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The Messy MacGuffins of Mission: Impossible

The Messy MacGuffins of Mission: Impossible

Last updated on: August 3, 2015 at 4:02 pm by Paul Asay

The Messy MacGuffins of Mission: Impossible 2015-08-03T16:02:38-06:00 Paul Asay

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It might be a briefcase. A treasure map. A priceless statue of a falcon. A MacGuffin is an object of supersized importance to a movie’s characters—something they would kill or die for—but often are of little importance to the audience.

And no franchise has made better use of the MacGuffin than Mission: Impossible.

Through five movies, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has chased MacGuffins around the globe, from lists of double agents to dangerous super-viruses to the mysterious and ill-defined “Rabbit’s Foot” from M:I:III. He’s climbed the highest buildings, cracked the toughest safes, donned the most outlandish masks for them. He’s done everything humanly possible to either capture or destroy them—and arguably sometimes has gone a bit beyond that. He’s sacrificed his all to obtain these fabled MacGuffins.

But in Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, you get the sense that it’s gotten a little old. You can only be disavowed and hunted down by your own government so many times, y’know?

The MacGuffin this time around is a mysterious computer file of much interest to the Syndicate—a shadowy organization of ex-agents from around the world. Its members soured on the whole king-and-country schtick and went freelance, forming a shadowy splinter state (think ISIS without the religion but with lots of black turtlenecks) with a yen for mayhem—and the file in question would give the Syndicate resources for decades’ worth of chaos.

The Syndicate is obviously filled with bad, bad people. But there’s a sense that the entities fighting the Syndicate—or the ones that should be, at any rate, aren’t much better.

Mission: Impossible movies are about locations and stunts and Tom Cruise looking intense, so I don’t want to sell this as a deeply introspective movie. But the emotional backdrop, to the extent that MI movies allow such things, really centers on disillusionment and relativism. We all know Ethan’s history now—much of himself he’s given to his job and to making the world a safer (if more explosion-riddled) place. We know that, in almost every movie, he’s either betrayed or wrongly considered a betrayer himself. And when he meets a beautiful agent named Ilsa—a woman whose allegiances seem iffy but who saves Ethan’s life a time or two—we’re introduced to someone whose own spy work has made her deeply cynical of any sort of entity who’d employ her.

“We only believe we’re fighting for the ride side because that’s what we choose to believe,” she tells Ethan.

It’s interesting, though, that Ilsa’s last name is Faust—the fictional scholar who brokers a deal with the devil. In Ilsa’s mind, who would that devil be? Is she serving as a deep-cover Mephistopheles, drawing Ethan into a dark bargain himself? In a way, she’s luring Ethan with an altogether different MacGuffin: Peace. Perhaps, Ilsa suggests, Ethan should stop caring so very much.

The legendary Faust was on a quest for his own MacGuffins, of course: Pleasure and knowledge—not unfamiliar MacGuffins for us, perhaps. He was willing to sacrifice his very soul to get them. But those who saw Faust in action knew he was thirsting for the wrong sorts of things.

In the M:I movies, the MacGuffins could indeed be anything and, in a sense, nothing. For the bad guys, they are Faustian—catalysts to claim wealth or pleasure or, most frequently, power. But for those of us in the audience, the MacGuffins themselves are almost interchangeable: The list of agents. The bank account numbers. The “Rabbit’s Foot.” How many of us even remember these objects of ultimate desire and destruction from movie to movie? How many of us can even keep all the M:I MacGuffins straight?

And yet, they are important. Why? Because they serve as a catalyst for the story itself—and for Ethan’s never-ending heroics.

Ethan doesn’t want to claim these MacGuffins for himself. He’s not interested in wealth or power. He’s not even tempted by Ilsa’s promise of peace. For him, they’re not objects of desire but, typically, things that endanger the stuff of real importance. For Ethan, the quest for the MacGuffin isn’t about the MacGuffin itself, but about saving the world. About protecting those whom he loves. It’s about serving others, even to the point of sacrificing himself to do so.

That’s why Ethan’s been one of moviedom’s most enduring heroes over the last 19 years. He’s got his priorities straight—even if those around him do not.

We know by now that Ethan’s bosses aren’t always looking out for his best interests, or even necessarily the interests of the rest of us. We know that his world, like ours, is filled with those who make bad decisions. Who play with mixed motives. Who betray. But for Ethan, it doesn’t matter. He has a higher purpose than just a Faustian MacGuffin. He serves a greater cause. He knows what’s important, and it’s not the MacGuffin. It’s the people he can save through its capture or destruction.

“For you were called to freedom, brothers,” we read in Galatians 5:13-14.. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

“The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing,” Alfred Hitchcock—a man whose fingerprints are all over the M:I movies—once said. And maybe the same could be said of the MacGuffins in our own lives; the things we yearn for, fight over, might even die to achieve. When you step outside yourself and look at the broader story, the MacGuffins are meaningless. It’s the people around us—and serving them to the best of our abilities—who are important.

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