(NOTE: The text of this post dates from 1998, and was moved from a board in the Sink on 10.29.06.)

Daniel Smith: I have watched Mission: Impossible (the new one with Tom Cruise) many times and have still not figured out everything. The guy who wrote something about Mission: Impossible on one of your pages helped to clear
up a few things, but I still have one main question. At the end of the movie when Ethan tells Phelps he has known about him since before they went to London because of the Bible, how did Ethan know that the Bible told him about Phelps? Thank you.

Phil: YIKES!It's been far too long since I've seen the movie. I do remember that there was some connection. Um something about the Bible coming from a hotel . . . Argh! Too long, too long! Anybody?

Phil, Perhaps he deciphered one of those wierd bible codes where every few letters theres a message. Theres a book on that subject called The Bible Code.

It has also been awhile since I saw the film. As I recall, the bible in question came from the Drake Hotel, and Phelps had stayed at the Drake.

The Drake in Chicago...I drive past it all the time going downtown...didn't jump up and cheer when I saw it in the theater, but almost did!

I suspect the problem would be that Phelps had a stolen Bible. Anybody who would steal a Bible has some kind of problem, or so it seems to me. Or at least a really weird sense of humor.

Well, everyone seems to have forgotten that, as revealed in Unusual Suspects, all
those Gideon Bibles in the hotel rooms are bugged

In the beginning of the movie, before the "job" that goes bad, the whole team are joking around at the safe house, and someone (Cruise?) asks Phelps where the IMF put him up in Chicago. "The Drake," he says, and the team all make "oooh!" noises.
Later, Ethan finds the Bible from the Drake (it's stamped inside the cover) and puts the appropriate 2 together with the other 2 to make the requisite 4.

Yes, but what's never explained is why on Earth Phelps would take the Gideon Bible from Chicago to Prague! As Max said, Job (Phelps) was not given to quoting Scripture in his communications... so why would he take it?

To move the plot forward!:)

CPD!

Convinient Plot Device!

Well, it's good reading, for one thing. It's a long flight from Chicago to Prague.

Amen to that. Also, as I recall, in an interview some years ago on NPR a spokesman for the Gideon Society said it wasn't really stealing to take a Gideon Bible. The idea is for the Bible to have as wide an exposure to the public as possible. If you are tempted to take one do so and when you are done just leave it in some public area for someone else to read.