marbleglove | Plot-bunny: Highlander (inspired by Mission: Impossible)

Despite my deep Tom Cruise reservations, I went to see Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and was pleasantly surprised.

Since the following discussion is vaguely (although not really) spoiler-y, I'm putting it under a cut tag.

I could actually track the plot (more or less), which was a major improvement over the previous movies in the series. The characters were actually appealing and bringing Simon Pegg in was an excellent decision on someone's part. Most of my issues with the plot line had to do with the physics of certain scenarios and the fact that I'm not sure when and where Ethan Hunt had any time to shower between when he was escaping a Russian prison through the sewer system and when he was infiltrating various high security situations, but surely there was a lost opportunity for product placement of handiwipes or something.

Anyway, there was one line in it that reminded me of a thought I'd had previously regarding Highlander.

One of the characters, Brandt, is an analyst who, it turns out, is also an expert at hand-to-hand combat.

Ethan Hunt confronts him regarding this, saying more or less, "How does an analyst get skills like that?"

Brandt explains that he had a traumatic mission a while back and refused further assignment into the field. So now he's reserved for a desk job and whatnot.

But I had thought, a while back, what about those people who are expert at multiple things, but can only do one thing at a time?

Say you have a Highlander style immortal who is ridiculously experienced and has expertize in practically everything. He's an expert fighter because he's survived The Game for the last many centuries/millenium, he's an expert manipulator because he's survived changing identities for the last whatnot, too. He has the knowledge and experience to be an expert analyst at the same time as he has the skills and abilities to be an expert field agent. But he can't be both at the same time.

I asked one of my friends, some time ago, if during some science fiction war, he had a choice between:
a) acting alone as a single hero, risking everything, and personally saving a thousand people,
b) leading a small group of individuals working together on missions, sharing the risks and protections, and saving a million people or
c) leading the whole war effort from a place in command behind the front lines, and saving everyone
which would he do?

He said (a). Even if he could accomplish much more by staying distant and doing the analysis and sending other people to fight and die in his stead, he couldn't do that.

So I kind of want a story that looks at the type of person who chooses choice (c).

Consider the immortal who can do anything better than anyone else, but he can't do everything better than everyone else. So here's an analyst who is brilliant at being an analyst and would be brilliant as a field operative, but if he were to go out into the field then he wouldn't be available to analyze the incoming data about the changing situation.

And there's probably a great deal of tension around some missions that go FUBAR because if this guy had gone, he could have done it perfectly, but it was still better for the war effort to let others fight and fail and die on their specific missions rather than have more people fight and fail and die on missions that were less important and less successful because they were strategized by someone else.

I'm thinking this is probably an alien invasion plot in which Duncan makes choice (b) and becomes a military hero, while Methos makes choice (c) and wins the war despite being thought a coward. And maybe, (because I love Methos and it's always so much fun to have people suddenly realize their errors in judgment) there's one final mission that's needed to stop the alien mothership and Methos finally joins the front lines and demonstrates his BAMF qualities.

Of course, if I wind up writing this, it will probably be told entirely in flashback and character dialogue, but I would love someone who is better at action writing to do something fun with this plot-bunny.