Tom Cruise has been spinning white hair for thirty years by running very quickly and jumping from much too high buildings. In the role of secret agent Ethan Hunt, whom he has taken on since 1996, the actor embodies a breathtaking franchise which has continued to redefine the notion of action blockbuster. While the last part, Impossible mission: The Final Reckoningwas released in theaters on May 21, a week after its off -competition screening at the Cannes Film Festival, we decided to get back into the saga and classify its eight films.
8. “Mission Impossible 2” (2000)
Let it be said right away, there is not really a bad movie Impossible mission… But there is still one who is much worse than the others. After the instant classic made by Brian de Palma in 1996, John Woo recovers the franchise and he wants it to fart. From the opening credits, saturated with electric guitars, Tom Cruise, in his long hair period, swings his glasses to the screen while they explode … The tone is set. In this very testosterone suite with great reinforcement of motorcycles and leather jackets, Ethan Hunt seems to have suddenly developed the skills of Power Rangers, multiplying the triple saltos and the high kicks. The contrast with the first part is … confusing.
The film is not without interest and digs patterns that will become recurrent in the saga: masks and especially Tom Cruise which climbs stuff with bare hands. But this second chapter is the one who has aged the most badly, weighed down by his excess kitsch (notably a criminal abuse of slow motion), fairly ugly digital effects and a laughable romance between Tom Cruise and Thandiwe Newton.
7. “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning” (2025)
With a first exhibition game as long as it is indicated, the last part is a real disappointment and almost seems to forget everything that has made the flavor of the saga. For their last lap, Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise chain tributes, but struggle to surprise us – or to entertain us. Despite some remarkable action sequences in the last part, including one in a submarine and another aboard a cuckoo, this conclusion never reaches the brilliance of the previous shutters. It may have been time for it to stop.
6. “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning” (2023)
The seventh part of the saga obviously contains its share of breathtaking sequences – the bomb at the airport! The chase in Rome !! The train suspended in the void !!! – and the successful introduction of the character of Grace, Pickpocket played by Hayley Atwell. But it is also the episode that suffers the most from its length (2h43 all the same), weighed down by laborious exhibition sequences. However, we are delighted with the return of Kittridge!
5. “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” (2015)
This excellent opus remains unforgettable, if only for the super badass arrival of Rebecca Ferguson in one of the most successful sequences of the whole saga, that of the Vienna Opera. The franchise, now controlled by Christopher McQuarrie, finally finds with the character of Ilsa Faust a heroine at the height of Ethan Hunt. And the action scenes are obviously breathless. Ethan, now in the fight against his own agency, must face Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a bad guy and turtleneck (Christopher McQuarrie would have a tooth against Steve Jobs?). On the program, a motorcycle chase on a subjective camera and a breathtaking sequence in a huge tank filled with water.
Like his hero, it is also a film that does not seek to chichiter and becomes more and more aware of its own absurdity. From his opening scene, with Ethan hung on a walk -in plane, Rogue Nation wants to initiate a new era in the saga: less play, more action. Moreover, after the loss of his wife in the previous aspect, Ethan Hunt also becomes a more discreet and silent hero, starting his transition into quasi-star of the mute.
4. “Mission Impossible 3” (2006)
It is well known, the profession of spy is incompatible with a happy family life … and an action hero would be nothing without a woman to save. Immediately married, Ethan Hunt therefore finds himself bereaved (unless). In this film built in flashbacks, the legendary agent will in any case try not to be, trying to rescue his wife kidnapped by a very revengeful Philip Seymour Hoffman. The actor who disappeared in 2014 embodies the best villain of the whole saga, obsessed with his now cult “rabbit paw”.
Directed by JJ Abrams, this third film almost looks like a long episode ofAliasthe filmmaker’s series, which recycles the same themes, the same archetypes and downright the same actors (Greg Grunberg). It is also the arrival of the character of Benji, played by Simon Pegg, who will become one of the central elements of the new team.
