The Mission: Impossible franchise has just grown once again with the release of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and here are all seven of the Mission: Impossible films ranked. Mission: Impossible is one of the most critically acclaimed action franchises of the modern era, with the movie series having gone on for nearly three decades. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One shows that the franchise is still going strong, with the film being a big contender when ranking the Mission: Impossible franchise.
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Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise is one of the superstar actor’s most iconic film series, with Cruise playing rogue IMF agent Ethan Hunt. The franchise has become known for its slick dialogue, extended action scenes, and realistic stunts, with Cruise constantly putting himself in danger in order to make the best film possible. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is only the most recent entry in the series, and with more Mission: Impossible movies on the way, this ranking could be seriously shaken up.
Mission: Impossible II
Released In 2000
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Mission: Impossible II PG-13ActionAdventureThriller
Mission: Impossible II is the second installment in the franchise, featuring Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt. Directed by John Woo, the film follows Hunt as he attempts to recover a dangerous bioweapon known as Chimera. Alongside his team, Hunt navigates treachery and high-stakes espionage while facing off against a rogue agent. The film is known for its choreographed action sequences and complex storytelling.
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*Availability in US Director John Woo Release Date May 24, 2000 Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Cast Tom Cruise , Dougray Scott , Thandiwe Newton , Ving Rhames , Richard Roxburgh , John Polson , Brendan Gleeson , Rade Šerbedžija , William Mapother , Dominic Purcell , Mathew Wilkinson , Nicholas Bell , Cristina Brogeras , Kee Chan , Kim Fleming , Alan Lovell , Dan Luxton , Christian Manon , Karl McMillan , Lester Morris , Kelly Ons , Nicholas Papademetriou , Brett Partridge , Candice Partridge , Natalie Reis , Daniel Roberts , Adriana Rodríguez , Sandra Rodríguez , Nada Rogic , Antonio Vargas Runtime 123 Minutes Expand
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Mission: Impossible II was the highest-grossing movie of 2000, which goes a long way to show how bizarre that pre-Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings era of tentpoles was. It’s a pretty standard-for-the-time sequel, putting the most recognizable element of a box office hit – Tom Cruise, masks – in a totally new environment – the Australian suburbs – but even with (or perhaps because of) John Woo putting his slow-mo dove stamp on Mission: Impossible, the film never rises above ridiculous.
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The Mission: Impossible Main Team Members |
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|---|---|
|
Member |
Actor |
|
Ethan Hunt |
Tom Cruise |
|
Luther Stickell |
Ving Rhames |
|
Benji Dunn |
Simon Pegg |
|
Isla Faust |
Rebecca Ferguson |
|
William Brandt |
Jeremy Renner |
|
Julia Meade-Hunt |
Michelle Monaghan |
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Mission: Impossible II has dated more than any other entry, and the cheese shows. The Thandie Newton-as-object-of-all-desire plot (which, as many have noted, comes straight from Hitchcock’s Notorious) is an interesting angle but winds up peculiarly steamy. At the same time, Dougray Scott (whose part is mainly remembered for being the role that blocked him from Wolverine) isn’t quite the mirror-image villain he attempts to be.
And yet, despite that, it’s still rather enjoyable, remarkably so considering it’s the weakest entry in a long-running series: can the likes of Jurassic Park or The Mummy claim their lowest point is still watchable? The overuse of masks is delightfully farcical (especially since it was called out in Ghost Protocol), and even if Tom Cruise’s performance of Ethan Hunt is unlike in any other Mission: Impossible film, his all-in-action approach is palpable.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Released In 2011
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3/10 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol PG-13ActionAdventure
The fourth film in the franchise, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, is an action-thriller film set years after the events of Mission: Impossible 3. It sees Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) see themselves falsely accused of a crime. Following a terrorist attack on the Kremlin, the IMF is implicated in the attack, forcing the government to disavow knowledge of them. To clear their names and find the true culprit, the United States initiates the “Ghost Protocol,” forcing them all to go off the grid with no support to solve the case.
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*Availability in US Director Brad Bird Release Date December 15, 2011 Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Cast Tom Cruise , Paula Patton , Simon Pegg , Jeremy Renner Runtime 2h 13m
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The Burj Khalifa sequence at the center of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is quite possibly the franchise’s defining moment. It’s a lengthy scene built almost entirely around Tom Cruise’s desire to do death-defying things at extreme heights for authentic entertainment and is so well-established and integrated that any other skyscraper exterior action feels trite by comparison. It’s truly a “worth the price of admission” setpiece that showed just what the franchise was capable of.
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The rest of the film works well enough but never matches those heights: it opens with CG Kremlin destruction and ends with a CG fight in a high-tech parking garage; the story is somewhat unclear on how to use Ethan with his team. Brad Bird deserves enduring praise for continuing the reinvention started in Mission: Impossible III while inserting some more self-aware humor to keep the series from becoming too gritty. That this can place so “low” shows how good the Mission: Impossible franchise is.
