MovieChat Forums > Mission: Impossible (1996) Discussion > Koepp on why they killed the old team an...

Koepp on why they killed the old team and made phelps a villain:


at last i got an explanation to why they did this.


"When the first Mission: Impossible came out, it caused some controversy as you made Jim Phelps, the main character from the original TV series, into a traitor and the bad guy [played by Jon Voight]. You also created an all-new character, Ethan Hunt, for Tom Cruise to star as. Where did these decisions come from?

Tom was involved first. He was interested in doing it, and he was producing it. And then Brian [De Palma] called me and said why don’t you take a crack at it. You have to consider who’s in it, and then make it work.

The essential problem was Tom Cruise was the biggest star on the planet, and [the original TV show] was an ensemble that tilts towards no-one. I’d never viewed the TV show as sacrosanct. We had to acknowledge who our cast was. So I can’t remember whose idea it was, either De Palma or Steve Zaillian said let’s start by killing the team, lets just get rid of them. Because you had to work out how you get this ensemble piece into a star vehicle. So we killed everybody, and we were feeling very cheeky, and decided we’re going to do want we want, we’ll kill people, we’ll make the good guy the bad guy, and added in the new recruits. And I think it worked out well.

Read more: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/david-koepp/33764/david-koepp-interview-mortdecai-jurassic-park-indy-4#ixzz3PeKRZepI
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they were idiots, that's the explanation


The stupid have one thing in common.They alter the facts to fit their views not the other way

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[deleted]

@Darknessviking Did you really need Koepp to explain to you that the team was killed off to keep the focus on Tom Cruise?

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Well it certainly helps so now we can make some inflammatory statements about them, and because they admitted it, legally it won't come off as slanderous.

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@jmcnamara-1 Right, I'd forgotten about all the IMDb posters who had gotten sued for slander.

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LOL 

"I'm the ultimate badass,you do NOT wanna f-ck wit me!"Hudson,Aliens😬

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From smoko
@Darknessviking Did you really need Koepp to explain to you that the team was killed off to keep the focus on Tom Cruise?


This film franchise was obviously a star vehicle for Tom Cruise and not a continuation of the original series.

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I love MI:1 and think it's still the best of the franchise but there is still one thing that annoys me to this day.
Someone as professional and inventive as Jim Phelps should be able to come up with a way to get rich that doesn't involve murdering his entire team, framing his protégé and exposing the identities of every undercover IMF agent on earth. As I recall, he wasn't even getting paid that much.
Turning to mass murder and treason indicates a psyche more likely to be motivated by revenge than greed.

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I love MI:1 and think it's still the best of the franchise but there is still one thing that annoys me to this day. Someone as professional and inventive as Jim Phelps should be able to come up with a way to get rich that doesn't involve murdering his entire team, framing his protégé and exposing the identities of every undercover IMF agent on earth. As I recall, he wasn't even getting paid that much. Turning to mass murder and treason indicates a psyche more likely to be motivated by revenge than greed.


It should never annoy you at all nor be bothered by it. The Jim Phelps of the original 60's series and the remake 80's series and the Jim Phelps of MI:1 are two different people.The former is the one who is professional and inventive and the latter one is the idiotic one.The fact that they are played by two different actors - Peter Graves in the former and Jon Voight in the latter - also proves just that. The Mission Impossible franchise movies of Tom Cruise is definitely not a continuation of the TV series of both the 60's and the 80's.

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It should never annoy you at all nor be bothered by it. The Jim Phelps of the original 60's series and the remake 80's series and the Jim Phelps of MI:1 are two different people.The former is the one who is professional and inventive and the latter one is the idiotic one.The fact that they are played by two different actors - Peter Graves in the former and Jon Voight in the latter - also proves just that. The Mission Impossible franchise movies of Tom Cruise is definitely not a continuation of the TV series of both the 60's and the 80's.


This.

"I'm the ultimate badass,you do NOT wanna f-ck wit me!"Hudson,Aliens😬

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Jim had nothing else going at the time; so kill everyone. And we also didn't know that Jim needed the money for, no not bitches for a gambling debt. Jim likes playing roulette at the Fremont in Las Vegas.

