If Peter Graves was genuinely that upset at the Mission: Impossible movie, I think he had some serious emotional problems that stretched far, far beyond a character he played turning evil.

Leonard Nimoy talked ages back about Graves ringing him in tears about what they had done to his character. And while I get what you're saying, remember he'd played the character in two successful series of MI, and to some degree it was his signature character.

Worth noting also that Graves had been losing the plot for years. I remember the story from the set of the second MI series of him walking around and around a car for nearly half an hour, trying to figure out how to get into it. He'd forgotten how the doors opened. Which is both funny and absolutely heartbreakingly horrible. But even in that state, he always knew his lines and could play the part.

As a Mission Impossible fan, I thought the move was an astonishingly fucked thing to do in an already misguided film. It really was pissweak writers trying to come up with a clever twist, so they went for something completely out of character that made no sense and was the final insult to fans of the original.

I didn't know Graves had been losing it a bit over the years, I just heard the bit about him crying about what they did to Phelps.

I didn't mind it in the movie. I thought it worked fine, made sense within the context of the film and was pretty darned enjoyable all round.

Mission Impossible II on the other hand...