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Well, you think about it, Ethan, it was inevitable. No more Cold War. No more secrets you keep from yourself. Answer to no one but yourself. Then, you wake up one morning and find out the President is running the country without your permission. The son of a bitch, how dare he. Then you realize, it's over. You are an obsolete piece of hardware, not worth upgrading, you got a lousy marriage, and 62 grand a year.
~ Phelps, trying to frame Kittridge as the mole, using his own motivation.

James "Jim" Phelps is the main antagonist of the 1996 film, Mission: Impossible. He is the original head of the IMF and the former mentor-turned-archenemy of Ethan Hunt, who became a mole selling top secret IMF information.

He was portrayed by Jon Voight, who also played Oscar Manheim in Runaway Train, Paul Serone in Anaconda, Mr. Sir in Holes, Thomas Reynolds in Enemy of the State, and Mickey Donovan in Ray Donovan.

Biography[]

By 1996, Phelps has become disillusioned as he believes he is no longer necessary, despite having served his country for over four decades. By this time, he has married a much younger woman named Claire, and has been given an entirely new team.

Finally snapping, Phelps convinces Claire to go along with his plan to sell sensitive IMF information to an arms dealer, Max Mitsopolis, for a large sum of money. He is almost caught, but manages to kill off his team during a Prague mission to stop the theft of a non-official cover (NOC) list of the IMF (which is later revealed to be a mole hunt) and frame rookie team member Ethan Hunt, who looks up to Phelps as a father figure.

For the job, Phelps hires disavowed IMF pilot Franz Krieger to help carry out the murders. In the end, Phelps, Claire, and Krieger successfully kill off three of their teammates as well as their target. During this, Phelps manages to fake his own death by getting shot and falling off a bridge.

Phelps then has Claire return to use her charms on Ethan, who has been successfully framed for the murders, as well as being the mole. Ethan concocts a plan to avenge the rest of the team and clear his own name by catching the real mole and stopping him, as well as Max. As the NOC list the team recovered in Prague was a fake, Hunt decides to steal the real list in order to draw the mole out of hiding. After making a deal with Max in exchange for some money, Ethan hires a couple disavowed agents for his mission. He chooses computer expert Luther Stickell, while Claire "suggests" Krieger.

After Ethan's plan succeeds, the IMF has his family framed for drug trafficking. After Hunt uses a payphone to alert the IMF of where he is (London), Phelps reveals himself to Ethan, claiming he survived getting shot. He then names IMF Director Kittridge as the mole. However, Phelps had underestimated Ethan, who is able to quickly determine that Phelps himself is the mole, and that he hired Krieger to pull off the murders, though he remains unsure if Claire was involved. When Hunt asks why "Kittridge" would do such a thing, Phelps uses his own reason: that he had believed he was becoming "a worthless piece of hardware not worth upgrading" due to the end of the Cold War. Hunt returns to the hotel his team is using for a temporary base of operations and, clearly distressed over what he has learned, lets Claire seduce him.

The next day, aboard a high-speed train, Phelps, realizing Ethan likely figured him out, hides as he watches Hunt reveal that Claire was in fact in on the treason. By this time, Hunt has given Max the real NOC list and is having Stickell use a jamming device to prevent Max from uploading it.

Phelps takes the money from Ethan, but Ethan gives Jim one last thing, he takes out his glasses, as Jim gets confused and gets a closer look, but turns out Ethan had Jim on a live camera in front of their boss Kittridge, as he sees him still alive and heard his cruel actions. Exposing Jim who is the mole the whole time. Shocked and enraged that Ethan ruined his plans, Ethan tells him it’s over and throws the glasses at him.

Claire tries to prevent Phelps from killing Hunt, causing Phelps to kill her instead. Ethan attacks him but Jim manages to knock down Ethan for a few seconds and cowardly flees. An enraged Ethan then gives chase to Phelps, who is using suction cups to make his way along the top of the train to the end, where Krieger is flying a helicopter to make their escape.

During the fight, Ethan manages to hook the tether of the helicopter to the train, forcing Krieger to pilot the copter into the Channel tunnel. After freeing the tether, Phelps motions for Krieger to simply pick him up with the bottom of the copter. However, Ethan hops onto the copter as well, and plants a piece of exploding chewing gum (a relic of the Prague mission) onto the copter, before jumping back onto the train. The gum causing an explosion which kills Krieger, and causes the copter to fall onto Phelps, crushing and blow up him.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • Some fans and many cast members of the Mission: Impossible television series were upset when they learned that Phelps would become an irredeemable antagonist in the 1996 film. Because of this, Peter Graves, who portrayed Phelps in the original series, turned down the chance to play Phelps in the film. In addition, Greg Morris, who played Barney Collier, was so disgusted that he left the theater before the film's end. Therefore, most of the show's fans considered the film series to be non-canon with the television series.
  • There are some elements that foreshadow Phelps being the mole early on in the film:
    • In the elevator scene, Jack can't open the doors but Phelps was able to stop the elevator as he has control of it from the hotel room. Later, when the elevator activates and Jack dies, Phelps mentions that he cannot stop the elevator because of a system lockout, but the computer is not shown during this scene, revealing that Phelps lied and intentionally killed Jack.
    • Phelps is in the Drake hotel during the mission. The Bible that Ethan would later acquire was from the Drake Hotel, linking Phelps as "Job".
    • If you look at the camera, the assailant's gun arm is crooked so that the gun faces Jim's camera. It's impossible for an assailant to sneak up on a veteran agent like that as an assailant would likely attack from a long distance or from behind. This foreshadows that Phelps faked his death.
    • Also, Jim was said to have fallen into the river, yet when Ethan arrives, seconds later, Jim is nowhere to be seen. This hints that Phelps faked his death to avoid being exposed as a mole. No assailant would be able to escape that quickly had Phelps actually got killed.

Navigation[]

           MissionImposibbleTitle Villains

Mission: Impossible (TV series)
Helmut Kellerman

Mission: Impossible (film)
Jim Phelps | Franz Krieger | Max Mitsopolis | Claire Phelps | Matthias

Mission: Impossible 2
Sean Ambrose | Hugh Stamp | John C. McCloy | Wallis | Ulrich | Michael | Simon

Mission: Impossible III
Owen Davian | John Musgrave | Brownway | Kimbrough

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Kurt Hendricks | Marius Wistrom | Sabine Moreau | Brij Nath

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
The Syndicate
Solomon Lane | Janik Vinter | Kagan | Saif | Richter

Other
Atlee

Mission: Impossible – Fallout
The Apostles
Solomon Lane | John Lark | Nils Debruuk

Other
White Widow | Zola Mitsopolis

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
The Entity | Gabriel | Paris | White Widow | Zola Mitsopolis | Grace | The Buyer | Denlinger

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