Reflections on life, meaning and purpose

Ethan Hunt’s Second Act and Tom Cruise’s Third: The Unending Impossible Mission…

If there’s a “before” and “after” in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, an obvious dividing point is the Burj Khalifa. This now-iconic sequence in the fourth film, 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” revolutionized the series around spectacular set pieces centered on Cruise actually performing jaw-dropping, death-defying practical stunts on location. By contrast, in 2006’s “Mission: Impossible III,” when Ethan Hunt needed to access the roof of a heavily guarded Shanghai skyscraper, while Cruise really did the swing and the wirework the stunt called for, he did it on a stage with green screens…