Given where Mission: Impossible is now, Tom Cruise is jumping off things for real. It’s easy to view the original as quaint, but the biggest thing Tom Cruise jumps down from is a ceiling vent. But not only was it pretty startling for the time – the core team is killed in the opening mission, and TV show lead Jim Phelps is the secret villain, a canon change tantamount to making Luke Skywalker a hermit – Mission: Impossible also maintains much of its thrill today.
It all lies on Brian De Palma, who approached this reboot of a well-known TV series with the same rigor as Scarface, with regular dialogue scenes as focused as the action; the Dutch angle paranoia of Ethan realizing he’s a suspect is exposition at its best. And that action is definitely fantastic for its attention to tension.
The franchise’s continued growth means that Mission: Impossible is revisited more often than many other mid-1990s tentpoles.
The Langley break-in may be simple enough on paper compared to what comes later, but Cruise still did the drop for real, and De Palma is meticulous in how he makes two beads of sweat the most important thing in the world for a far-too-long minute. The franchise’s continued growth means that Mission: Impossible is revisited more often than many other mid-1990s tentpoles anyway, but even without five more films to mark it out, it’s one of the best.
3
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
Released In 2015
The preceding two movies had begun to form what Mission: Impossible could be – stunt-based, a wink-wink continuity, overall fun blockbusters – but it was Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation that refined it. The film opens with a single sH๏τ that would be the centerpiece of another entire franchise – Cruise clinging to the side of a plane taking off – and goes breakneck into a lightning mix of twisty plot and integrated action that never lets one of the plates drop.
It had been on the tip of many tongues for a while, but here, it seems Ethan Hunt had overtaken James Bond.
Christopher McQuarrie had proven himself as a master thriller writer with The Usual Suspects, and this expands that, throwing in new elements like Ilsa Faust and evolving static aspects like Renner. The finale, in which the scheming, emotionally involved villain is captured in a moody London night, earned copious comparisons to Spectre, almost deferential to Mission: Impossible. It had been on the tip of many tongues for a while, but here, it seems Ethan Hunt had overtaken James Bond.
2
Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning
Released In 2023
As the seventh film in the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise, it is incredible that the series can still be this great this late in the game. Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning Part One gives Ethan Hunt more characterization than ever, delving deeper into the IMF agent’s backstory. The film shakes up the series’ villain formula, with Hunt, this time, having to take on a rogue AI with god-like powers. While the film once again centers around a MacGuffin, it manages to keep the stakes high throughout.
Once again, the stunts are the highlight of Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning Part One. The fight on top of the train, the extensive Rome car chase, and Tom Cruise’s now-iconic motorcycle cliff jump are all incredible, although they don’t reach the heights of the helicopter chase and the bathroom fight in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning is an incredible film that exceeds almost all of its predecessors, except for one film.
1
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Released In 2018
In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, everything improves from Rogue Nation. The stunts are more audacious – the 106 HALO jumps make for a hand-clamming sequence early on, while the helicopter chase in the finale is maintained for so long, beats from the trailers were cut – the humor more balanced, and the filmmaking more astute. Like De Palma, action and dialogue are treated with equal opportunity for flair, and the story is more reaching. With its villains, the series manages to use the convoluted story to explore genre clichés.
What makes Mission: Impossible – Fallout great is how it dissects Ethan Hunt. Tom Cruise’s character has evolved across the Mission: Impossible series, but not all of it was organic, something McQuarrie’s worked hard to correct. This started in Rogue Nation, but this entire movie is constructed around attempting to figure out what creates this “force of nature” and recontextualize him in the real world. To see it so earnestly delivered alongside everything else is an emotional powerhouse.
How Does The Mission: Impossible TV Show Compare To The Movies?
While the Mission: Impossible movies have a lot of fans, don’t count some of the original television show cast members among those ranks. Several of these actors had a mᴀssive problem with Tom Cruise’s movies from the start. The main problem came from the first movie’s twist and who the villain was. In that film, Phelps, the leader of the IMF, played by Jon Voight, betrayed his team as a double agent, and every member of the team was sH๏τ and killed except for newcomer Ethan Hunt.
Greg Morris, who played tech guru Barney Collier, walked out of the theater before the movie ended. Peter Graves, who played Phelps in the TV show as the main hero of the series, was so upset about the twist that he refused to reprise his role as Phelps in the movie. Martin Landau, who played Rollin Hand, was so angry that he lashed out at the movie in the press:
“When they were working on an early incarnation of the first one — not the script they ultimately did — they wanted the entire team to be destroyed, done away with one at a time, and I was against that. It was basically an action-adventure movie and not Mission. Mission was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there. So the whole texture changed. Why volunteer to essentially have our characters commit suicide? I pᴀssed on it… The script wasn’t that good either!”
However, it didn’t matter, and the Mission: Impossible movie franchise became one of the most successful action movie franchises in history. The TV show still remains highly regarded, though. On Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score for the first season is a perfect 100%, and the critics’ reviews were all positive until the final fifth season. Reviews called it one of the best spy shows in television history, especially in an era when other shows were getting “goofier,” M:I maintained a “touch of class.”
The Future Of The Mission Impossible Franchise
The next movie in the franchise is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and the previous movie made it look like things are winding down for Ethan Hunt and his elite team. It almost seems like it can’t get much worse, and the stakes can’t get much higher. The new movie is set to hit theaters on May 23, 2025, with trailers advertising it as early as the end of 2024. However, as director Christopher McQuarrie has said, this won’t mark the end of the franchise, and there will be more Mission: Impossible movies in the future.
“There’s always a plan, the plan always changes, everything goes completely awry, and hopefully everything always turns out alright in the end. But you never really fully understand, or trust where it is you’re going, until you get there.“
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning continues the story from ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning, with Ethan Hunt on a mission to stop the ᴀssᴀssin Gabriel (Esai Morales) from obtaining the AI program known as the Enтιтy. Hayley Atwell (Marvel’s Agent Carter) joins the cast as Grace, a former thief turned IMF agent, and Pam Klementieff (Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy) joins as Paris, a French ᴀssᴀssin who Gabriel betrayed. Most of the main cast also return for this eighth adventure.
Tom Cruise is 60, but even he says that he plans to keep making Mission: Impossible movies, likely into his 80s. “Harrison Ford is a legend; I hope to be still going; I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him,” Cruise said (via The Sydney Morning Herald). “I hope to keep making Mission: Impossible films until I’m his age.” Mission: Impossible movies aren’t going anywhere and could be around for the next two decades if Cruise gets his way.
Mission: Impossible
- Cast
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Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Czerny, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby
- Created by
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Bruce Geller, David Koepp, Steven Zaillian, Robert Towne, Christopher McQuarrie, Tom Cruise
- First Film
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Mission: Impossible
- Latest Film
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Mission: Impossible – ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning
- Upcoming Films
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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Summary
The Mission: Impossible franchise is an American action spy series that began with the 1996 film Mission: Impossible and has since become one of the most successful and long-running franchises in Hollywood. The films follow Ethan Hunt, an agent of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), as he takes on various high-stakes missions around the world, often involving intricate heists, double-crosses, and death-defying stunts. The franchise is renowned for its intense action sequences, particularly those performed by Tom Cruise, who insists on doing many of his own stunts.
