Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - Official Trailer

The official trailer for Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol arrived in 2011 and announced the franchise's transformation into a genuine global blockbuster phenomenon with a visual invention and comic energy that perfectly captures the film's more purely entertaining register. The trailer's central selling point is apparent from the outset: the Burj Khalifa sequence, shown with enough visual clarity to convey its physical ambition and dramatic consequence, is the trailer's most audacious image and one of the most effective pieces of action movie marketing from its era. It is a trailer that understood the film's essential appeal and presented it with a directness and visual energy that made Ghost Protocol one of the most anticipated action films of its year.

First Impressions

The trailer is immediately the franchise's most visually ambitious, with the Burj Khalifa sequence and the ensemble's collective chemistry conveying the film's more purely entertaining register with real force. The disavowal premise is laid out with enough dramatic logic to establish the film's central engine, and the trailer identifies the Burj Khalifa sequence and the ensemble's comic energy as the elements that give the film its primary selling points. Pegg's Benji is introduced with enough wit to establish his elevation to field agent status as the film's most significant character development, and the trailer is right to give him considerable space.

What the Trailer Reveals

The trailer establishes the disavowal premise, conveys the nuclear threat, and glimpses the Burj Khalifa sequence with enough detail to establish the film's practical filmmaking ambitions. The ensemble's collective chemistry is shown with enough warmth and comic energy to establish the film's most significant creative achievement, and the trailer identifies the Burj Khalifa sequence as the film's most spectacular and most defining individual achievement. The footage makes clear that Bird has brought an animator's instinct for physical comedy and spatial clarity to the franchise, and the results are immediately distinctive.

Music and Sound

Michael Giacchino's score, building on the established themes with a propulsive energy and wit that suits the film's more overtly entertaining register, gives the trailer a sonic energy that captures the franchise's creative evolution with real precision. The sound design on the Burj Khalifa sequence is the trailer's most viscerally effective element, conveying the physical scale and genuine danger of the sequence with a directness that makes the spectacle feel thrilling rather than merely impressive.

Most Memorable Moment

The Burj Khalifa sequence, shown with enough visual clarity to convey its physical ambition and dramatic consequence, is the trailer's defining image: a demonstration of practical filmmaking of such spatial intelligence that it establishes the film's action credentials as something new in the franchise's history. Cruise is hanging off the world's tallest building with nothing but a pair of sticky gloves. The trailer makes that feel entirely reasonable.

Trailer Verdict

A visually inventive and entertaining trailer for the franchise's most purely enjoyable entry. Ghost Protocol transformed the franchise into a genuine global blockbuster phenomenon, and this trailer captures that transformation with a visual invention and comic energy that makes it one of the most effective pieces of franchise marketing from its era. Bird understood something about this material that no previous director had quite grasped: it works best when it knows how to laugh at itself.

The Mission: Impossible Series