Mission Impossible confusion

Aside from the fact that the Tom Cruise movie franchise should probably be renamed “Mission Quite Likely To Succeed” given its track record, the series might have to rebrand a bit more drastically in future. So far we’ve had:

• MI1: Best suspense scene in a Hollywood movie, marred slightly by the fact Tom Cruise later performed an Internet search for “Job” which returned just three hits. Oh, and the last five minutes sucked.
• MI2: Terrible film. John Woo tried to make girly-haired Cruise look good, but the slow motion pigeons upstaged him. Only notable for the front-wheelie-spin-shoot combo. Even Thandie Newton couldn’t give the film a pulse.
• MI3: Easily the best of the lot, but then it was almost a foregone conclusion given that it had JJ Abrams at the helm and Philip Seymour Hoffman being crazy-badass.
• MI4: Good premise and well executed. Nice to see Simon Pegg expand his role as the comic sidekick.

The next two instalments, however might run into search engine problems, given that MI5 and MI6 are branches of the UK “intelligence” service. Maybe the ‘MI’ already stands for Mission Impossible, in which case there won’t be much of a problem for anyone except those thinking of applying for a job in British intelligence who find themselves on a movie set instead.

To avoid confusion, I suggest basing the next two movies on the respective intelligence services, making them documentary-stylie.

• MI5: Could be about how to stage a false flag bombing operation using four innocent Muslims and a Brazilian who can be conveniently shot seven times in the head by police the day after.
• MI6: Revolves around one of the world’s greatest codebreakers cleaning his flat spotlessly, resetting his phone to factory defaults, climbing naked inside a duffel bag in his bathtub, zipping himself into it and padlocking it shut from the outside.

Both yarns should keep Cruise and co flummoxed for a couple of hours at least. Bring on the popcorn.