch, which would have without a doubt triggered World War III.
    • Russian actor Vladimir Mashkov plays an antagonistic SVR agent tracking Ethan down after suspecting him of attacking his country. In 2022, Mashkov was subjected to EU sanctions and estranged himself from his daughter after voicing his support of President Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Word of God says William Brandt was put in the movie so that he could become the series' new protagonist if Tom Cruise ever left. In the end, Cruise stayed as the lead... but around the same time, Jeremy Renner did end up becoming The Bourne Series' new protagonist after Matt Damon dropped out of The Bourne Legacy.
  • Josh Holloway's brief role in the botched operation that starts the film has him using Augmented Reality contact lenses to pinpoint a target-something that his character on Intelligence (2014) has as a superpower.
  • When Ethan first meets Jane, she introduces herself as "Agent Carter." Even funnier as Agent Carter's actress, Hayley Atwell would later sign up for Mission Impossible 7+8.
  • Léa Seydoux, who plays a cold Professional Killer with a personality not too different from a James Bond villain in this film, ends up playing Bond's love interest in Spectre and No Time to Die.
  • In The Incredibles, Brad Bird spoofed this franchise's staple of self-destructing message sent by a secret agency. Years later, he would direct this movie, which is a part of said franchise he spoofed.
  • When Benji is briefing him on how the computers will get hot once the fans are turned off, Brandt comments that he’s basically being told he’ll be jumping into an oven. Two years later, Renner would portray a character famous for almost getting thrown into an actual oven in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.
• Magnificent Bastard: Kurt "Cobalt" Hendricks is a former specialist in nuclear endgame theory, who grew weary of treating the lives of millions like a game, and came to the conclusion that nuclear war is an inevitability. Hijacking the IMF's operation at the Kremlin, Hendricks frames the agency for bombing the landmark, raising tensions between Russia and the U.S. He forces a nuclear physicist to verify launch codes by kidnapping his family, then releases the family and kills the man to cover his tracks. Hendricks launches a missile at San Francisco in order to start a war so the survivors will declare a worldwide armistice. When Ethan Hunt comes close to stopping the missile, Hendricks leaps to his death attempting to ensure his plan succeeds, coming within a second of accomplishing his goals. Despite his destructive goal, Hendricks genuinely believes that Utopia Justifies the Means, and manages to play the IMF and the world's governments for fools all the while.
• Moral Event Horizon: Hendricks crosses it by committing suicide to ensure his Evil Plan succeeds. This shows just how far off the slippery slope (and it's a very slippery one, indeed) he's jumped and that he values his plan more than his own life.
• Signature Scene: Given that it's the big stunt of Ghost Protocol, everyone tends to remember this film as the one that had Ethan climbing the Burj Khalifa.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The one major criticism of the film is that it has a rather forgettable and underutilized main villain in Kurt Hendricks. You don't actually get to see him all that much before his Final Battle with Ethan.
• Win Back the Crowd: The movie got more love from fans of the original show because it wasn't strictly "Ethan Hunt and his friends" but that each team member was fully developed in their own right. There is also significantly less gunplay, with more emphasis on trying to get in and out without anyone knowing what happened.

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