Classic Marketing: How the trailer for Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible invented the modern movie tease, for better or worse.

If you were old enough (or young enough) to care back in February or March 1996, you probably thought this was the greatest trailer you had ever seen.  And in a certain sense, you were right.  For better or worse, this trailer for Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible basically redefined the modern movie trailer.  While Batman (1989) was the first major trailer to have no narration or voice over of any kind, the M:I trailer played a different game.  It was arguably the first trailer to move so quickly that you could barely digest the images.  It had plenty of dialogue and plot teases, most of it supplied by an gloriously cryptic Henry Czerny, but the would-be exposition vague enough to not qualify as a spoiler.  On the other hand, it has explicit misdirection, falsely setting up Emmanuelle Béart as a damsel-in-distress while using a sex scene between her and Tom Cruise that wasn't even in the final cut of the film.  But its core contribution to modern film-trailer construction was the sheer speed and intensity of its action montage.  Obviously set to Lalo Schifrin's classic theme (well, maybe not so obviously...), the final rip-roaring 90 seconds arguably redefined how high-energy a trailer could be.

Ironically, it now exists as a classic example of both misdirection and spoiler-by-insinuation.  If you actually pay attention to the trailer, you'll see pretty much every major action moment in the film, which in turn makes the film appear to be far more action-drenched than it actually is.  That final shot of Cruise leaping from the exploding helicopter was the best money shot in a trailer I had ever seen.  But upon seeing the film, my heart sank as I realized that golden money shot was actually the climactic death of the primary villain.  The film spoils pretty much every action moment in the film, while actually spoiling quite a bit of the narrative.  If you pay attention, you'll see shots of Jon Voight in costumes different from the clothes he dies in, and at 0:59, there is a clear shot of Voight fighting with Cruise.  You get at least one image of Jean Reno angrily flying a helicopter, as well as an extended shot from the epilogue with Czerny confronting Vanessa Redgrave on a train.  The only thing the movie doesn't hint at is the stabbing death of Kristen Scott Thomas and the somewhat surprising reveal of her murderer.  Other than that, if you pay attention to the lightning-fast images, you'll have a pretty good idea of how the movie will unfold, plot twists and all.  Of course, the trailer to Mission: Impossible was a trailer designed to be seen a few times in a theater, but it was also tailor-made for the Internet, which was in its mainstream infancy.  It was just the sort of trailer that was actually worth downloading and enjoying of its own accord.  For better or worse, the trailer to Mission: Impossible was groundbreaking both in its construction and its existence as a stand-alone piece of art.

Scott Mendelson