In addition to the usual waterfalls (notably a very, very anxiety -provoking sequence in Shanghai), the film is punctuated by excellent replicas (“At some point, audacity becomes bullshit”tells us Luther.) Tom Cruise runs a lot – even more than usual – and confirms his status as a badass hero. When Ethan’s partner, in full shooting, asks him how many bullets he has left, he answers her “enough” (We will understand later that in fact, he had only one).
3. “Impossible mission: ghost protocol” (2011)
It is in this fourth film that we find one of the most memorable (and anxiety-provoking) action sequences of the whole saga: that in which Tom Cruise climbing with bare hands La Burj Khalifa in Dubai (the highest skyscraper in the world, with 828 meters above the ground). In this component, where the team must work without its usual means, nothing works: masks, gloves, the message that self -destructs … Ethan and his acolytes are therefore pushed into their most extreme entrenchments, for our greatest pleasure.
Despite a major offense (appoint Sabine Moreau the hit man played by Léa Seydoux), Ghost protocol Is undeniably one of the most entertaining and that where the saga reaches delusional proportions … exploding the Kremlin? Why not!
Directed by Brad Bird, he started on the wheel hats, with the escape of Ethan mysteriously imprisoned in a prison in Eastern Europe. In the process, the agent finds himself infiltrating the Kremlin, with the help of Benji, who became a field agent. The sequence of the invisibility panel in the corridor of the fortress is one of the most inventive moments of the saga. Christopher McQuarrie, who reworked the scenario behind the scenes, will then resume the reins of the franchise during the next component (and this, until the last).
2. “Mission Impossible” (1996)
Without him, the saga would simply not exist. Signed Brian de Palma, the first Impossible mission is a spy and action film as much as an author’s film, overflowing with style and choice of daring narration. Throughout the first half, the film takes its time to install the plot: Ethan Hunt’s world collapses when he loses his whole team in a mission that is wrong and finds himself wrongly accused.
Like all saga of action, it must have done in film bidding in film. But from this first opus, there are high caliber gadgets (the masks, already, but also an explosive chewing gum) and above all, breathtaking sequences, in particular the final confrontation in (and on) a Eurostar train.
Without forgetting the most cult sequence of the franchise, that where Tom Cruise commits a breakage in Langley, at the CIA seat, suspended by a thread. A lesson in writing and staging, always as breathless by the hundredth viewing, which makes this first part a historic film.
1. “Mission Impossible: Fallout” (2018)
It is not by pure chauvinism that we place at the top of the list Impossible mission Parisian. It is also and above all because it represents the ultimate culmination of the saga and its most modern iteration. Carried by the grandiose music of Scottish composer Lorne Balfe, the film starts with a completely delusional sequence shot, during which Tom Cruise really starts an airplane for a leap in free fall at high altitude. All filmed in the air by the cinematographer Craig O’Brien.
This virtuoso sequence, which required more than one hundred taken (and jumps, therefore), redefines for good the modern image of Tom Cruise as the greatest hero of modern action cinema, ready to push the limits of the franchise by performing his own stunts (he thus becomes the first actor to perform this type of jump).
The actor is also accompanied in this film by a remarkable female casting: Vanessa Kirby immediately established herself in the role of the white widow, without forgetting Michelle Monaghan, Rebecca Ferguson or Angela Bassett.
The film, which explores the consequences of all the choices made by Ethan Hunt in the saga, firmly holds his theme without releasing the tension for a second. A landing on the roof of the Grand Palais, a shattering fighting scene in public toilets, an mind-boggling sequence in the streets of Paris (because among all the most dangerous waterfalls in the world, there is also taking the star roundabout in the wrong way) and a number of indelculable twists … Until his final as stressful as moving in the mountains of cashmere helicopters followed by a naked hand confrontation between Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill, Fallout represents the peak of the franchise.
