Ranking the ‘Missions: Impossible’: Which is the best?
Within the span of 20 years, Tom Cruise’s big movie gamble has paid off in spades, propelling the Mission: Impossible series through eight films, seemingly wrapping up this cycle with M:I - The Final Reckoning. In this conclusion to 2023’s hectic nail-biter Dead Reckoning Part 1, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) teams up again with Grace (Hayley Atwell), a slippery-fingered pickpocket, plus Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), to dismantle the Entity, an all-encompassing AI that destroys humankind’s ability to perceive reality.
In the final entry, Hunt heads to the Sevastopol, a sunken Russian sub where the missing part of the puzzle lies that can destroy the Entity. His deep dive to the lurching sub is one of the best sequences ever (Cruise reportedly passed out from holding his breath too long while filming), leading to some spectacular imagery as he ascends.
There are great sequences here, nods to early Hollywood (a biplane fight), but the weight of wrapping up eight movies requires so much back-story exposition, you feel like you’re trapped in one of those “Previously on…” intros. In classic M:I fashion, the story is outlandishly interconnected, so it takes a lot to get onboard this finale. But once it takes off, you’ll enjoy the new peaks and feel a twinge of regret that this team apparently is ready to part ways and start living their lives again without a pressing mission.
Let’s look at the rest of the entries over the past two decades, ranked here from least favorite to best:
Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)
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This one was directed by action legend John Woo, but the tone never really gets M:I quite right. Thandie Newton and Dougray Scott are never the most mesmerizing of M:I GFs and villains, respectively; not even Robert Towne and William Goldman could perk up this script of a search to destroy Chimera, a deadly virus that rogue IMF agent Ambrose (Scott) wants to steal so he can peddle the cure. The stunts—such as Hunt and Ambrose aiming flying motorcycles at each other mid-air—seemed almost cartoonish at the time.
Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)
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Benefits from an effectively cold-blooded villain, lethal arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour-Hoffman), looking to grab a biological weapon known as “Rabbit’s Foot” (always with the nicknames) before Hunt and his gang can stop him. P-Ho has some great fun, chuckling his way through the pain he unleashes, though IMF Agent Keri Russell never really gets to shine much in this outing. J.J. Abrams takes over directing in this serviceable, if not too memorable, entry.
Mission: Impossible 4
Ghost Protocol (2011) The one where Cruise wears a hoodie. Now officially “disavowed” by the IMF, Hunt and his team are looking for stolen nuclear launch codes in Moscow. The actions scenes are more about Cruise doing things like scaling Burj Khalifa skyscraper, perhaps signaling an era where the actor’s commitment to doing his own stunts would become a main marketing point. Jeremy Renner (IMF agent Brandt) and Lea Seydoux (assassin Sabine) add some interesting spice to the mix.
Mission: Impossible 5
Rogue Nation (2015) This follow-up does the IMF “outsider” equation even better: Hunt and his team are working with precious little backup from the US government, but rogue MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) seems a great match for Ethan, at least in the field. (We’re not so sure how trustworthy she is.) Christopher McQuarrie takes over for (The Incredibles director) Brad Bird, and everything seems to gel from here on out.
Mission: Impossible (1996)
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Yes, the Brian De Palma entry that started it all had to do an awful lot of spadework, but the key elements are there that make the M:I series such a cinematic kick: the skewed Dutch camera angles signaling Hunt’s paranoia as he meets IMF director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) in a Prague restaurant and realizes he can’t trust him (cue exploding fish tank!); the gallery of easy-use latex masks that not only allow Hunt to impersonate anybody, but somehow make him even taller; and of course, the classic sequence of ballet-like Cruise descending on a wire into IMF headquarters to steal files. Sure, the script was bonkers, but it had a crackpot sensibility that made sense to launch this show based on a TV series.
Mission: Impossible 6
Fallout (2018) Terrorist Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) returns, looking for plutonium cores to control the world order, and CIA director Sloane (Angela Bassett) sends a questionable agent, August Walker (Henry Cavill), to assist Ethan and crew in retrieving the cores first. The bathroom fight sequence in Paris—and the duel HALO jump from a plane that precedes it—are legit classics already; add to that a stunning helicopter fight at the finale (Cruise, again, showing off his skills at defying death), and this one deserves a high ranking indeed.
Mission: Impossible 7
Dead Reckoning (2023) We come close to the end of the series with another reinvention. The old crew is here, but add Hayley Atwell and the formula gets a fresh boost, with a dash of ’60s European spy movie appeal: their comic car chase sequence in a tiny Fiat 500 Abarth mines new levels of humor, and the two have the easy chemistry of, say, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade. This one introduces ever-cackling villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) and ends with a pair of fantastic set pieces involving a high-speed motorcycle plunge off a cliff and a plummeting Orient Express train car that is the essence of nail-biting action.
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Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning is now showing, from Paramount Pictures.