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"The essential problem was Tom Cruise was the biggest star on the planet, and [the original TV show] was an ensemble that tilts towards no-one. I’d never viewed the TV show as sacrosanct. We had to acknowledge who our cast was. So I can’t remember whose idea it was, either De Palma or Steve Zaillian said let’s start by killing the team, lets just get rid of them. Because you had to work out how you get this ensemble piece into a star vehicle. So we killed everybody, and we were feeling very cheeky, and decided we’re going to do want we want, we’ll kill people, we’ll make the good guy the bad guy, and added in the new recruits. And I think it worked out well."

You failed!

Making Jim Phelps the bad guy was the worst decision since 'New Coke'.
It totally turned me off to this movie series, and I've never watched, or will watch, any more in this line.

If you make a movie based upon an iconic television series, you do not insult the viewers memory of the original series by making their hero the villain!

If you can't hold anything as sacrosanct, you should at least consider that the viewers might hold to a higher standard than you do.

If Cruise was the biggest star back then, he is no longer, and the whole "Mission Impossible" thing needs to be re-booted.

Correctly.

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I totally agree with laclone. Jım Phelps was my childhood hero. When they turned this hero from the TV-series into a villain, I felt extremely disappointed.

This decision was made to make Tom Cruise the leading star of the movies by eliminating the other members of the original group.

I’ve never watched the rest of the movies since then, and I will never watch any of them. I’d like to remember the mission impossible team as it had been in the original series.

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Maybe tom isn't the "biggest" star currently but he's still a huge star and legend and he's certainly one of them. I say let tom keep doing them as long as he's able and the movies keep rocking. It can get its reboot someday in a different fashion but cruise has done some amazing things these films and I many others love them. You might not like em but I don't think tom makes these movies for you..

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Maybe tom isn't the "biggest" star currently but he's still a huge star and legend and he's certainly one of them. I say let tom keep doing them as long as he's able and the movies keep rocking. It can get its reboot someday in a different fashion but cruise has done some amazing things these films and I many others love them. You might not like em but I don't think tom makes these movies for you..


This.

"I'm the ultimate badass,you do NOT wanna f-ck wit me!"Hudson,Aliens😬

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If you make a movie based upon an iconic television series, you do not insult the viewers memory of the original series by making their hero the villain!
It was indeed very cheeky, as Koepp said. You, the viewer, are only entitled to an opinion. Please give another example of when someone took a longtime hero of an iconic television series and turned him/her into a villain? I don't think you and I will be arguing that the creative choice was/wasn't unique.

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Agreed! They could just as easily have had Phelps in retirement, having been forced out as a failure or a suspected traitor & then recruiting Ethan Hunt to track down the real traitor. Or Phelps could have been killed, branded a failure for it, leaving protege Hunt to tracks down his killer & expose corruption somewhere in the IMF. Same end result without spitting on the past.

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I’d never viewed the TV show as sacrosanct.


Which is why he had no bussiness writing the script. If you don't respect the original source you don't touch a project...

Not that I care much about the films since it's the Tom Cruise's Show not Mission Impossible.

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Which is why he had no bussiness writing the script. If you don't respect the original source you don't touch a project...
If that were the logic applied by those in the industry for every movie, we'd be stuck with fan-fic scripts written by fanboys.

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I love the choice because it wasn't "predictable". The anger for the bad guy was real, because we really wanted the decision dead, and then realized it was a great movie.

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Making Jim Phelps the bad guy was a very interesting and brave decision
It made Ethan hunt not trust anyone in the organisation which U will find is the basis of the character that tom cruise played very well throughout the movie series

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It's Mission: Impossible, not Hamlet. It's a movie based on a dumb tv show. I mean, grow up. People complaining about this are as bad as the "adults" who got upset over the idea of Ninja Turtles becoming aliens.

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No people complained about it because it was a stupid decision, saying to people who legitimate right to dislike the choice to grow up makes you come across as closed minded person. Imagine if they tried to do that in a Star Trek movie by making Kirk or Spock the villain.

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Why not just have Tom Cruise play Jim Phelps , then ?

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No people complained about it because it was a stupid decision, saying to people who legitimate right to dislike the choice to grow up makes you come across as closed minded person. Imagine if they tried to do that in a Star Trek movie by making Kirk or Spock the villain.


Is that supposed to be your argument? I have no doubt Star Trek fans would complain about Spock or Kirk becoming a villain. So what? Idiots act like other idiots. Is what you mean, Trek fans act stupid so you can act stupid to?

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