2 Mission 2 Impossible

I was waiting for the (hopefully) final installment in the Mission: Impossible series since its “Part One” was released. Just like with TV shows I’m not interested much in waiting for conclusions between installments, so I didn’t bother with the seventh film in 2023. I wasn’t in a big rush, as I remembered not particularly liking most of the newer entries. Now that it’s here, I took it as an opportunity to revisit the entire series.

Definitely some surprising results, so even with almost half of them being pretty bad I enjoyed doing this. The notes below are what I had typed up for my upcoming August media diet post as I watched them all in this month. It ended up fairly wordy, so I figured I’d split these out into their own post.

Obviously: Spoilers for all eight movies. Don’t read before watching.

Mission: Impossible (1996) – ⭐️ 8/10

A timeless classic, peak of the series.

Mission: Impossible II (2000) – ⭐️ 3/10

Holy cow, I had not realized how hard they jumped the shark with this sequel. Face masks for everyone all the time! In so many scenes Tom Cruise literally looked more like Ben Stiller doing him on SNL than himself. I was wondering why this movie had so many Gladiator-style sad music scenes – turns out it was literally the same Zimmer and Gerrard combo doing the score. And why the heck is Anthony Hopkins in this movie?! An uncredited appearance for barely a few minutes, and with some of the dumbest dialog ever. But the ridiculous love-story takes the cake, it has no basis and yet half the movie revolves around it. Genuinely shocked there even were any more sequels after this. A hard downgrade from my teenage-brained 7 to a (generous!) 3.

The best thing about this movie is the Limp Bizkit version of the theme song.

Mission: Impossible III (2006) – ⭐️ 6/10

That’s better – rating it down from 7 to 6: Solid, but nothing great. Interestingly, I had basically zero recollection of this movie. I only remembered that when seeing it on release I fell for the movie theater’s damn upsell-pricing and got myself a massive one liter Coke (maybe even 1.5 liters). My bladder almost burst thanks to the 2h+ runtime and I actually had to step out before the climax. That is something I try to avoid like the plague. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it was this experience that impacted how I approached going to the movies ever since – rather risking to die from dehydration than drinking too much before and during a film.

It was fun seeing Aaron Paul in a super brief scene, a few years ahead of Breaking Bad. Good additions to the cast in general: Keri Russel and Laurence Fishburne in particular stood out, and of course Philip Seymour Hoffman elevated the entire thing with the intensity and seriousness he always brought. Fascinating that this movie came out in the same year as Casino Royale, it feels much more like a relict of the 90s.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) – ⭐️ 6/10

I dislike a lot about this movie: It has the worst interpretation of the theme… it’s almost impressive making that banger into a version that doesn’t slap. The CGI explosion of the Kremlin looks comically bad. Doing Dubai’s publicity bidding is shameful.

All that said, the movie itself is fairly decent. I’m not sure why I only rated this 4/10 originally, so this gets an unprecedented rating upgrade to 6. I liked part three a bit better (mainly as this one starts to lean more into “Marvel humor”), but both are on fairly equal footing. The nod-back to its predecessor at the end was a nice touch.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) – ⭐️ 7/10

Pretty decent, easily the best one since the original movie. Still not quite back on the same level, so I’m changing my original rating down from 8 to 7. The ending was a bit silly and over-the-top – and once again a romance that felt unearned and underdeveloped has to carry more than it is able to.

The film overall felt rather similar to one of the Craig-era Bonds. It’s interesting how Bond went into a more M:I direction at the same time – I’m not sure which franchise tried to changed more into the other one.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) – ⭐️ 4/10

This seems to be when the stupid “ZOMG LOOK AT THE STUNTS”¹ marketing fully took over. Crazy how many people seem to consider this one peak, it doesn’t even come close to Rogue Nation let alone the first movie. Whoever edited this owes me 30 minutes, it had absolutely no business running for 2.5 hours.

The overly long cold open was already not great – having Wolf Blitzer in there as a knowing participant felt extremely gimmicky and took me out of it. The theme version sucks again. I like Henry Cavill well enough, but he was terrible in this. The entire parachute/HALO plan was so idiotic – like a pre-determined set piece that some “story” was shoe-horned around. But still nowhere near as dumb as the final act – did two 15 year-olds high on weed write that?

• “Yo, what about a helicopter crash after he rams them mid-air?!”
• “Sick bro! But after the crash we make it… crash again! It falls over a cliff!!!”
• “Totally!! But get this: The loading clamp will catch on the mountain surface in the physically most implausible way so it is super suspenseful!”
• “Genius! But I can do you one better. We ALSO DO THAT PART TWICE!!”
• “Duuuude!!!!!”

The idea of some continuity with Rogue Nation is nice, both in terms of a “bigger villain” and a love interest that could get some actual depth – but unfortunately but the direction they took this story was dumb. The pathos-dripping narration of the CIA boss over the final scene was big cringe, already setting up the next two parts for failure.

But: Still not as bad as the second movie, so I’m sticking with my original 4/10 rating.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) – ⭐️ 4/10

Here we go, the first one I hadn’t already seen in the past.

First thought, before I even start watching: Why the hell is this 2 hours and 43 minutes long?! And that is only the first part? Second thought, within the first 15 minutes: Good lord, please don’t do a fucking origin story. Retconning an arch-nemesis into the canon at this point? You have got to be kidding me.
It’s not even really worth it anymore to comment on the way women are handled in this series – that tiny bit of continuity from the last one? Actually forget about it, here’s a new woman that Ethan is now deeply and passionately in everlasting love with.

“AI is the villain” is a choice that within just a few years aged worse than Tom Cruise himself, and he really isn’t aging well anymore at this point. Several times throughout the movie it took me out of it how he looked almost a bit like in Vanilla Sky. Don’t get me wrong, “AI” is evil – but the movie decides to retreat a clichéd Skynet version of that trope, as opposed to the much more interesting socio-political conflict we’re suffering under presently. That’s why I said the speech at the end of the previous entry set this up for failure: It already made it clear that M:I is not able to handle the kind of “extinction level event” stakes it is now taking on. And it isn’t what these movies should be about: The reason why the first movie remains peak is because it ultimately was about human connection, with all the spy stuff as a backdrop.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) – ⭐️ 4/10

Absolutely insane that they managed to make this even longer. And what kinda Indiana Jones ass bullshit is this – “Inuit fishermen” found the magic keys to the evil AI. Come on, man. To the surprise of absolutely no one it turned out to be 100% inconsequential to the story that Gabriel was tied to Ethan’s “origin story”. He could have been some nobody with zero prior connections and it would not have made any difference whatsoever. I really can hardly put into words how much that particular plot detail needs to go fuck itself. It’d be insulting to even call this “writing”.

That’s not enough, though – we’re eight movies, so now the series gets its own Midi-chlorian moment and explains things nobody wanted to know: All this talk about “The Choice” was pretty cringe. I never cared about why or how Ethan or anyone else got into the IMF. And of course this other dude now reveals himself as Jim Phelps’ son, they were connected all along!! But: Seeing Rolf Saxon again was nice – somehow he managed to give his contrived inclusion in the plot some emotional heft.

I suppose the most unrealistic part of the movie was that the US had not just the semblance of a functioning government, but – lol, lmao even – a black woman as President. The entire governmental aspect was useless, seemingly only existing so that the Secretary of Defense can say his corny “The sonofabitch actually did it!” line at the end. The amount of circle-jerking about how awesome Ethan is was too damn high – much like the constant, repeated flashbacks to the previous movies.

It’s time to let this franchise die, or at least to stop treating it as Cruise’s personal thrill-ride vehicle and start making actual movies again.