Mission Impossible: The Ilsa Faust Paradox

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One is another worthy addition to this beloved franchise. After top-tier Tom Cruise / Christopher McQuarrie action in Rogue Nation and Fallout, Team IMF have returned to fight... an AI?! But thats not the strangest thing to happen in the movie. For me, the handling of one of my favourite characters in Ilsa Faust was more than a little disappointing... in spite of some of the best set pieces the series has to offer!

Join me as I break down what I loved about Dead Reckoning and the one thing I did not...

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[sptfr]

Luther correcting Grace's "I'm the reason she's dead" with "No, she's the reason you're still alive" really sealed my theory that Ilsa's still alive somehow.

[hershin]

Ilsa's death really confused and frustrated me to the point where I actually felt less invested in the movie after that point. The addition of Grace feels like a blatant swap for Ilsa which really does injustice to Ilsa's character development over the last 8 years. I'm still hoping that they've tricked us and she's still alive but my gut tells me that she's really gone. Very perplexing end to the second best character of the franchise.

[CH-zcqx]

Honestly, I think she might be alive, and this might just be a ruse to get her underground in order to evade the Entity and Gabriel. The way she died was too unceremonious. Why spent 2 movies developing Ilsa and her relationship with Ethan only to kill her off in such an underwhelming way? The team didn't even mourn her. Ethan didn't seem all that cut up. Fall Out made it clear that Ilsa and Julia are the two most important women in Ethan's life. If they'd indeed planned to kill Ilsa for real, McQ is more than capable of giving her a glorious exit and proper sendoff. Out of the main 4, only she is McQ's brainchild and Ilsa remains one of the fan favorites. It seems wildly out of character for McQ to fridge such an important character.

[pamelahermano]

Ilsa’s death jerked me right out of that film. Not because they killed off a beloved character, but because she was killed in such a meh way. First of all, the series established what a skilled and resourceful agent she was, yet she lost a sword fight when she was the only one with a sword? There was no mention of her anymore outside of Luther’s little talk with Grace. And the worst part was that I felt they just got rid of Rebecca Ferguson simply because they didn’t want two female leads and so they replaced her with Hayley Atwell. What a terrible send off for one of the best characters in this series.

[henchi]

after Ilsa died i just couldn't pay much attention to the rest of the movie. I just wanted to get on phone and check if she's really dead. she was such a great addition to the team, able to carry her weight and had a great action sequences. hope she's really not dead.

[wiggywan]

SPOILERS: Just saw it for a second time. There is a lot of groundwork laid to set up that Ilsa is not dead. Specifically the quick focus on the knife that Ilsa grabs just before it is used to stab her.
Also, Ethan says he cannot accept any of the team being sacrificed. That's when Luther says Ethan needs to think like a cold calculating computer. He knows based on the airport scene that the Entity knows his friends are most important to him. Then Ilsa points out how Gabriel will kill the people close to Ethan. And he says, it's not the killing he likes, but the suffering he creates. So, knowing this, I think the team has accounted for this. I don't know how, or why yet, but I don't see her being dead. Also, it's unclear as of yet, but I have zero doubts Benji sabotaged the mask machine.
Cannot wait to see how it turns out and Kitrich gets screwed!

Edit: One final point...why would Ethan's last words to Ilsa be: "Run, far as you can."??

[pranavnnair]

I was honestly surprised that Benji wasn't the one who was killed. In the airport scene, where Benji was solving the riddles, he was asked about his fear of death which felt like a clear foreshadowing of his death to me. Then towards the second half of the movie, when their comms stop working and Benji goes out on the boat looking for Ethan, it seemed like the perfect setup for his death. It makes sense: you take away the guy in the chair's ability to communicate and bring him out in the field to fight the bad guy hand to hand which is his clear weakness and take him out of the equation. But instead, they chose to kill Ilsa in the lamest way possible by some random character tied to Ethan's past that we just now learn about after 7 movies. This may sound harsh but killing Benji felt like the logical step in the franchise. He was easily the most light-hearted character in the franchise and his death would have made the movie a lot darker in tone and raised the stakes. Furthermore, The IMF team already has Luther who functions as the brains and can be the guy in the chair for Ethan so it wouldn't feel like we have a big chunk of the puzzle missing when it comes to the overall team.

[sirenlyfox]

I don't think she's dead. After the airport scene, when Ethan realized he was dealing not only with the AI entity but also Gabriel and various agencies trying to kill him, he decided to disappear Ilsa permanently, and that's why they were both acting so weird in Venice. In MI3, when Lindsey died, Ethan held her corpse, but felt absolutely nothing about Ilsa's death? Yeah, I'm not buying it. And this wouldn't be the first time he disappeared a woman he loves. Also, Gabriel has already murdered someone Ethan cared for, and that explains why Ethan came so close to killing him on the train.

[HeavyMetalSonicRM]

Imagine the theater blowing up with cheers when Ilsa is revealed in part two. She'll probably save Grace's life out of nowhere.

