Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible spawned one of the most successful film franchises of all time, and the first picture now feels like it belongs in a different time and place than the sequels. With all of its cool behind-the-scenes information and famous action set pieces that actor Tom Cruise struggled to pull off, the first Mission: Impossible is one of the most impactful spy movies ever. It appears that some recommendations from De Palma's buddy George Lucas affected Tom Cruise's first Mission: Impossible.

According to De Palma, “When George saw Mission: Impossible you know he said, ‘There’s no setup to this thing. You’ve gotta set this thing up! You’re gonna do this, you’re gonna do that, you gotta have that scene where they’re all sitting around the table and everybody gets their instructions about what’s gonna happen. In the beginning we had this very strange scene – it’s hard for me to remember now – with [Jon] Voight and somehow the jealous thing with the wife and Tom, and then we got into the first mission. And when George saw the movie it’s the first thing he said, ‘What are these people doing? This is Mission: Impossible, it’s a group of guys going to do something! So you’ve gotta get them all around a table and tell the audience what they’re supposed to do,’ and that’s what we did. We went back and reshot it. So that’s an example of us helping each other.”