Ranking franchise movies is the new stat-counting. It is both pointless and satisfying, calming and argument inducing. It creates order and frivolity in equal measure. In this time of expanding cinematic universes, rapidly adapted intellectual property, and the ever-gaping maw awaiting time-killing content, we rank. We rank, therefore we are. Fortunately, the Mission: Impossible movies are worthy of the form, because each entry indicates a shift or improvement in moviemaking strategy and franchise storytelling. It codified—and then broke—the “One Director’s Vision” concept that has become so prevalent in the Marvel canon. It’s a long-running but not urgent property; when a new one arrives, it’s less a consequential continuation of mythology than it is a fun diversion. The stunts are real and the stakes are massive, but the end game is modest: Just wow us. In 1996, when Tom Cruise sought to launch Mission with his producing partner, Paula Wagner, studios were reluctant to invest in an expired TV property, thinking it beneath the mega-wattage of Cruise. Twenty-two years later, it’s entered the firmament of summer studio staples. And they’re coming more frequently now. Five years passed between the third and fourth installments; four between the fourth and fifth; and now just three between the fifth, Rogue Nation, and this week’s Fallout. The last two were written and directed by the Academy Award–winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, Edge of Tomorrow), who has brought a new energy to the series, at once emotional and breakneck. Fallout is perhaps the most purely entertaining yet. Among American franchises, Mission: Impossible ranks just 26th at the box office. But, as long as Cruise can withstand the physical consequences of leaping off of buildings, swimming through Tauruses, crashing helicopters, and running really, really fast, it will likely continue to grow without necessarily “expanding.” It’s a series that knows what it is, and we do, too. Herein are six lessons from the six movies about how to evolve, adapt, and protect a franchise. 6. Mission: Impossible II (2000) Directed by John Woo The Lesson: Catch a Director at the Right Moment This is the only Mission: Impossible film that doesn’t completely work, and it’s mostly a consequence of styles clashing. By 2000, the iconic Hong Kong action director John Woo had successfully translated the operatic, rampaging vision of crime dramas that he developed with A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled to the United States. His early American work was ludicrous, but deeply fun and true to his aesthetic, specifically the timelessly preposterous Face/Off. But that absurdity is nowhere to be found in M:I II, which plays more like a martial arts revenge saga than a slick spy movie, a gritty underworld tale, or the winking self-referential tone it has adopted in recent years. Unfortunately, Woo, who was 54 when II was released, was on the back nine of his career. He never made a movie as big or as relevant, and his approach just wasn’t a fit. Every filmmaker in the series who has followed has had something to prove to audiences. Woo—like his predecessor Brian De Palma—was already a legend. But something had gone missing. 5. Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (2011) Directed by Brad Bird The Lesson: Don’t Try to Replace Ethan Hunt Remember when Jeremy Renner was going to take over this franchise for Tom Cruise? That feels ridiculous and like quite some time ago now. Ethan Hunt—dogged, singularly focused, defiant, always reeled into some mess he wants no part of—is the centerpiece of the story and needs to be. Mostly because of Cruise and his character’s mad-eyed, weirdly sentimental connection to a government organization that keeps putting him in situations that want to kill him. He isn’t a patriot so much as a masochist. Audiences may not be as enraptured by Cruise’s effortless charisma as they were in the ’90s. A fraught and complicated series of events in his personal life made him a difficult figure to root for. But Mission: Impossible never wavered. It appeared, regularly, a constant despite the tumult. When Brad Bird came on to direct this fourth edition, he rejuvenated the movie at the box office (it’s the second highest-grossing) and put a little verve in the machine. But there’s a fly in the ointment. Renner’s William Brandt, a sighing cipher, was rumored—but never confirmed—to be an eventual replacement for Cruise. Ultimately, Brandt—well-trained but affectless—never stood a chance. His character is a bureaucrat with fists. Ethan Hunt is a lifestyle. 4. Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (2015) Directed by Christopher McQuarrie The Lesson: Expand the Universe When McQuarrie took the reins, the franchise was in an unusual place. He’d done an uncredited rewrite on the previous film and sensed that the series needed some new emotional stakes. Ghost Protocol was huge, but oddly inert upon a rewatch. The Burj Khalifa stunt was unforgettable—the rest of the plot is hard to remember. So McQuarrie shifted gears. The introduction of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) throws Hunt for a loop, puts Brandt on the backburner, and reintroduces a little romantic tension into his life. The sexless, mission-driven aspect of Bird’s movie made Hunt seem monklike. But that isn’t the guy who stared down Max and wooed Claire with magic in the first film, and it isn’t the guy who swooned over Jules in the third. Fittingly, Ilsa—thanks to McQuarrie—brought with her a worldwide anarchist collective called the Syndicate (sure, why not) that would define the series going forward, putting stakes in the stakes. And she brought Hunt back to a human level. 3. Mission: Impossible III (2006) Directed by J.J. Abrams The Lesson: Make the Villain Mean. Really Mean. Evil. Owen Davian is one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s best roles. It isn’t nuanced like Capote, heartbreaking like Scotty J, manic like Gust Avrakotos, or mysterious like Lancaster Dodd. It’s just evil, a vicious distillation of pure and unrelenting capitalist meanness. Davian is the arms dealer at the center of J.J. Abrams’s stab at the franchise, and he is casually, calmly vicious. During this scene, Hoffman talks plainly, like a vindictive monster with no conscience. “You have a wife … girlfriend? Because you know what I’m gonna do next? I’m gonna find her, whoever she is. I’m gonna find her and I’m gonna hurt her. I’m gonna make her bleed, and cry, and call out your name. And you’re not gonna be able to do shit. You know why? Because you’re gonna be this close to dead. And then I’m gonna kill you right in front of her.” It’s still bracing to watch Hoffman work in this movie. It’s an especially unconventional choice in a series that often relies on silly MacGuffins, ridiculous heists, and literal masks to keep an audience at attention. After utilizing magic tricks to set the stage through two movies, Abrams and Hoffman trade sleight of hand for blunt force trauma. 2. Mission: Impossible — Fallout (2018) Directed by Christopher McQuarrie The Lesson: Don’t Forget Continuity One of the best things about Fallout is what makes it so different from what came before … and so similar to other franchises: It fits together. In this new movie, the Syndicate is back. Sean Harris’s Solomon Lane is back. Ilsa is back. Luther and Benji are back. Alec Baldwin’s slippery G-man Hunley is back. This is a movie that fits together with Rogue Nation—it’s more rewarding when they’re seen in succession. What makes the Mission movies fun is right there in the title—they’re individuated, stand-alone stories with an extraordinary goal at the heart. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be a repertory company and a continuing arc. More than Tom Cruise’s fearless stunts or McQuarrie’s rat-a-tat repartee, it’s that connectivity that makes Fallout feel so vital. This is a movie in a world we know, and never want to leave. 1. Mission: Impossible (1996) Directed by Brian De Palma The Lesson: Franchise Isn’t a Dirty Word While Brian De Palma watched his pals George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola build franchise empires and scale the movie business to the height of their imagination, the Movie Brats’ fourth compadre worked in a cocoon.<doc-sep>Our mission — and we decided to accept it — is to rank from least to best all six of the “Mission: Impossible” thrillers toplined by Tom Cruise as Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt. 6. Mission: Impossible III (2006) Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock THE PITCH: When he isn’t busy wooing, and eventually wedding, Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan), a nurse who knows nothing about his spy-guy activities, Ethan Hunt leads his IMF team in pursuit of a MacGuffinish device (known as “Rabbit’s Foot”) coveted by arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). THE RUNDOWN: Despite the game efforts of director J.J. Abrams to humanize Ethan by supplying a civilian romantic interest — and showing he’s not so ruthless that he’d make good on his threat to drop an uncooperative bad guy out of an airplane — the threepeat is a curiously bland spectacle that is nothing more (or, to be fair, less) than the sum of its sporadically exciting action set pieces. Not surprisingly, it is the lowest-grossing entry in the entire franchise (so far). THE SCORE: 2 ½ out of 5 stars. 