[WastedPo]

Your conflict about Dead Reckoning perfectly articulates my response to the movie. The way that Ilsa was written out annoyed me in a way that no other Mission Impossible movie has, and it detracted from the overall experience. (I still recognize it was a very well-crafted movie, don't get me wrong.) It wouldn't have been as disappointing if the movie had at least let her go out like a badass. But her death felt meaningless. She (apparently) couldn't even fight off one guy (a guy who finds it necessary to travel with his own hitwoman). And then when she was gone, the amount of respect the movie paid her was on par with the acknowledgment given over the death of a minor character (like Alec Baldwin in MI6), not the death of someone who has become a central character.

It was also pretty blatant that she was being replaced merely because they wanted to introduce a new female lead. Even though Ilsa felt fully fleshed-out in the previous movies, here, it's like McQuarrie only saw her as a romantic partner to Ethan. And since Grace was being introduced, I guess Ilsa was completely disposable. It's strange too, because McQuarrie did such a good job writing for Ilsa (and even Julia) in past movies. Also weird was how the bad guy gave Ethan a choice between the two ladies, and Ethan acted like Grace was the most important person ever. It was like we as the audience were supposed to care as much about Grace, even though we barely knew her.

I know some would scoff that it's silly to care about writing or characters in an action movie, but the writing and characters are a big reason why I like Mission Impossible. If I just wanted mindless action, I'd watch a Steven Seagal movie.

[danieltravelstead]

I’m 95% sure after watching it again today, they didn’t kill her off. It was only meant to look that way so that Hayley Atwells character would do the pickpocket job on the train and have an agent that the entity no longer knows about so it won’t be able to predict when she shows up again in the next movie. He says to her in the beginning of the movie, “you’re dead. Stay that way”. It’s meant to throw us off at the time that he’s talking about the governments tracking her down but he’s talking about the entity cause it could even find her in that remote desert but not if it thinks she’s dead.

Next, the scene before the party, Luther talks about playing 4D chess with the entity. And Ethan doesn’t want to bring everyone along cause he knows the entity will use his friends against him.

They also talk in the same scene specifically about the entity intercepting digital equipment and changing voices right before that scene as well. Which is how the bounty hunters found Ilsa.

At the party, when Gabriel says Grace or her have to die before tomorrow for the key to wind up in his hands, the camera does a close up on Ilsa and she does a brief smile.

When Luther is talking, Grace after Ilsa dies says
“She died because of me.” And then Luther replies
“No, you’re alive because of her”.

LASTLY AND MOST IMPORTANTLY the shot immediately after she dies back at the safe house we see Benji walking away from ANALOG equipment that we never see them use! There’s an old headset there and bunch of dials on an old timey radio. So that is like pretty much a confirmation that Ethan wasn’t actually tricked by the Entity based on the conversation they have right before and that shot right after. If they have analog equipment, thered be no reason why Ethan wouldn’t be expecting him to be mislead on comms.

All of this makes me almost positive that she’ll turn up in the next movie since MI is practically known for fakeouts and it’s a clever way to write her off till they need her so Rebecca Ferguson can focus on other projects.

[ProjectPxP]

Ilsa is still alive. Remember, Luther was out of the picture at the last act of the film?

She is with Luther. They are going to have a separate task in part 2.

I think.

[avantegarde]

The treatment of Ilsa's character, in this film, is insulting, and totally undoes the strength of her character. The comments made about her, by Ethan's boss, were not even challenged by Hunt. Pisses me off. She deserved so much better.

[matthewpelletier]

I was worried for most of the movie leading up to her fight with Gabriel and I literally grabbed my skull and yelled 'No!' when she died. I also sat through the entire credits hoping for a stinger where it shows her not being dead, I was disappointed. If Grace is slotted in as a romantic partner for Ethan in part 2, I will not be happy.

[E_T_]

The fight on the bridge & Ilsa's fate really struck me by surprise.
Not only did the choreography feel disconnected & not as thrilling as MI normally, but realistically Isla's range advantage (sword) should've been Gabriel's death sentence (knives).

[ThousanWhite]

I'm not ready to lay into the movie too much about Ilsa Faust's fate until after I've seen part 2. There's still too much that we don't know...

[lhazarus]

I do agree that Ilsa's death felt somewhat forced. This idea that it was caused just so that Ethan would be pushed to kill Gabriel and cut the info trail to the sub also felt unwarranted. However, I understand that her and Ethan are forces to be reckoned with to a point where the IMF maybe needed to be nerfed. All in all, she was one of if not my favourite character of the franchise and it is a shame that she was let go in such a way.

[QwkDrw]

I fully believe that Ilsa is still alive and I think there are several clues that point to this. Her first scene was her and Ethan faking her death. Later in the group meeting they talked about needing to think like an AI in order to outsmart it but they don't tell us the plan. Then after it was revealed that one of the girls needs to die, Ilsa and Ethan exchange a look and she smiles. Also Ilsa "dies" on a bridge which could be a reference to Jon Voight faking his death on bridge in the first film. Now that the entity thinks Ilsa dead she can more effectively help Ethan work against it.

[jefcaine]

I couldn’t agree more. Ilsa was by far my favorite character and it did feel kind of gross the way the movie decided to “swap her out” for someone else.

[truefilm]

Rebecca Ferguson is the definition of class. Hayley Atwell as Grace is great and perfectly cast, but Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa not only out-classes her, but she has much more depth and you believe that she has her heart in it.