Mission: Impossible 2 is the disappointing second film that the movie franchise bounced back from, while completely changing its tone and shifting its focus. Despite a few saving graces, especially the close-up combat sequences, which might be the reason this movie features Tom Cruise’s best melee fight sequences in the franchise, Mission: Impossible 2 is the weakest Mission: Impossible movie.
Rewatching 1996’s Mission: Impossible in 2025 reveals some surprises, most notably the striking difference in tone from the rest of the franchise as it is a grounded and intense espionage thriller with next to no fight scenes. John Woo’s Mission: Impossible 2 is thus even more jarring as a follow-up because it’s over-the-top, cheesy, and features an abundance of fighting.
Tom Cruise’s most underrated Mission: Impossible stunt, also featured in the most underrated movie in the franchise, Mission: Impossible 3, completely transformed the nature of its action sequences, indicating that the franchise moved away from the direction John Woo had taken it in. Mission: Impossible 2 has its merits as an action movie, but it doesn’t fit into the franchise.
John Woo’s Style Doesn’t Completely Fit With Mission: Impossible
John Woo‘s action movies that defined the 1990s have become cinematic artifacts that are still studied today to understand the evolution of the genre over the years. They’re fantastic thrillers, characterized by an abundance of plot twists and hyper-stylized action sequences, which utilize slow motion, over-the-top explosions, and gun stunts, along with orchestral background music, to create epic showdowns.
Unfortunately, Mission: Impossible isn’t the franchise for this aesthetic. Most Mission: Impossible movies have elaborate action setpieces, but they’re more showcases of daring stunts rather than fight choreography, and Mission: Impossible films are grounded spy flicks with lots of action, unlike John Woo movies, where over-the-top action is the highlight. So, Mission: Impossible 2 sticks out like a sore thumb.
The Overuse Of Masks Hurts The Plot Twists
John Woo’s movies are known for their plot twists. His most famous movie, Face/Off, is an action thriller that stays perfect from start to finish, but it’s most known for the confusing suspense it creates as a consequence of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta constantly switching places, so you stop trying to track the events and surrender to the whimsy.
While that works for Face/Off, a similar technique, when used in Mission: Impossible, makes the plot twists predictable or silly. You expect that every impossible situation will be magically fixed by revealing that Ethan Hunt is actually safe and was hiding behind a mask. It’s a great homage to pay to the original TV show, but the overuse is frustrating.
Thandiwe Newton’s Character Is Poorly Written
Thandiwe Newton plays Nyah Nordoff-Hall, a thief whom Ethan Hunt stops, and who then inadvertently gets embroiled in the IMF’s mission, thus becoming a victim before being saved by Ethan in the final minutes of the film. Her existence is presented as a strong motivator for Ethan Hunt, but she, as a character, is mostly just a damsel in distress.
It might seem like Nyah is a fierce character who speaks her mind and isn’t afraid to take matters into her own hands, but the story doesn’t afford her enough agency for this aspect of her to matter. The only significant choice she makes is to inject herself with the virus as a sacrifice, which Ethan finally saves her from.
The Dialogue In Mission: Impossible 2 Hasn’t Aged Well
The greatest line in Mission: Impossible history is arguably from its weakest movie. What Ethan’s director says in response to him pointing out the difficulty of his mission is exactly the level of cheesy that suits the tone of the rest of the franchise as well. However, some of the dialogue in Mission: Impossible 2 would never be written today.
“This isn’t Mission: Difficult, Mr Hunt. It’s Mission: Impossible.” – Mission Commander Swanbeck
The way Nyah is talked to doesn’t just sound grating, but also serves as a reminder of how many 2000s movies have aged poorly, especially in the way they present female characters. It is disappointing to see how little pushback there is against the repulsive lines that the movie’s villain uses to describe Nyah and her role in the mission.
Mission: Impossible 2’s Love Scenes Will Make You Cringe
Almost every Mission: Impossible movie has a romantic interlude, with varying degrees of relevance to the main plot, but Mission: Impossible 2 is far too self-indulgent and nearly turns into a slow-moving romcom during the romantic scenes that are eyeroll-worthy and undermine the film’s pacing. It is also uncomfortable to see how much Thandiwe Newton is reduced to eye candy.
The love scenes in Mission: Impossible 2 are more comedic than they’re romantic, because the film goes overboard in trying to establish excess chemistry between the actors, who would naturally have shared a more compelling dynamic otherwise. Saving someone from a car hanging at the edge of a cliff is hardly the time to get romantic, but the movie disagrees.
The Casanova Archetype Doesn’t Suit Ethan Hunt
The one thing about the James Bond franchise that has not aged well is the trope of the Bond girl, who is usually an overly Sєxualized female character without much relevance to the plot, whose primary purpose is to serve as eye-candy and a romantic interest for Bond. So, trying to create a similar trope for Mission: Impossible naturally backfired.
Not only has the amount of agency that Bond girls have in a James Bond movie changed over the years, but it’s also not a trope worth celebrating or popularizing further. Moreover, Ethan Hunt’s personality doesn’t suit the trope, and even if 1996’s Mission: Impossible is quite sleazy at times, it becomes too much to enjoy in Mission: Impossible 2.
It Feels Like Big Chunks Of Story Are Missing
The other major difference between Mission: Impossible 2 and the other entries in the franchise, including the first movie, is its pacing. The film moves in spurts, feeling rushed at multiple points in the narrative. There isn’t a coherent and natural flow between many scenes, and it’s obvious that some major bits of footage were edited out in post-production.
It is rumored that the film was initially three and a half hours long, but was then cut for theatrical purposes.
The most noticeable instance of this gap is toward the end of the film, as we almost immediately jump from Nyah injecting herself with the virus to the final battle, without the signature buildup of anticipation ᴀssociated with Mission: Impossible and the hunt for her that obviously took Ethan and his teammates longer than is seen on the screen.
Tom Cruise Barely Runs In Mission: Impossible 2
The biggest reason this film feels like a disappointment is that it opens with the best scene. Tom Cruise’s climbing stunt in Mission: Impossible 2 is one of his most impressive action sequences, arguably among the three best, in the franchise that’s constructed on the premise of each film’s major set piece outdoing its predecessor’s set piece.
Watching him having a knife held within inches of his eyes, hitting his enemy with a flying kick, and kicking up a gun before killing Ambrose, are all impressive stunts, but what you really miss when watching Mission: Impossible 2 is Cruise’s signature run. While he does run in the film, the overtly stylized editing breaks the viewer’s immersion.