5. Mission: Impossible (1996) Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock THE PITCH: After IMF chief Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) dies in the line of duty — yeah, right — special agent Ethan Hunt must assume command of a mission to keep a list of deep-cover CIA operatives from being sold by an IMF mole. THE RUNDOWN: More than a few fans of the original “Mission: Impossible” television series were positively furious when Brian De Palma’s big-screen, franchise-spawning reboot turned Phelps (played on TV by Peter Graves) into a traitor. No, really. Twenty-two years later, however, the most unsettling thing about the movie is the quaintly retro look of formerly cutting-edge technology (note the floppy discs and portentous references to “The Internet”). On the other hand, some things never look dated: Hunt’s wire-supported drop into a high-security CIA vault remains one of the most suspenseful (and frequently imitated) heist sequences in all of movie history. And there’s still something richly amusing about the shameless flirting between Tom Cruise’s boyish Hunt and Vanessa Redgrave’s bemused arms dealer. THE SCORE: 3 out of 5 stars. 4. Mission: Impossible II (2000) Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock THE PITCH: Ethan Hunt convinces beautiful thief Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton) to renew her affair with IMF turncoat Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) in order to retrieve vials of an artificially created virus. Complications arise when Hunt falls for Nyah — and she is infected with the virus. THE RUNDOWN: Although relatively restrained when compared to director John Woo’s dizzyingly kinetic and flamboyantly stylized previous films (“The Killer,” “Hard Boiled,” “Face-Off,” etc. ), this chronically and unfairly under-rated sequel serves up a generous amount of suspense-fraught thrills and impressively choreographed spills, along with a side order of borderline-operatic emotional intensity. Yes, the climactic seaside confrontation between Ethan and Ambrose (first on motorcycles, then up-close and lethal) is outrageously over the top. But, well, it’s supposed to be. Also worth noting: The sly allusions to Alfred Hitchcock classics, especially “Notorious” (the racetrack sequence and the entire Ethan/Nyah relationship) and “North by Northwest” (Ambrose’s back-and-forth with an underling played by Richard Roxburgh echoes the vaguely kinky give-and-take between James Mason and Martin Landau). THE SCORE: 3 ½ out of 5 stars. 3. Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (2011) Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock THE PITCH: After Ethan Hunt is (wrongly) blamed for destroying a significant section of the Kremlin, the Impossible Missions Force is temporarily disbanded. On his own, he employs three comrades — techie Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), special op Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and “intelligence analyst” William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) — to stop a deranged Russian nuclear strategist (Michael Nyqvist) from triggering World War III because… because… well, because he wants to. THE RUNDOWN: Making a smashingly successful debut as a live-action director, Brad Bird (“The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles”) propels the globe-hopping narrative at an entertainingly brisk clip, pausing only for such sensational set pieces as Ethan’s death-defying dangling outside an upper-floor of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa (a.k.a. “The Tallest Structure in the World”) and a climactic confrontation on various levels of a Mumbai automated parking garage. And yet: The primary appeal of “M:I4” is its wink-wink willingness to repeatedly demonstrate how the high-tech gadgetry sometimes doesn’t work — at one point, even the usually reliable mask-making dingus is glitched — forcing Ethan and his teammates to improvise while ratcheting up the suspense. (This occasionally happened on the old TV show as well.) Only complaint: Franchise mainstay Ving Rhames appears only in a fleeting cameo as ace computer hacker Luther Stickell. (By the way: You know that Ethan/Julia marriage in in the third “M:I” movie? It is more or less removed from the equation here. THE SCORE: 4 out of 5 stars. 2. Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (2015) REX/Shutterstock THE PITCH: Overcoming efforts by CIA director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) to absorb the IMF into his agency, Ethan leads compatriots Benji Dunn, William Brandt and Luther Stickell in a mission to neutralize The Syndicate, a rogue outfit led by fanatical former British spy Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Another Brit operative — the formidable Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson)— may be friend or foe. THE RUNDOWN: Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie keeps the franchise firing on all cylinders while effectively emphasizing, to a degree greater than in previous “M:I” films, IMF teamwork as much as Ethan’s solo derring-do. The most memorable sequence is at once low-tech and highly suspenseful, an ingeniously sustained, cleverly Hitchcockian backstage skirmish during a performance at a Vienna opera house. (Bad guys wish to assassinate someone; Ethan doesn’t want that someone to be assassinated.) And it’s nice to see that Ethan isn’t the only one who gets to kick ass during a final-reel face-off: Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust is a knockout as she causes grievous bodily harm to a villain who foolishly mistakes her for just another pretty face. THE SCORE: 4 ½ out of 5 stars. 1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) Chiabella James THE PITCH: Ethan once again deals with a hostile takeover attempt as new CIA boss Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett) demands that her hand-picked operative, August Walker (Henry Cavill), go along for the ride to observe and report (and, maybe, eliminate) while our hero tries to retrieve three plutonium cores seized by The Apostles, an offshoot of The Syndicate (see “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation”). THE RUNDOWN: The latest and best entry in the ongoing franchise certainly can stand on its own as a rousing rush of breakneck excitement and sensational stunt work. (Credit “Rogue Nation” writer-director Christopher McQuarrie with leaping over the bar he raised in the previous outing.) But for anyone who’s been following the adventures of Ethan Hunt over the past 22 years, “Fallout” is all the more satisfying as a cinematic class reunion, with pointed allusions to images and incidents from previous “M:I” movies (note the reprise of Ethan’s rock-climbing from the opening of “M:I2”)and welcome return appearances by long-time and recently introduced series regulars. As Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise has aged gracefully into something like gravitas while maintaining his boundless and infectious enthusiasm. And Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell and Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn do standout double-duty as backup crew and Greek chorus, playing it fast-and-frantically straight during the turbo-charged action but also offering wink-wink observations about Ethan’s trademark penchant for unpremeditated risk-taking. All that’s missing is a paraphrase of Britney Spears: “Whoops! He did it again!” The very best thing about “Fallout,” of course, is that it leaves you hoping that Ethan Hunt will keep on doing it. THE SCORE: 5 out of 5 stars.<doc-sep>“My name is Christopher McQuarrie. I am the writer, director, and co-producer of ‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout.’ The biggest challenge of this sequence is constantly maintaining a connection with Tom Cruise, knowing that Tom Cruise is going to jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet, and that the camera is going to stay with him. When Tom and I discussed this idea, right away the challenge became making it the most subjective sequence we possibly could, putting the audience with the character of Ethan Hunt. And that means that everything that Tom does, as he’s jumping out of his plane, the camera operator has to do with him in reverse. So of course, this shot right here, once this starts, we were determined to have no cuts from this moment until Tom reaches the ground. Just prior to this clip starting, he’d had a conflict with Henry Cavill, and Henry Cavill has disconnected his air hose as a way of getting Ethan Hunt out of his way, so he can jump out of the plane. So Craig O’Brien, our camera operator, is jumping backwards out of the plane, and Tom has to come towards him and come within three feet of the camera to remain in focus. Which means Tom has to stop himself, and he has a three inch margin of error because of the light at that time of day. It’s very difficult to maintain focus, and we had exactly three minutes of light everyday to gather these shots, and if you didn’t get the shot, it meant you came back the next day.” “What’s the matter, Hunt, afraid of a little lightning?” “The decision here to have all of the sound drop out was a practical decision to maintain that subjective reality, put you in Tom’s experience, and Tom is now coordinating all of his movements with Craig O’Brien. They’re actually doing a dance, so that we can maintain all of the storytelling without ever cutting, and so you’ll notice that the other actor is falling in the background there. His movements had to be coordinated with Tom, and then of course, the real danger in the sequence was a mid-air impact in which everyone could have collided — Tom, the camera operator, and the actor.” “Walker!”<doc-sep>
Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible - Fallout (Courtesy Paramount Pictures) Here's what you need to know going into Mission: Impossible - Fallout, the sixth entry in Tom Cruise's 22-year-old spy-movie franchise: absolutely nothing. Sure, there's some continuity between Fallout and the last adventure, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. There's the dangerous band of former spies turned terrorists, led by the nefarious Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). There's also Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), a former MI6 agent whose partnership with Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team continues with the same question marks and asterisks attached. These minor details are the furthest the series has gone in developing story lines from one film to the next, and yet it doesn't matter. If you've never seen a "Mission: Impossible" film before - or, more likely, if you've seen dozens of other films in the interim and given over your mental space to countless other aesthetic and life experiences - there's no need to worry. You won't miss a beat. Tom Cruise in a still from Mission: Impossible - Fallout (courtesy Paramount Pictures) For that reason alone, the Mission: Impossible series stands apart from the typical blockbuster franchise, which is about world-building and paying off dense histories that can take several films to develop. It would be unthinkable, for example, to drop into the sixth Harry Potter film cold and expect to grasp the stakes and emotional complexity of an epic story more than a dozen hours in the telling. A superhero team-up such as Avengers: Infinity War - or any of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for that matter - demands the knowledge of its predecessors. And what's more, it expects you to remember the details as if you watched the films yesterday. It can make summer escapism feel like homework. There's a related point that's more important and feeds into why Mission: Impossible has been so great for so long. Because there's no interest in a larger mythology, the only true mission the sequels have is to keep topping their predecessors. Fallout and Rogue Nation are the first two to share a director, Christopher McQuarrie. But after Brian De Palma set the standard with the first Mission: Impossible, it's been a game of Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better among some of the most skilled craftsmen in the business, with entries by John Woo, the Hong Kong action maestro behind Hard Boiled and Face/Off; J.J. Abrams, who created the superb TV spy series Alias and went on to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens; and Brad Bird, the writer-director of The Incredibles films for Pixar. The plug-and-play adventures of Ethan Hunt, like James Bond movies, include a handful of compulsory elements - "Your mission, should you choose to accept it," "This message will self-destruct in five seconds," the unmaskings, among others - and the standard byzantine plotting about terrorist cells, rogue agents and other mischief-makers hellbent on mass destruction. Tom Cruise in a still from Mission: Impossible - Fallout (courtesy Paramount Pictures) But starting with the break-in at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in the first "Mission: Impossible," the films have always been built around the set pieces, those discrete units of suspense and derring-do that have steadily escalated with each sequel. Fans of the series are probably more likely to identify the individual film as "the one where he climbs Burj Khalifa" or "the one where he's underwater" or "the one with the helicopters" than by their actual titles. You can watch "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" a half-dozen times and still not remember what "ghost protocol" means, but you won't forget Tom Cruise dangling off the world's tallest building. Even harder to remember is the pretext for Ethan Hunt's putting himself in harm's way. Hunt dangles more than 100 floors above the ground from the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in "Ghost Protocol" - with only a malfunctioning pair of high-tech climbing gloves separating him from disaster - for the mundane purpose of accessing a computer server room. Hunt dives into an underwater vault for three minutes (and quite a bit of change) in Rogue Nation for the purpose of swapping out a security profile so an IMF team member can access a building. Again, there's the overarching goal of protecting the world from catastrophic danger - loose nukes, viral outbreaks, toxic chemicals, the usual - but whatever it takes to get Tom Cruise to dangle 1,700 feet above the streets of Dubai will do.