With the release of Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, we look back at a franchise so reliably good, it might have surpassed the greatness of Bond.
The first Mission: Impossible hit theaters exactly 27 years ago. On May 22, 1996, to be exact. Since then, it has matured into the rare—maybe the only—long-running blockbuster franchise that actually seems to get better and better as it goes on and on. Thanks to its similarly ageless star, Tom Cruise as IMF ringleader Ethan Hunt, and his sweet tooth for old-school, death-wish, show-stopping stunts, the series seems hellbent on upping the ante like a deranged gambler with each subsequent installment. But if the M:I movies were only about Cruise risking his life for our popcorn amusement, the sensational saga would never have made it as far as it has. Sure, you could argue that each chapter in the IMF Cinematic Universe is, in a way, kind of the same. But they’re also different enough (thematically, stylistically, narratively) to keep us coming back for more. Which makes ranking the Mission: Impossible films no easy challenge. But you could say, it’s our mission—and we chose to accept it. So without further throat-clearing, here’s our definitive ranking of the seven M:I films, from worst to best….
7. Mission: Impossible II (2000)
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Mission: Impossible II – Trailer
This actually kills me to write because I absolutely fucking adore John Woo, but I think even the revered Hong Kong action auteur would cop to the fact that M:I 2 was not his finest hour behind the camera. He was the right man for the wrong job. Hell, Woo even managed to make a better movie with a medium talent like Jean-Claude Van Damme (1993’s Hard Target) than he did here with Cruise. Woo and Hollywood were always a weird fit. His operatic-bordering-on-corny-melodrama sensibility may have worked like double-fisted gangbusters when partnered with Chow Yun-Fat (see A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled), but something often got lost when it came to satisfying the commercial imperatives of big-studio American filmmaking. Coming four years after Brian De Palma’s series kick-off, M:I 2 is all flashy, slo-mo razzle dazzle. In fact, its entire M.O. seemed to be more is more. And while in some movies it can be, here it’s most definitely not. M:I 2 is so obsessed with style (i.e. the long-haired Cruise’s ludicrous meet-cute with Thandie Newton in a skidding high-speed car chase pas de deux), you couldn’t help walk out of the theater starved for some substance beyond the film’s tapioca villain (Dougray Scott) and its equally so-what plot about…stock options? Still, Cruise’s rock-climbing finger-nail hang from Utah’s Dead Horse Point during the opening credits remains a vertigo-inducing thrill.
6. Mission: Impossible III (2006)
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Mission: Impossible III | Official Trailer | Paramount Movies
Going from Brian De Palma to John Woo to J.J. Abrams, the director of MI: III, feels like a whiplash-inducing game of Hollywood Mad Libs. But Abrams, in his first big-budget movie assignment, got more right than wrong in this solid installment. Abrams has always been a believer in character over spectacle, which is something this outing sorely needed after the baroque indulgence of Woo’s M:I 2. Then again, you could also argue that Abrams overcompensated here—that MI: III really could have used a little more spectacle. Still, it is what it is. And what it is, is a deeply personal rescue operation for Ethan Hunt. It’s a bit of a strange choice especially since Hunt (not to mention the inscrutable movie star who plays him) was always a bit of a cipher when it came to his backstory. He (they) often seems more like a superhuman automaton than a flesh-and-blood person capable of emotional entanglements. The love object in question is played by Michelle Monaghan, but there’s zero chemistry there. Instead, the real sparks come between Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays the film’s creepy villain, Owen Davian. There are several signature action set pieces in this one (the Shanghai skyscraper climb, the kinda phoney-looking bridge ambush), but the one that sticks is probably the Vatican extraction, where they kidnap Davian using some of the best examples of the franchise’s low-fi rubber mask trickery. Unlike Woo, here’s a case where less is more.
5. Mission: Impossible (1996)
Mission: Impossible (1996) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers
Hollywood is littered with the bloated corpses of movies that were made with the intention of kicking off long-lasting franchises (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, John Carter, The Dark Tower, etc.). But it was obvious right out of the gate that Brian De Palma’s first Mission: Impossible would lead to a series of legs (even those legs wouldn’t be attached to De Palma). We were lured into the theater by the name-brand cache of the vintage TV series and, of course, Cruise’s star power. But we were immediately put on notice that the M:I movies wouldn’t really have all that much to do with the small-screen storytelling of the show—that these movies would be massive Rube Golberg-ian exercises in pyrotechnics and triple-cross pretzel logic. So this is really where it all begins. And now, it seems like a quaint throwback to a time when blockbusters could be…smart. Clearly, it’s hard to discuss this film without talking about the trickle-of-sweat hanging-spider break-in at the CIA’s Langley headquarters. Twenty-five years later, movie magic has come so far. But this set-piece really hasn’t been topped in terms of pure ingenuity and suspense. Over time, the M:I series’ trademark set pieces would get bigger and louder and more lavish and expensive, but nothing has yet come close to topping this economical masterclass in dangling, white-knuckle delirium.
4. Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation (2015)
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Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation Trailer
Okay, this is where this list really starts to get into Sophie’s Choice territory. From here on, all of these movies could be number one. But we’re gonna go with our gut. So…Rogue Nation. When producer-star Cruise began the M:I series he’d always envisioned each new chapter having a different director so that each film would have its own idiosyncratic stamp. It was a great instinct, not to mention an auteur-theory idea that was more experimental than a guy like Cruise is often given credit for. But in Rogue Nation, the star found himself to be so simpatico with Christopher McQuarrie that the director has remained at the tiller for 2018’s Mission: Impossible—Fallout and the currently-in-the-works Mission: Impossible 7. McQuarrie, who first made his name as the writer of the twisty, ur-‘90s indie puzzle-box caper The Usual Suspects, began working with Cruise on 2008’s disappointingly mediocre Valkyrie. And they’ve been almost inseparable ever since. Things get off to the races right away in Rogue Nation (with Cruise dangling from the side of a cargo plane as it takes off—before the opening credits even roll!). And the breakneck pace doesn’t relent much afterwards. In fact, you could make a case that this is where the franchise finally found its rhythmic sweet spot. Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames are all given their moments in the spotlight, too. But the real draw here is the clockwork precision and giddy inventiveness of McQuarrie, whether it’s in the—deep breath—underwater computer-lab chip exchange or the Hitchcockian Vienna opera house sequence (a sequence, by the way, that actually feels operatic), where we first become intrigued and enthralled by Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa, the series’ best late-stage addition. All of this, plus Alec Baldwin as the head of the CIA!
3. Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol (2011)
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Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol Official Trailer #1 – Tom Cruise Movie (2011) HD
I’ve got just two words for you: Burj Khalifa. Everything about this sea-sick skyscraper-scaling sequence on Dubai’s tallest building in the world is so goddamned perfect it’s like huffing laughing gas. In fact, it may be the defining action scene of the 21st century so far. Fuck that, it definitely is. Hands down! After the kinda disappointing M:I III, director Brad Bird gives the franchise the reboot it needs. The team is really firing on all cylinders thanks to the humorous interplay between Crusie and Simon Pegg and the addition of Paula Patton. It’s the first time when Cruise’s lust for kicks actually begins to feel like a high-stakes geek show, where he (and we) won’t be satisfied until he ends up in traction (or worse) performing some insane without-a-net stunt. Are you not entertained? Frankly, it’s impossible not be what with the Houdini-esque Kremlin break-in, Old Testament sand storms, and the always-welcome Lea Seydoux.
2. Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One | Official Teaser Trailer (2023 Movie) – Tom Cruis
The only thing holding back Dead Reckoning Part One from the top spot? It’s the fact that it released roughly three years too late. The AI villain is as silly as something out of the Fast & Furious franchise—but nothing can hold Tom Cruise’s movie magic back. He still somehow makes it work; he gives Ethan Hunt a new, mysterious backstory. Of course, though, it’s all about the stunts. In Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise drives a tiny car through Rome, fistfights in a tiny alleyway, and jumps off a cliff… on a motorcycle! And the man is 60 years old. It’s an incredible sight to behold.
1. Mission: Impossible—Fallout (2018)
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Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) – Official Trailer – Paramount Pictures
Fallout is like the Raiders of the Lost Ark of Mission: Impossible movies. It cuts out all the passing and junk and serves up only the most choice bits. It’s 147 minutes of highlights. If that sounds exhausting, well, I’m sorry, you couldn’t be more wrong. Cruise was 56 when this movie was made and he was determined to prove to every single one of us that he was still the world’s hungriest movies star. He breaks an ankle jumping from one Parisian rooftop to the next: No problem, as long the camera didn’t stop rolling. In my mind, Fallout is the moment the Mission: Impossible movies nosed ahead of the Bond franchise. And to take the comparison a step further, Fallout is in a way Ethan Hunt’s Skyfall—the chapter of the story that fills in our hero’s personal backstory and shows us the emotional sacrifices his line of work has made him make. I don’t want to get too psychoanalytical about what is essentially a top-notch Hollywood Event Movie, so let me also point to the fact that this is also the film where Cruise shatters a shitload of porcelain in his brutal bathroom brawl with Henry Cavill. It also features the lightning-lit HALO jump, a bonkers Paris motorcycle chase, and a helicopter finale that makes you want to stay put as the ushers sweep up all of the theater’s spilled popcorn and stray Sour Patch Kids and stick around for the next showing so you can experience it all over again.
