Some of the big blows in the television series “Mission: Impossible”, which take place for seven seasons from 1966 to 1973, are present not only in the 1996 film but also its consequences. The two have a version of the IMF which performs difficult missions that force people to fulfill different roles, such as the manager, the technological expert, etc. Said missions are also presented by an off-screen voice that ends by saying that the message is self-destroy in a few seconds. But while the television show “Mission: Impossible” had key agents (played by actors like Martin Landau, Leonard Nimoy and Lesley Ann Warren), he did not present Ethan Hunt, who was created for the films.

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Another critical similarity between the two is Jim Phelps, played in the show by Peter Graves and the 1996 film by Jon Voight. In the show, Jim was the reliable leader of the IMF starting in the second season of the show (and continuing in the renewal, which was broadcast from 1988 to 1990). But in the film by De Palma, the whole Jim IMF team is killed in the first act, with the exception of Ethan. At the end, we learn that Jims really organized the massacre. As shocking as it was for the public, he was almost exasperated for the distribution of the television series.

At the time, Grave just noticed: “I’m sorry they chose to call it Phelps” (via The guardian). He (reasonably) added that the premise of the film could have been exactly the same without calling the character of Voight Jim Phelps:

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“They could have resolved this very easily by keeping me in a scene at the very beginning, or by reading a telegram of me saying:” Hey boys, I retired, went to Hawaii. “”

Greg Morris, who played one of the program’s technological experts, had an even more severe evaluation. When he died only a few months after the film was released in August 1996, the Los Angeles Times reported that he had released 40 minutes after the screening of De Palma’s film (declaring that it is “abomination”).

Talk to MTV News In 2009, Landau also rejected the idea of ​​resuming his character from the television show, Rollin Hand, in the films “Mission: Impossible”. He also noted that an earlier version of the 1996 film script went further than the possible film, explaining: “They wanted the whole team to be destroyed, eliminated with one at a time, and I was against it.” Perhaps the only key difference in the finished film is that the other Ethan IMF agents do not share the names of the characters in the television series.