In the party scene, we find out that Ethan and Julia are engaged. For some reason, spy movies like to have agents get married in a film or two.   In On Her Majesty’s  Secret Service, James Bond marries Tracy.   In Licence to Kill, Felix Leiter marries Della. It does not end well for the women they marry.   In fact, in Licence to Kill, Della’s father tells her “I told you this was a mistake”. Is there any reason to believe things will end better for Julia?

In the clip for this section, we see Ethan boring one of the party attendees (Kevin) with a story about how he works for the department of transportation.   Kevin is played by Greg Grunberg who also played Eric in J.J. Abram’s “Alias” television show. Greg and J.J. have been friends since kindergarten and has appeared in many projects which J.J. has been associated with.

One other parallel to “Alias” is that unlike Jason Bourne or James Bond, the theme of family is strong with Ethan hiding the fact that he is an agent from his fiancé and their friends. This was a common idea throughout “Alias”. In Bond and Bourne, there is almost no association with family.   When Bond marries Tracy, her father is well aware of who Bond is.

In Mission: Impossible III, Ethan leaves the party to meet up with Musgrave. Ethan gets his mission from a disposable camera. It is yet another unique way of having the mission defined for the team leader.  In Mission: Impossible (1), Jim Phelps gets his mission on the plane. In Mission: Impossible II, Ethan gets his mission in a pair of sunglasses which were a precursor to the Microsoft HoloLens.

Lindsey Farris is a young agent in the IMF who has been captured by Davian.   This scene is part of the extraction of Lindsey from where she was being held.   She is complaining about something that obviously is hurting her. Davian has injected an explosive device in her skull. This comes back into play toward the end of the movie when Davian does something similar to Ethan.   Just before this clip, Lindsey tries to warn Ethan about something.   We don’t find out what that was until a microdot she mailed him is evaluated later in the film.

This scene brings the extraction team together; Luther (Ving Rhames), Declan (Johnathan Rhys Meyers), and Zhen (Maggie Q) are all part of the extraction team.

It is yet another failed initial mission for Ethan in the series.   In Mission: Impossible (I), the mission to grab the NOC list from Golitsyn goes bad with agents dying.

This scene again focuses on Ethan’s deception to Julia about his job.   It ends with them getting married. It is very rare in spy films for agents to get married. It is even more rare for the starring agent to get married.   As mentioned earlier, James Bond marries Tracy and that’s about it. It is even more poignant later in the series with the film Mission: Impossible – Fallout when we see what has happened to Ethan and Julia’s relationship.

This scene shows the mission of breaking into the Vatican so that the team can kidnap Davian.   There are two stunts in the scene.   The first one has Ethan running up a wall. The second is the now-familiar falling-with-a-cable-attached-spreading-the-arms-and-just-missing-the-ground type of stunt.   This has happened in all of the first 3 Mission: Impossible films:   In the CIA vault in Mission: Impossible (I), the atrium dive in Mission: Impossible II, and now, here. In this author’s opinion, it was very cool in the CIA vault but is a tired stunt by now.

In the pre-title sequence of Goldeneye, James Bond bungee jumps off the Verzasca Dam, from a height of 220 meters.   He doesn’t end up doing the Ethan Hunt spread eagle pose, but he does jump off the wall of the dam and hurtles toward the bottom of the dam. You can see it here.

At the end of the scene, Ethan has his workman outfit pulled off his body, leaving him with a priests’ outfit. It had somewhat of the same feel as when James Bond steps out of his wetsuit in the pre-title sequence of Goldfinger.

There is a lengthy scene as the IMF team is in the Vatican to kidnap Davian. This clip shows the scene in the bathroom when the team grabs Davian.   Ethan is wearing a mask and is dressed as Davian. After they grab Davian, he has to speak into a device that lets Luther program Ethan’s voice to be that of Davian’s.

This scene shows both Ethan disguised as Davian as well as the actual Davian together.   In Mission: Impossible (I), the ending scene on the train has something similar, with Ethan portraying Jim Phelps and then Jim shows up.

Ethan needs to leave the Vatican with everyone thinking he is Davian. Ethan as Davian leaves with Zhen in the Lamborghini Gallardo. In the meantime, Declan lowers the real Davian into a sewer. Zhen stops the car over a sewer manhole and the team descends from the car into the sewer. Finally, Zhen blows up the Lamborghini Gallardo.

One thing can be said for spy movies: they like to destroy beautiful cars.

Villains being transported on a bridge and escaping while on the bridge is a common plot point in movies.   In License to Kill, the villain (Sanchez) is under arrest and being driven on 7 Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys (USA) when he escapes. In True Lies, the villains are also trying to escape while driving on 7 Mile Bridge.   Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Albert Gibson (Tom Arnold) are part of the team that destroys the bridge while capturing the villains.   In Mission: Impossible 3, it is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (Maryland, USA) that is used.   Davian’s team blows things up on the bridge and he makes his escape.

While Davian’s henchman kidnaps Julia, Ethan is arrested for the debacle at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and losing Davian.   This is reminiscent of M’s revoking James Bond’s licence to kill in the film with the same title. The bosses don’t like it when things go wrong and the spy needs to escape from people in his own organization.

Wearing a mask that is similar to the mask worn by Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, Ethan is able to escape and heads to Singapore at the guidance of Musgrave.

I guess if you have a mask that looks like that in a movie, your next move is to escape.

We’re now back at the scene that was used for the pre-title sequence.   We see that Julia wasn’t the person shot and Ethan goes looking for her.   Additional shots are added to the scene.  Like in all the Mission: Impossible movies, a mask was used to deceive the audience.  We thought we saw one thing at the beginning of the film but really saw something different. After this scene, Musgrave talks to Ethan and exposes that Musgrave is the bad guy in the IMF.

Mission: Impossible III was released in 2006.  Nine years later in the 2015 James Bond film Spectre, Q (Ben Whishaw) has a discussion with James Bond where he is worried about losing his job for helping Bond out. The dialog is very similar to how Benji is talking about losing his job with Ethan in this scene.  I had to listen to each scene again to make sure they weren’t word-for-word dialogue.

This is the climactic fight scene. There is a piece of the action that feels somewhat familiar. In the 1994 movie, Pulp Fiction Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) has overdosed on heroin.   Vincent Vega (John Travolta) slams a syringe of adrenaline into her chest.   Mia breathes loud and deep and sits up and gasps as she recovers. See it here.

In the 2006 film Casino Royale, James Bond (Daniel Craig) almost dies of poisoning, he has to stick a needle in his neck, passes out, his heart stops and he is revived by Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) with a defibrillator. See it here.

Finally, in Mission: Impossible III, also released in 2006, a portion of the fight scene includes a point where Ethan has to stop his heart so that he can disable the bomb planted in his brain.  Julia, conveniently a doctor, then uses a CPR to bring him back. She struggles to revive him and then slams her fist into his chest multiple times.   Ethan comes to with a gasp and sits upright, grabbing the gun.   So this scene is similar to the near-death scenes for 007 and Mia, but in this case, there was no antidote delivered by a needle, just CPR was needed.