How does a relic from the 1960s become one of America’s biggest blockbuster franchises? Frankly, it still boggles my mind to see what Mission: Impossible has become given its obscure origins. Originally a product of the Cold War, Mission: Impossible was a TV show following the Impossible Mission Agency (IMF) as it tackled espionage operations across the world. I’ve never seen the show – apparently, it’s good – but what I have seen are the movies.
Following the incredibly lucky Ethan Hunt as he risks his life in increasingly ridiculous ways, the Mission: Impossible movies are some of the best action films around. It’s a series that has changed with the times, picked up some amazing directors and has some shocking lows alongside stunning highs. With the newest addition in the franchise given the subtitle The Final Reckoning, it seems like a good time to look back at America’s biggest espionage franchise (though, I think it will be the final reckoning in the same way that Friday the 13th’s fourth movie had the subtitle The Final Chapter only to be followed by six sequels, a crossover and a reboot).
7. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)
Before I watched Mission: Impossible 2 for the first time, I remember being told it was the worst in the series for how ridiculously over the top it was. It was all style and no substance, where everything explodes due to the lightest scratch. After actually watching MI2, I wish it had more action.
The first hour of this movie could be 10 minutes and nothing would be lost. It’s a slow methodical build-up of plot and tension, but neither the plot nor the tension rises from their initial setups, leading to the first half being painfully dull. It’s a melodrama in a spy thriller; it doesn’t really fit. When the actual action does kick into high gear, I think it’s actually pretty good. It absolutely is excessive at times, but honestly I found the hyper-stylized action to be pretty charming. Although, its sheer scale does kind of kill the suspension of disbelief, leading to some scenes becoming boring, which is ironic considering the later films’ ludicrous set pieces somehow still feeling more grounded than the scenes in this one.
6. Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Without a doubt, Mission: Impossible III is the most disappointing movie in the series. MI2 may be worse, but at least it didn’t completely squander its potential. The opening scene of MI3 is without a doubt the most intense and gritty scene in the whole series. It sets the tone for a darker spy thriller with the prolific Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a villain more grounded and intimidating than the series had seen before. But, as the film goes on, the cracks start to show. Hoffman’s portrayal of MI3’s villain is the best the series has ever seen, but he’s only in around three scenes, one of them the opening. Also, he is ultimately defeated in the most underwhelming, almost comically tone-breaking way I have ever seen in an action movie. Not to mention, all of the film’s edge is gone within the first 20 minutes, as it moves to set up a mystery plot, which would be an acceptable shift if the film actually gave any sort of resolution to any of its mysteries.
At the crux of every Mission: Impossible movie is a heist segment; Hunt and friends have to break into a highly guarded facility and steal some classified MacGuffin. MI3 spends half of its run time setting up for this climactic scene, and when it finally arrives, the audience doesn’t see any of it. This cut desperately needed to be reversed as, for an action movie, there’s really only a handful of action scenes, and the absence of this heist is really felt in the runtime.
Every good idea this movie has, it squanders: its tone falls apart in the first half hour, the plot is an unfinished mess and it neglects to have any action or tension scenes in this action movie. However, in the dust of those good ideas is still a better movie than Mission Impossible 2.
5. Mission: Impossible (1996)
It feels weird to call this movie quaint, especially since it has a scene where Hunt hangs off of a train to fight a helicopter. But compared to the rest of the franchise, that’s really how the first Mission: Impossible feels. Directed by Brian De Palma, the creator of Scarface (1983), Mission: Impossible brought cinematic flair to this reboot of a long-dead TV show.
At times, it can be pretty tonally inconsistent. For example, the scene where the gang breaks into the CIA headquarters might be one of the most iconic scenes of all time. The shot of Hunt being lowered into a heavily guarded room where even a drop of his sweat can mean his ruin is incredibly famous for a reason. It’s tense. It’s a spectacle. It’s everything a spy thriller should be. Right after this genre-defining scene, Hunt rigidly does card magic to trick a member of his crew. It’s supposed to be funny, but comes off as stilted and awkward, and there are moments like this all throughout the movie.
It also lacks a sense of scale that the other movies have in droves, and Tom Cruise does not seem completely comfortable in the character of Ethan Hunt yet. Together, these faults make the movie fall into the shadow of what this series would become.
4. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is the third movie in a row directed by Christopher McQuarrie, and with this one, the cracks in his style start to show. Supposedly, the way McQuarrie directs these movies is by writing the action sequences first and then writing the rest of the script around them. While this strategy might have worked for his earlier two films, Dead Reckoning Part One is really dragged down by its plot. For one, instead of a central villain for Hunt and friends to work against, there’s only a malevolent AI, represented by blue light and given the remarkably generic name “the Entity.” The film frequently tries to make this AI a formidable threat by constantly emphasizing how smart the Entity is and showing how much power it has at its disposal, but these exposition dumps come off as more tedious than threatening. Outside of exposition, the movie resorts to other methods to show how dangerous the Entity is, but, without getting into spoilers, these plot points come off as very forced and unnecessary.
The movie’s plot is further dragged down due to it only being the first half of the story. While Dead Reckoning Part One’s ending isn’t dissatisfying, it isn’t conclusive either. The film just ends after one of the big action set pieces, bad guys still at large, character allegiances still questionable and likely more exposition dumps to await us in the next movie. However, it’s still a fantastic addition to the Mission: Impossible franchise. Just like the rest of McQuarrie’s movies, there are some great set pieces and a fantastic sense of scale throughout. But the problems with the plot cause the movie to drag and make this McQuarrie’s worst showing so far.
3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)
This movie is basically the textbook example of a Mission: Impossible film, and because of that, I don’t have that much to say about it. I can’t think of anything wrong with it, but it just doesn’t appeal to me as much as the next two movies on this list. With the exception of its opening and an underwater sequence that may be one of the best scenes in the franchise, everything about it is good or great but not excellent. It’s a great comfort food, but there are better meals out there.
2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
From Brad Bird, the director of Ratatouille (2007), comes the movie that reinvented the franchise. It’s easy to remember the Mission: Impossible franchise for how it is now, defined by massive globetrotting set pieces, but Ghost Protocol was the movie that really established that legacy. Sure, there were set pieces around the world in the previous three movies, but all of these sequences really could have happened anywhere. Scaling the Burj Khalifa or blowing up the Kremlin can really only happen in their specific locations.
On top of the action, they really start to play with the characters more in this film, making them a lot easier to root for rather than just the generic protagonists trying to save the world. As a consequence of this change, this movie is a lot more charming than its predecessors. Through its characters, it plays with humor and emotion in a way the series previously neglected.
Through Bird’s direction, the mixture of charm and action feels effortless, creating an incredibly entertaining experience. It’s no wonder that this movie became the template for the rest of the franchise.
1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
Shockingly good. Genuinely one of the best action movies of all time. The way the action folds into the plot and vice versa builds a constant sense of tension and adrenaline throughout the whole film, not just the major set pieces. Emphasizing this plot structure is how the movie immediately establishes the stakes of Hunt’s mission by showing the consequences of what would happen if they failed, making the movie’s scale feel ginormous and perfectly matching the over-the-top action set pieces of both the film and the franchise as a whole. Every scene builds on the one that came before resulting in the final sequence being this spectacular climax.
Every scene is memorable. Every minute of its two-hour 28-minute runtime is exhilarating. It’s the peak of everything the series had been building to, and, with only one film supposedly left in the franchise, it is incredibly hard to see how it could ever be topped.
