Every 'Mission: Impossible' Movie, Ranked
Vote up the Mission: Impossible movies that really pack in the action.
As of this writing, the eighth installment in the Mission: Impossible film franchise is currently in the casting phase. While plot details of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two are scarce, it will be director Christopher McQuarrie’s fourth entry in the series that began in 1996.
The series is still chugging along almost 30 years after the original movie, and the franchise has evolved considerably since those days. It began as the first project produced by Tom Cruise’s production company, Cruise/Wagner Production, and was an adaptation of a TV series of the same name that ran from 1966 to 1973, with a two-season revival in the late 1980s. Like that series, the first Mission: Impossible movie was espionage-heavy and wove a complicated tale of intrigue and betrayal. For those who are familiar with the most recent entries in the series, which are much more action and stunt-heavy, the first Mission: Impossible might seem like a movie from a different franchise altogether.
This list will chart the entire Mission: Impossible movie franchise from 1996 until the most recent film, and you can vote for your favorites below. For new fans, it’ll help you know where to start. For diehards, hopefully it’ll help you keep the movies straight.
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The Mission: Set two years after Rogue Nation, Mission Impossible: Fallout sees Cruise and McQuarrie reunite to continue the story begun in the previous film. The Syndicate has rebranded as “The Apostles,” and even though their leader Solomon Lane was captured in the last movie, his followers are moving forward with a plan to acquire nuclear bombs that they’ll use to destabilize the world. It’s up to Ethan, Luther, Benji, and Ilsa to stop them.
The Impossible: Although the US government has reinstated the IMF, its status is still on shaky ground, and it’s essentially under the CIA’s supervision. This means Ethan is forced to welcome CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) onto the team. Sure enough, he turns out to be a double agent working for the Apostles. He also plays the Owen Davian card and locates Ethan’s now-ex-wife Julia and threatens her life, which once again adds personal stakes to the mission for Ethan - although it does also give Cruise and Monaghan's characters a chance for closure.
Standout Stunt: It has to be the HALO jump that kicks off the sequence when Ethan and Walker infiltrate Paris early in the film. It was originally planned to be a 12,000 ft jump instead of a true HALO jump at 25,000 ft, but when Cruise broke his ankle while filming a rooftop chase, the production moved the shoot from the UK to the UAE, which approved the higher jump.
- 2568 VOTES
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The Mission: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is the first film in the franchise directed by Christopher McQuarrie. In it, yet another failed mission leads to the IMF being absorbed into the CIA, leaving Ethan out in the cold, while Brandt, Benji, and Luther continue with the Company. Ethan’s only close ally in the world is Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), an MI6 operative and possible double agent working for The Syndicate, which also happens to be the main enemy organization in the movie.
The Impossible: Standing in Ethan and company’s way is The Syndicate, a shadowy organization of ex-spies which turns out to be the creation of MI6. Think of it as the IMF but with even fewer scruples. It was created to allow the British government to carry out unpleasant missions like political assassinations in order to maintain deniability, and it’s adept enough at its operations to get the IMF shut down, at least temporarily. In this case, the Syndicate's loosely organized structure backfires when megalomaniacal member Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) commandeers the group to destabilize the world.
Standout Stunt: This one is a tie between the opening, which features Cruise clinging to a real Airbus 400 as it taxis and takes off, and the underwater heist sequence during which Cruise actually held his breath for six minutes.
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The Mission: In the seventh installment, Ethan, Luther, Benji, and newcomer Grace (Hayley Atwell) must stop a rogue AI called the Entity, which has gained sentience and threatens to control the world’s governments, markets, and the Internet itself. It also has a cadre of fanatical human followers led by Gabriel (Esai Morales), who are willing to kill to serve it. Two halves of a key are needed to control the Entity, the second of which Ethan secures from Gabriel during a heist on the Orient Express. The keys can access the Entity’s source code, which is located inside a Russian submarine at the bottom of the ocean, setting up a mission for the forthcoming Part Two.
The Impossible: Once again, a villain uses Ethan’s personal ties against him. This time, Gabriel forces Ethan to choose either Grace or Ilsa to kill, and by this point Ilsa and Ethan have started to become an item. Ilsa manages to free Grace but falls to Gabriel in the ensuing sword duel. Like many a spy in fiction, Ethan falling in love means bad news for his love interest.
Standout Stunt: While the Rome car chase is excellent, Ethan jumping a motorcycle off a cliff and then parachuting onto the speeding Orient Express is the most jaw-dropping. Since it was deemed to be the most dangerous stunt in the film, Cruise opted to shoot it first so that production wouldn’t be derailed if he got injured again.
