Our mission, should we choose to accept it? Ranking every film in the Mission: Impossible franchise.
In the years since the classic 1966 espionage TV show was rebooted by Brian De Palma in 1996, Tom Cruise’s action franchise has gone on to become a modern Hollywood stalwart. While the films took a while to really find their footing, Mission: Impossible has also been one of the most reliably enjoyable franchises out there, with every entry having something to recommend it: balletic fight choreography; audacious, death-defying stunts; Shea Whigham.
As such, ranking the films largely comes down to personal taste. (Though you can probably guess which entry takes the lowest spot. That’s right: that one.)
The latest film in the franchise, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, is out in cinemas next week, and serves as a direct follow-up to 2021’s Dead Reckoning (originally titled Dead Reckoning – Part One).
Described by The Independent’s critic Clarisse Loughrey as “an inherently absurd” film that “also reaches such highs that it’s hard to really be that bothered”, The Final Reckoning looks poised to be one of the franchise’s most divisive films to date.
Here is The Independent’s ranking of every Mission: Impossible film, from the 1996 original to Final Reckoning…
8. Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Putting John Woo’s uber-glossy sequel in bottom place here is a little like declaring The Godfather Part III the worst of that trilogy: well, obviously. But while M:I-II struggles with self-seriousness and is a little too in love with its innumerable latex-mask plot twists, it’s still often incredibly fun. You’ve got Cruise with long hair, Thandiwe Newton giving a Mission: Impossible version of Catwoman as a slinky thief, and Metallica and Limp Bizkit providing the music cues, for goodness sake. Do you remember a single thing about Dougray Scott’s elaborate scheme to steal a lethal virus? Probably not. But you will likely recall how this film possesses arguably the greatest bit of terrible-amazing dialogue in the history of cinema: “This isn’t Mission: Difficult, Mister Hunt,” intones mysterious spy poppa Sir Anthony Hopkins, “it’s Mission: Impossible”. Huzzah!
7. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)
The latest – maybe last – instalment in the series annoyingly reflects the best and worst instincts of these things. There is a brilliant lightness of touch to the action here, notably a scene in which Ethan dangles perilously off the wing of a prop plane, but there’s also a stodginess and an almost Marvel-coded devotion to legacy and callbacks that weighs it down. The Final Reckoning is also long, clocking in at a grand 170 minutes, with at least 60 of those not especially earned. Perhaps it’s a villain problem – Esai Morales’s anonymous Gabriel and the all-seeing artificial intelligence known as The Entity, both introduced in 2023’s Dead Reckoning, remain far too silly to work. Or it’s the fact that this film has reportedly been filmed, edited and endlessly tweaked for close to three years. Either way it feels too worked-on, as if no one could particularly figure out what the finished product should be. This is, of course, still largely entertaining. But it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if it marked the end of the road.
6. Mission: Impossible III (2006)
JJ Abrams made his feature directorial debut here after David Fincher dropped out (imagine!), and it can’t help but play like an extended episode of his TV series Alias as a result. That long-running spy drama cast Jennifer Garner as a secret agent attempting to preserve some semblance of a private life – and Ethan more or less goes through the same predicament here, as we meet him in the midst of marital bliss with Michelle Monaghan’s lovely Julia, who is ignorant of her husband’s espionage escapades. Overall, the pacing is a little off and the set pieces aren’t particularly novel – Cruise took a salary cut as Paramount were nervous about spending big on this one – but it has one major ace up its sleeve: Philip Seymour Hoffman, as a slippery arms dealer, is unsurprisingly brilliant here, and comfortably remains the franchise’s greatest villain.
5. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023)
There is such shiny ease to Christopher McQuarrie’s handling of these characters and the form of these movies that Dead Reckoning is by and large a total pleasure. The set pieces remain breathtaking (a Venice car chase featuring Ethan and Hayley Atwell’s ebullient pick-pocket Grace in a tiny vehicle is the highlight) and there is a knowing silliness to the increasing absurdity on display: Vanessa Kirby playing Hayley Atwell playing Vanessa Kirby is exactly the kind of nonsense these films have perfected of late. But the attempts to grant Ethan a tragic backstory never really come off – Mission: Impossible hasn’t historically needed this type of thing, so why start now? – while the demise of Rebecca Ferguson’s marvellous Ilsa Faust shamefully unravels all the rewarding time spent in the two previous movies not making her just another one-shot female character in this franchise. In light of The Final Reckoning, it may be Mission: Impossible’s proper jump-the-shark moment.
4. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
The wince-inducing sequence in which Ethan climbs Dubai’s Burj Khalifa skyscraper still holds the title for most impressive stunt in these films, which makes it slightly curious that director Brad Bird wasn’t invited back. Still, he did an impressive job of kicking the franchise into a new era. There is a noticeable split down the middle in Mission: Impossible just as Christopher McQuarrie (unbilled here but responsible for reworking the script mid-shoot) enters the picture. The films are suddenly funnier, more graceful in their ambitious stunt-work, and more rooted in ensemble-cast teamwork. But there are also growing pains: Jeremy Renner’s short-lived, possible Ethan replacement is deeply bland, while Michael Nyqvist’s nuclear strategist ended up the blueprint for this franchise’s increasingly rote villains.
3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)
It practically goes without saying that MI6 agent Ilsa (“Rebecca Ferguson best of the yellow satin dress” has been viewed more than 26,000 times on YouTube, I should add) is an incredible shot in the arm for these movies just as they began to risk overkill. She’s the first Mission: Impossible supporting character – and certainly first female character – who feels as if they are Ethan’s conceptual equal: heroic, complicated, slightly maddening in their derring-do. Beyond Ilsa, though, Rogue Nation is a smooth operation, heavy on spectacle (that cargo plane opening sequence!) and moving at a brisk clip, as Ethan and his team take on The Syndicate, aka secret agents who’ve gone bad.
2. Mission: Impossible (1996)
It’s quite remarkable how little Brian De Palma’s first film resembles what the franchise would ultimately become – and how quickly his brand of chilly, paranoid menace was excised. It makes it slightly difficult to rank, and I wouldn’t necessarily blame anyone who finds it a tad dull. But it’s incredibly distinct as these movies go, tense and occasionally macabre, with flashes of stylish violence. It sees Ethan accused of murdering his team (among them Kristin Scott Thomas and Emilio Estevez), before attempting to identify a traitor within the ranks of the Impossible Missions Force. There is such visceral thrill to the set pieces here – the massacre of Ethan’s comrades, the fish tank and the exploding bubble gum, that iconic dangle on the wires – that it’s difficult to ever dislike it. And the erotic charge to Ethan’s tangle with Vanessa Redgrave’s elegant arms dealer makes you miss when these films weren’t quite so chaste.
1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
The actual storytelling in Fallout is largely nonsensical. It’s something about suitcases of plutonium, and features far too many monologues that frame Ethan Hunt – and by extension, Tom Cruise – as the closest thing to Jesus Christ for the agents of the IMF. But holy smokes is Fallout just sensational as an action film. The Paris motorcycle chase. The speed-run along the South Bank. That cliff-edge helicopter closer. It’s all just so, so relentlessly fun. You also wonder, in light of the Reckoning two-parter, whether this would have worked better as a finale than a sixth film in an eight-movie franchise: story arcs come to a close, Henry Cavill – as a moustachioed hired gun – reloads his fists like they’re pistols, and Cruise snaps his ankle on camera. It was only ever going to be downhill from here.
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