With reference to genre and narrative features, consider how the opening 10 minutes of Mission Impossible III gains your interest and creates expectations for the rest of the film

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Steven Ridley

With reference to genre and narrative features, consider how the opening 10 minutes of Mission Impossible III gains your interest and creates expectations for the rest of the film

 The narrative of a film provides the basic structure by which it is told. The narrative is usually ordered in a way that makes the film easy for the audience to understand and piece together. Genre films build on the narrative by using generic conventions which will fulfill the audience’s expectations of the film. The people behind the making of each and every film aim to engage the audience’s interest by using narrative and genre conventions in a way that is relative to the film’s genre. If they succeed in doing so audiences will be happy and profit will be made. This essay will focus on the use of narrative and genre conventions used in the opening 10 minutes of J.J. Abrams Mission Impossible III.

 

 Mission Impossible III is the perfect example of an Action film. Abrams has given it every generic convention for an action film you could possibly think of: the hero’s mission, good vs. evil, damsel in distress, spectacular stunts and a narrative that sees the hero always as the underdog in his battle against terrorism. This is Abrams first directing role for a film although he did play some part in the production of Armageddon in 1998 which contained plenty of spectacular special effects just as Mission Impossible III does. 

 The sequence before the opening credits introduces to the audience the main characters and also the problems that the hero of the film will have to overcome. This opening sequence is an interrogation scene which is quite odd because you would think an action film would open with a big stunt or some kind of action set piece. Straight away surprises the audience and makes them feel confused. The very first shot is an extreme close-up of the hero, Ethan Hunt who is played by Tom Cruise, an actor renowned for action films. His prestige would attract audience to the film. He is looking beaten up and confused by his surroundings. We are shown that he is handcuffed to a chair and therefore helpless. There is then an over the shoulder shot which reveals to us a woman also handcuffed to a chair with tape over her mouth in front of Ethan. To her right are two men, one of which is the main bad guy, Owen Davian (Played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), and he is pointing a gun at her head. Owen is a very dangerous drug lord from England. We can tell this by his accent and the fact that he is holding Ethan hostage with a gun pointing at him. Having an evil European male cause problems for the hero is a typical convention of the action genre. This is because Americans wouldn’t want the bad person in a film to be from the USA. This would make them appear as evil people to the rest of the world. They want the bad person to be from a different country so that when he loses his battle the Americans feel a real sense of triumph. Owen threatens to kill the woman if Ethan does not tell him the location of ‘The Rabbits Foot’ before he counts to 10. Instantly we think that this woman must mean something to Ethan by his facial expressions when he hears this. The ‘damsel in distress’ element has already come into play. We are immediately drawn into the film because we want to know what will happen to the woman and we also want to find the answer to one of the many narrative enigmas bound upon us in the opening sequence: What is The Rabbits Foot? When Owen starts counting Ethan uses his verbal skills as a spy to try and stop him. Lying and trying to reason with him for instance, but nothing works. This gives the impression that the bad guy is the one with all the power and can do whatever he wants and he doesn’t need to listen to anyone. It is also building a lot of tension as we don’t know whether or not Owen will shoot her. It makes us nervous as to what will happen, therefore gaining our interest. When he finally reaches 10 and pulls the trigger the audience is immediately unnerved by what has happened. We aren’t shown her being shot but we know ultimately what happened. This is guaranteed to force conflict upon Owen and Ethan in the remainder of the film. The enigmas we are left with at the end of this scene are: How did Ethan get there? Who are the two men? What is The Rabbits Foot? And how does Ethan know the woman? All the way through the film certain events relate back to this first scene and all our questions are answered. It’s basically a puzzle that is pieced together during the remainder of the film.

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 During this whole sequence there isn’t one single long or wide shot. Every shot is a close up. I think that Abrams is doing this because he wants you to feel uncomfortable; he’s trying to make it seem as though you are in Ethan’s shoes. Also in a way Abrams is breaking the rules of the action genre. He is letting us see Ethan in a way we don’t usually see a hero. He is vulnerable. This makes the scene very intense and in some ways scary because we are not used to an action hero being in such ...

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