Rewatching all the Mission Impossible movies. IMHO, an underrated series.
Some have criticized the lack of flashbacks and backstory. The most you get about his past is a detail in MI3 that he, like his fiancé, lost his parents some time ago. Films obsess over those details, draw them like spaghetti, and stuff them into every filler moment in between action scenes. As if we need to meet the first girl Hunt kissed, his childhood doll or his childhood bully in order to understand him. I'm glad we didn't. Films have a bad habit of overexplaining characters in dull predictable terms (family, status, childhood).
It's not that people don't have such backstories. But the backstory is infinitely more complex than any film could capture, so the angle tends to feel forced.
So I respect MI's choice not to dig into Hunt's life. The closest you get to insights in Hunt's personal values is IMF's Secretary telling him, "some flaw deep in your core being simply won’t allow you to choose between one life and millions." And really, it's more honest to appeal to the mystery of what beats a person's drumbeat. Philosopher Robert Kane suggests that each act of free will is an experiment: I don't know what will come of this decision, but here I go, I have set my course, let's see what happens. It's your task to see it through, "should you choose to accept it."
So I respect MI's choice not to dig into Hunt's life. The closest you get to insights in Hunt's personal values is IMF's Secretary telling him, "some flaw deep in your core being simply won’t allow you to choose between one life and millions." And really, it's more honest to appeal to the mystery of what beats a person's drumbeat. Philosopher Robert Kane suggests that each act of free will is an experiment: I don't know what will come of this decision, but here I go, I have set my course, let's see what happens. It's your task to see it through, "should you choose to accept it."
