Mission: Impossible | Tom Cruise and Ethan Hunt — Are they the same person?

Tom Cruise and his fictional character Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Late in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (2015), Alec Baldwin’s CIA director Hunley describes IMF agent Ethan Hunt as “the living manifestation of destiny”. It’s a descriptor that seems like it was lifted off a magazine profile of star Tom Cruise himself. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but his career in Tinseltown is now into its fifth decade. Cruise has played many iconic and diverse characters over the years, but his enduring legacy is going to be Mission: Impossible’s Ethan Hunt, the quintessential embodiment of his on-screen persona.

Actors and characters bleeding into one another is not a unique phenomenon. Screenwriters usually write (and rewrite) to their stars’ strengths, playing off their public-facing personas. It’s most visible in long-running franchises, where the star, the creative team, and the audience have had the opportunity to live with a character for multiple outings. John Wick may have started off as a stereotypical assassin, but over the course of four movies has so thoroughly settled into the laconic style of star Keanu Reeves that it seems like a fantasy extension of Reeves himself.

Based on the 1966 TV series of the same name, Mission: Impossible came back to life in the mid-90s after Tom Cruise bought the rights as a producing and starring vehicle for himself. In the simplest sense of the word, Cruise owns both the Mission: Impossible franchise as well as the character of Ethan Hunt, which was created specifically for him. The first movie was released in 1996 and received mixed-to-positive reviews but was enough of a financial success to warrant a sequel, and, thus, a franchise was born.

The original vision for Mission: Impossible was to have Ethan Hunt’s adventures interpreted by filmmakers with distinct visual styles from New Hollywood’s De Palma with his fondness for diopters to Hong Kong’s John Woo and his pigeons to (at-the-time) TV’s JJ Abrams with his near-abusive reliance on lens flares. Ethan’s stylistic journey was mirrored by Cruise’s own career at the time. Cruise was seeking out visionary directors like Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Mann, who challenged his star persona and pushed him beyond his limits. But in the last decade, Cruise has chosen to work repeatedly with only a handful of directors like Doug Liman, Joseph Kosinski, and Christopher McQuarrie, who rarely, if ever, push Cruise outside his comfort zone. Meanwhile, as the franchise has matured, it has stepped away from its original plan and has established Cruise as its one true authorial voice (with able assistance from writer-director McQuarrie).

It’s not just the career trajectory, Hunt’s personal life is also a reflection of Cruise’s public projection of his personal life. Mission: Impossible 3 (2006) went all in on the improbable notion that the hotshot agent Hunt could have a normal domestic life with Michelle Monaghan’s Julia. In real life, this was the same year that Cruise’s whirlwind romance with Katie Holmes culminated in marriage. Cruise was trying to position himself as America’s sweetheart; wholesome and welcoming. However, marital bliss was short-lived for both character and actor. When the franchise came back with Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (2011), Julia was ostensibly killed as Hunt realized he could never give himself the luxury of a normal life. Cruise himself was putting the finishing touches on his divorce with Holmes at the time. While rumours abound of romantic flings and secret affairs, Cruise seems to have taken a life of public celibacy, only surfacing when he has a new mission, excuse me, movie to tackle.

The parallels don’t stop there — Hunt’s defining characteristic has been his willingness to go to death-defying extremes for his mission. From skydiving to scaling the world’s tallest building to speedflying (who knew that was even a thing?), Hunt never backs down from a physical challenge. Cruise has gotten increasingly daring with his penchant for doing these stunts himself, training for months at a time to create that perfect cinematic moment. It’s come to the point where the last few scripts have been written around the elaborate set-pieces, which would go a long way in explaining the increasingly convoluted nature of these plots.

Which brings us to the eponymous mission. The specifics of each mission may be different but the goal is always the same, to save the world from unthinkable catastrophe. While Cruise the star has tried on different public personas in his long career, he has now settled into his messiah phase as the self-proclaimed saviour of the cinema-going experience. He already did it once last year with Top Gun: Maverick (2022), and even Steven Spielberg acknowledged that “You saved Hollywood’s ass and you might have saved theatrical distribution”. Cruise has spoken out on numerous occasions about his love for the big screen, and believes that it is his duty and his mission to save it. He has decried the growing influence of streaming and the devastating impact it has had on the theatrical industry. It’s not a coincidence that the latest instalment has Ethan Hunt battling an algorithm, a thinly-veiled allusion to the likes of Netflix and other streamers.

It’s been close to 30 years since Cruise first played Hunt, and the two are now nearly indistinguishable. Audiences don’t go to Mission: Impossible movies to see Hunt’s new adventures, they go to see what new death defying stunt Tom Cruise has come up with. Cruise and Hunt are embodiments of the same ethos — an insatiable thirst for adventure, a fierce commitment to excellence, and an unwavering determination to achieve the mission. Cruise or Hunt — it’s a distinction without a difference, as their shared characteristics illuminate the profound connection between actor and character.