Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol's Original Ending Would Have Changed Everything

"Mission: Impossible" seems to reach new heights — literally — with each new installment. The franchise kicked off with director Brian de Palma at the helm in 1996, and nearly three decades later, series headliner Tom Cruise is still saving the day as Ethan Hunt. It's hard to separate Cruise from "Mission," a series he's been producing since the first installment, and it'd be even harder to imagine the Impossible Mission Force without the maverick creative. However, if things had gone as planned, Cruise wouldn't have been the one fighting on a train or hanging off planes — he'd have been the one calling the shots.

While appearing on the podcast "Light the Fuse," "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" cinematographer Robert Elswit dropped a major bombshell: Hunt was supposed to retire as an agent, kind of. "The original version of this movie was, at the end of it, Tom Cruise stops being Ethan Hunt the agent and becomes Ethan Hunt the secretary," Elswit revealed. The Oscar-winning cinematographer continued by discussing how the original version of "Ghost Protocol" would have featured another IMF mission unit being put together. This would have led to "a new agent [taking] over the franchise," with Elswit implying that the series would have then rested on Jeremy Renner's shoulders. "Which I think seemed kind of nutty, but that was kind of the marching orders," Elswit added.

Following the release of "Mission: Impossible III," Tom Cruise's clout as Hollywood royalty was dropping, no thanks to his trampoline-like treatment of Oprah's sofa. Paramount was clearly interested in getting rid of Cruise, especially with his reputation in decline, and the studio made its split with the "Magnolia" actor formal in 2006, with Viacom chairman Sumner M. Redstone telling The Wall Street Journal that the actor's "recent conduct [had] not been acceptable to Paramount."

Of course, "Ghost Protocol" entered production in 2010, reuniting the actor and studio. A year earlier, The Hollywood Reporter had suggested that "Mission: Impossible III" director J.J. Abrams and Cruise were figuring out how to hand the franchise over to a younger lead or an ensemble. Then, in 2010, THR posited that Jeremy Renner was the candidate Cruise had in mind.

The rumor mill at the time was churning with the possibility of Renner spearheading the "Mission" franchise, but that never happened. Why? Robert Elswit says that we have franchise steward Christopher McQuarrie to thank. McQuarrie was brought on board to rewrite "Ghost Protocol," a decision that changed the franchise's direction.

"Chris came in, and he rewrote it, the last half, maybe more, and made it so that we had to change a few things that we shot at the beginning, like add lines, reshoot little pieces so that it all made sense," Elswit told "Light the Fuse." "He tied the whole thing together and made it so that at the end of the movie, Tom ends up not becoming the secretary but just goes on in his own lonely way."