Michael Giacchino: Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol

Making the impossible possible, Michael Giacchino's spy score pays its dues to the original Mission: Impossible.

Michael Giacchino has rapidly become one of the most important composers working in movies today. A strong argument for his constant success is most definitely his versatility - he's gone from the sentimentality of Pixar's Up (which earned him an Academy Award) to the bursting energy and action of the new Star Trek movies. Well, no prizes for guessing which camp Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol falls into…

The Tom Cruise spy epic sees director Brad Bird returning to the director's chair, but the music is all about Gioacchino and another great composer, Lalo Schifrin. Importantly, he subtly weaves Schifrin's original Mission: Impossible music throughout the whole of Ghost Protocol, as if it's a continual reference point to the series' legacy. And somehow managing to balance that influence with plenty of his own energetic material is quite a feat.