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The Mission: In the fourth film in the series, directed by Brad Bird, Ethan finds himself incarcerated in a Russian prison, and then implicated along with the rest of the IMF for a bombing of the Kremlin, which forces the president to disavow the IMF entirely. With no official backing, Ethan and his new team - which consists of Benji, and newcomers Jane (Paula Patton) and Brandt (Jeremy Renner) - have to track down the real bomber. Codenamed “Cobalt,” he’s really Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), a fanatical Russian nuclear strategist who’s trying to start a nuclear war.
The Impossible: Losing the backing of the IMF is one thing - that happens to Ethan and company in nearly every movie, one way or another. But Hendricks and his associates are just as smart and technically advanced as Ethan’s crew, including possessing the same disguise-making technology.
Standout Stunt: When Ethan and company infiltrate a Dubai meeting during which Hendricks intends to buy nuclear launch codes, it involves Ethan climbing up the side of the world’s tallest skyscraper, the 2,722 foot Burj Khalifa, which Tom Cruise actually did - even though the production company planned to shoot most of it on much smaller set meant to resemble the skyscraper.
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The Mission: The third entry, directed by J.J. Abrams, finds Ethan retired and engaged to a civilian, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Naturally, he gets called in for one last mission, to rescue an IMF agent and former pupil who’s been captured while investigating an arms dealer named Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Like it did in the first movie, the mission goes sideways, the agent is killed, and Ethan and his team are suspected of betraying the agency. To clear their names, they have to stop Davian from carrying out his sinister plan to acquire a biological weapon called “Rabbit’s Foot,” which he plans to sell to terrorists. This film also introduces Simon Pegg as IMF tech expert Benji Dunn, who would become a series regular.
The Impossible: Once again, Ethan’s personal life gets in the way. Julia doesn’t know about his life as an IMF agent, but the ruthless Davian forces the issue by kidnapping her and forcing Ethan to secure Rabbit’s Foot for him. (It should also be noted that Ethan spontaneously marries Julia during this period, while she’s still in the dark). Many double crosses later, Ethan and Julia kill Davian and his henchmen and go on their honeymoon together.
Standout Stunt: Mission: Impossible III doesn’t quite put Tom Cruise’s life at risk like the other movies do. But it does have some memorable set pieces, including the helicopter chase through a Berlin windmill field and the fighter jet attack on the prison convoy transporting Davian while it crosses a bridge. You try blowing up a car and making it flip over on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
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- 6529 VOTES
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The Mission: In the inaugural entry of the series, Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, a field agent for the fictional Impossible Mission Force, a spy agency within the US government that handles all the jobs others can’t. On a mission to Prague, Ethan’s entire team is seemingly wiped out. Soon, he learns the IMF set his team up, suspecting a mole in their operation. Since Ethan is the sole survivor, he’s suspected to be the mole, and he’s forced to go rogue. On the run, Ethan assembles a new team that includes Claire (Emmanuelle Béart), the thought-to-be-dead wife of their team leader, Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), plus disgraced tech expert Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and helicopter pilot Franz Krieger (Jean Reno). Together, they must steal a list of CIA agents to sell to an arms dealer in the hopes of exposing the mole and earning their jobs back.
The Impossible: Spoiler, but the mole turns out to be Jim himself, who also was thought to be killed in Prague but survived. The story decision to make Jim Phelps the traitor and then kill him off was not popular among fans of the original TV series, as Phelps was a beloved character.
Standout Stunt: The confrontation between Ethan and Phelps on roof of a speeding train would top the list in any other movie, but this one also has the sequence where Ethan has to descend via cable into a CIA mainframe room that’s monitored with security sensors so sensitive that they can detect a drop of sweat - and Tom Cruise didn’t even have to risk his life to pull it off.
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The Mission: Ethan Hunt is tasked with stopping rogue IMF agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), who’s stolen both a deadly virus called Chimera as well as its antidote, Bellerophon. Ethan assembles a new team to stop him, which includes the professional thief Nyah (Thandiwe Newton), who's also Ambrose’s ex-girlfriend. The plan is to have Nyah seduce Ambrose to get to the bio material, in exchange for expunging Nyah’s criminal record. However…
The Impossible: Obviously, Ethan catches feelings for Nyah, which Ambrose exploits to his advantage by allowing her to inject herself with Chimera and then trying to use her to start a pandemic, which he will conveniently be well positioned to profit from. It’s up to Ethan and some classic disguise work to get the cure, stop Ambrose, and save Nyah. Ethan and Nyah ride off into the proverbial sunset together but do not wind up a couple, and it’s never explained why.
Standout Stunt: This one opens with Ethan on vacation, free-climbing - or, climbing a mountain without any equipment. In reality, Cruise did have a thin safety cable and a stunt double. But he really did spend five days climbing the 600 ft cliff at Dead Horse Point, Utah to get the shot. Best of all, it has no bearing on the plot. It’s just there to show us what an adrenaline junkie Ethan is, lest you think he only jumps motorcycles onto trains because he has to.
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