Name: Mission: Impossible - Executing the Perfect Heist
Uploaded: 2018-08-26T07:14:52.000Z
Duration: 12 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Whenever a new Mission Impossible movie is
coming out,

the focus always seems to be on whatever crazy,
new,

incredibly dangerous stunts Tom Cruise is
doing in the movie.

but it can sometimes make the Mission Impossible
films

seem like nothing more than flashy action movies.

And while they certainly have no shortage
of action...

...there's another kind of tension at the heart
of the series.

This has always been true of the franchise,

even going back to the original Mission Impossible
TV show.

And perhaps more than any other kind of sequence,

heists present the hero with an incredibly
clear-cut goal and difficult obstacles,

creating high-stakes scenes designed to keep
the audience guessing.

So today, my mission is to compare two heist
sequences

from different Mission Impossible movies...

To examine the way they establish goals and
convey detailed obstacles…

...and how they ultimately subvert expectations by
taking an impossible situation,

the engine that drives a heist forward comes
from the protagonist's desire.

In the first Mission Impossible, Ethan wants
to steal the NOC list—

a record of every secret agent and their true
identity—

because he thinks it will help him find the
person who set him up.

“I deliver the NOC list, Max delivers Job.”

In Rogue Nation, his goal is...also to steal
a list.

It contains the identities of his operatives,
his terrorist associates,

the entire inner workings of the Syndicate.”

Once the goal is established, the first big
problem is clear:

both of the lists are located in highly-secured
facilities—

there's no way Ethan could get to them on
his own.

So to achieve the desire, the protagonist
is going to need allies…

Each team member is designed to have a specific
characteristic

that will help the protagonist achieve their
goal.

In Rogue Nation, Ethan partners with Benji,
who we've seen is a tech wizard...

...and Ilsa, a new character who we've seen
is a superspy in her own right.

In the original Mission Impossible, Ethan
recruits two new people.

...and Krieger, who is great at being Jean
Reno.

This team assembly phase allows the writers

to tease the kind of obstacles our heroes
will be going up against...

...but it also serves to start creating tension.

In both films, the writers give us reasons
to suspect

that one of the team members is what John
Truby calls, a "Fake-Ally Opponent."

In his book “The Anatomy of Story,” Truby
explains:

"The fake-ally opponent is a character who
appears to be the hero's friend

Having this character is one of the main ways
you add power to the opposition

In both heists, the newest members of the
team are former agents who have been disavowed.

Ethan is about to put his life in their hands,
and isn't sure they can be trusted.

He's going to need their help if he wants
to achieve his desire,

because standing in their way are a number
of very big obstacles.

In a heist sequence, obstacles are the forces
of antagonism that the heroes struggle against—

both films waste no time in establishing the
difficulty

both films cut away from the team to show
the actual location of the heist.

In the first film, Ethan's narration combines
with the visuals

to create a kind of tour of the vault system.

Ethan: “The only person allowed in the room
has to pass through a series of security checks.”

We see that the computer terminal is guarded
by voice activation…

…retinal scans, temperature fluctuations,
and even a pressure-sensitive floor.

Ethan: “All three systems are state of the
art."

Rogue Nation uses this cutaway technique
in a different way.

Rather than simply providing a tour of the
obstacles in the system,

the script visualizes the brainstorming process,

letting us see which security systems they
could easily fool...

We just impersonate the agent who stole the
ledger in the first place,

By letting us actually see the obstacles the
team is facing,

we get a very clear understanding of each
of them—

and the better we understand the obstacles,
the more effective they are.

So now that the heroes know precisely what
they're up against,

and it's at this stage that the two films
differ the most.

In Rogue Nation we know all the main steps
of the plan beforehand,

and are even shown what success looks like.

Ethan: “One of us needs to enter the torus
and change the security profile…

…so that the other one can access the computer
without being caught.”

In the original film, we don't learn what
the team's plan is

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Mission: Impossible - Executing the Perfect Heist

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