Nineteen years, and only five movies? The Mission: Impossible series is one of Hollywood’s longest running movie franchises, but that’s at least partly because Tom Cruise & Co. take their sweet time with them.
With Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation releasing this weekend, we thought it would be a good idea to look back on these films. In part because a lot of the target demographic for the new movie wasn’t even born when the first Mission: Impossible came out. But we were there the whole time: watching, marveling, and judging. Most of the Mission: Impossible films are actually pretty darned good, but most of them also have serious problems that have kept them out of the pantheon of all-time action movie classics.
Let’s take a journey through these popular films, from the worst to the very best, and see what went right, what went wrong, and how Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation fares against the rest of the series. (Our #4 is going to piss a lot of people off, we just know it.)
Related: ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ Review
To say that time has been kind to Mission: Impossible II would be very democratic, but not untrue. What was originally decried as a truly horrible action movie upon its release has settled over the years into a merely lackluster one: dumb and loud but not so much “terrible” as “disappointing.” Especially considering the film’s impressive pedigree: Oscar-winner Robert Towne (Chinatown) wrote the screenplay and based it on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 espionage classic Notorious, Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga have a story credit (and they went on to spearhead the incredible TV reboot of Battlestar Galactica), and director John Woo was responsible for such influential action classics as The Killer and Hard Boiled.
That those superlative talents came together to overproduce a straight-up thriller that takes forever to get going, and doesn’t go anywhere interesting until the comically over the top motorcycle fight finale (and let’s not forget the damned doves), is a minor tragedy. But taken as just another ridiculous action movie – and that’s ultimately all it is – it’s not unwatchable. But it’s certainly the worst film in the Mission: Impossible series. By far.
A controversial pick for the second worst film in the Mission: Impossible series, but we stand by it. (If it helps, try to think of it as the fourth best.) Brad Bird’s entry won audiences over and is frequently hailed for its gorgeous cinematography, impressive stunts and a winning ensemble cast… and that’s all fair, because those are the best parts of the movie. Ethan Hunt was part of an ensemble team of spies with fun, distinctive, memorable personalities, and he does a lot of cool stuff and it all looks great.
It’s too bad the villain is such a complete non-entity. He barely has any presence in the movie and he hardly interacts with our heroes, so that when the big climax resorts to a knockdown fight between Hunt and Nuclear Weapon Guy #1 in a crazy-ass car park (for no better reason than the setting was kinda cool), it means nothing. It’s just an abstract concept brought to life. Hero + villain + location = ending. Although Bird deserves credit for filming it with pizazz.
What’s more, there actually WERE emotional storylines to be exploited, but Ghost Protocol sabotages both of them. Jane Carter (Paula Patton) thirsts for revenge against Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux) for killing her partner at the beginning of the film, but that gets resolved halfway through the movie, leaving only one humanizing subplot left. William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) is overwhelmed by his guilt for letting Hunt’s wife get murdered, and took a desk job because he couldn’t handle the strain any more. Then it turns out she was secretly alive the whole time, and that Brandt sabotaged his own career over absolutely nothing. And he doesn’t even get so much as miffed about it. What the hell was up with that?
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is a triumph of production value, and the Burj Khalifa sequence is particularly astounding, but it just doesn’t hold together nearly as well as these other three films in this series.
The first Mission: Impossible movie remains a corking thriller to this day. (We’re not counting 1968’s Mission: Impossible vs. The Mob, in part because it’s just two episodes from the TV series playing back to back, and in part because the title is really, really stupid.) The film opens with a great and likable team of spies who all get brutally assassinated by a mysterious villain, and Ethan Hunt – for the first of many times – is forced to go rogue to clear his name and stop the bad guys. Visual maestro Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill) directs the film with classy flourish and a classical sense of suspense. If anything, for De Palma at least, Mission: Impossible feels restrained.
But that sense of moderation works. Mission: Impossible‘s biggest set piece might be the climactic chase between a bullet train and a helicopter, but its most memorable is all about sneaking around the CIA and avoiding any physical conflict. For a so-called “action movie” this first film doesn’t have a lot of “action” in it, and it’s exciting from start to finish regardless. Fun twists, a team that can’t be trusted and that explosive, bravura finale make for a heck of a great time.
The biggest problem with first Mission: Impossible – besides its thin grasp on computer technology (which was a flaw in many 1990s thrillers) – is that the whole thing gets convoluted. The plot that isn’t actually all that complicated but it’s consistently described that way, making otherwise straightforward scenes play out with all the density of a trigonometry class. But that doesn’t change the fact that otherwise it’s still a great spy yarn that holds up surprisingly well 19 years later.
Mission: Impossible III is a divisive film amongst many fans of the franchise. Some are frustrated that the film’s action sequences are mostly understated, with one of them even taking place entirely off-camera. (That was part of the gag, by the way.) Others admire the film for giving Ethan Hunt an actual story arc for the very first and, thus far, only time. But what no one can seemingly deny is that J.J. Abrams’ film has the best villain in the entire series: Owen Davian, played with disarmingly calm menace by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
As you can tell, since it’s #2 on our ranked list of all the Mission: Impossible movies, we fall into the second camp. Mission: Impossible III might not have the best action in the series – although a spectacular drone siege is one of the franchise highlights – but the stakes have never felt higher for Ethan Hunt anyway. His protégé is cruelly murdered, and his mission of revenge only succeeds in pissing off Davian even more, putting Hunt’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) in the crosshairs. For once he isn’t fighting for his good name, or to prevent a hackneyed doomsday plot, or to save the life of a person he just met. He’s fighting for personal stakes, and Abrams’ capable direction – combined with a witty script and fun side characters – sells every suspenseful minute of it. For a long time, this was easily the best film in the series. Until…
As we already discussed in our review, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation finally gets the mix just about right. Incredible action, a memorably threatening villain, a great supporting cast and an emotionally involving journey for one of the characters. That character just happens to be Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), not Ethan Hunt. She’s a double agent who either helps Hunt or tries to kill him, depending on her mission parameters at any given moment. Torn between both sides, Ilsa is trapped in an impossible situation and by the end of the film we can’t help but worry whether or not she will get out of it alive.
It’s not a perfect film, of course. Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames get sidelined a bit, and when Alec Baldwin describes Ethan Hunt as “the living manifestation of destiny” we couldn’t help but chuckle. But Christopher McQuarrie’s otherwise impressive script keeps the twists twisting and the thrills thrilling, and he manages to keep the question of “what else could possibly go wrong” alive throughout the entire movie. That’s what made the Burj Khalifa scene in Ghost Protocol work so well – not just the altitude, but the constant deluge of screw-ups that made an impossible job even more ridiculously difficult – and that’s the spirit that Rogue Nation maintains in practically every scene. The stakes are constantly being ratcheted, and the monkey wrenches are always being thrown.
It took 19 years, but Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is the first unequivocally great film in this series. And now we genuinely can’t wait for the next one.
All images via Paramount Pictures.
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on two weekly YouTube series: Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