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Mission: Impossible III
Released In 2006
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Mission: Impossible III pg-13ActionAdventure
Directed by J. J. Abrams, Mission Impossible III marked the third release in the long-running Thriller, Action, and Spy series starring Tom Cruise. Marking J. J. Abrams directorial debut, this installment sees a retired Ethan Hunt dragged back into the spy game.
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*Availability in US Director J.J. Abrams Release Date May 5, 2006 Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Cast Tom Cruise , Michelle Monaghan , Maggie Q , Simon Pegg , Philip Seymour Hoffman , Ving Rhames , Jonathan Rhys Meyers , Billy Crudup , Keri Russell , Laurence Fishburne Runtime 126 Minutes
At the time, going from Brian De Palma to John Woo to a TV creative may have felt like a downgrade, but nobody quite reckoned for J.J. Abrams. From a modern perspective, it makes perfect sense: the pioneer behind both Star Trek and Star Wars reboots, his feature debut likewise reinvigorated the Mission: Impossible franchise (which had been dormant for six years). Abrams didn’t change the formula but laid down several key aspects defining the series’ longevity.
So, for the most part, Mission: Impossible III is a solid entry in the series, with exciting enough action (albeit nothing to rival the thrills of what came next) and a plot that uses Abrams’ questionable mystery box to great effect (with Mission: Impossible III standing purely on its own, there’s no unfilled tease, even if the Rabbit’s Foot MacGuffin isn’t all that novel). But Abrams’ characters are what makes this entry stand out.
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Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian is the most memorable villain in the series.
The team aspect is back at the forefront. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian is the most memorable villain in the series (that mid-flight interrogation is as startling as any of Cruise’s stunts), and for the first time, it properly explores the personal side of Ethan Hunt.
Mission: Impossible
Released In 1996
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7/10 Mission: Impossible PG-13ActionAdventureThriller
Tom Cruise stars as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible, the first in the long-running movie franchise. When a mission in Prague goes south for the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), agent Ethan Hunt is left as the only survivor of his team after an essential CIA list is stolen. Now framed for the death of his colleagues and forced to run from deadly government assassins, Ethan will need to infiltrate the CIA and find the culprits to clear his name in this non-stop action thriller.
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*Availability in US Director Brian De Palma Release Date May 22, 1996 Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Cast Jon Voight , Ving Rhames , Vanessa Redgrave , Tom Cruise , Emmanuelle Béart , Henry Czerny , Jean Reno , Kristin Scott Thomas Runtime 110 minutes
Given where Mission: Impossible is now, Tom Cruise is jumping off things for real. It’s easy to view the original as quaint, but the biggest thing Tom Cruise jumps down from is a ceiling vent. But not only was it pretty startling for the time – the core team is killed in the opening mission, and TV show lead Jim Phelps is the secret villain, a canon change tantamount to making Luke Skywalker a hermit – Mission: Impossible also maintains much of its thrill today.
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It all lies on Brian De Palma, who approached this reboot of a well-known TV series with the same rigor as Scarface, with regular dialogue scenes as focused as the action; the Dutch angle paranoia of Ethan realizing he’s a suspect is exposition at its best. And that action is definitely fantastic for its attention to tension.
The franchise’s continued growth means that
Mission: Impossible
is revisited more often than many other mid-1990s tentpoles.
The Langley break-in may be simple enough on paper compared to what comes later, but Cruise still did the drop for real, and De Palma is meticulous in how he makes two beads of sweat the most important thing in the world for a far-too-long minute. The franchise’s continued growth means that Mission: Impossible is revisited more often than many other mid-1990s tentpoles anyway, but even without five more films to mark it out, it’s one of the best.
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Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
Released In 2015
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5.7/10 Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation PG-13ActionThriller
The fifth film in the franchise, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, is an action-thriller film that takes place after the events of Ghost Protocol and continues following former IMF agent Ethan Hunt and his crew. With the IMF disbanded and the crew now rogue agents, they decide to take the fight to the terrorist organization known as the Syndicate. This opposing rogue operation has recruited other agents worldwide to engage in black-ops terrorist actions, and Ethan’s crew intends to shut them down.
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*Availability in US Director Christopher McQuarrie Release Date July 31, 2015 Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Cast Alec Baldwin , Tom Cruise , Ving Rhames , Simon Pegg , Sean Harris , Jeremy Renner , Rebecca Ferguson Runtime 131 Minutes
The preceding two movies had begun to form what Mission: Impossible could be – stunt-based, a wink-wink continuity, overall fun blockbusters – but it was Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation that refined it. The film opens with a single shot that would be the centerpiece of another entire franchise – Cruise clinging to the side of a plane taking off – and goes breakneck into a lightning mix of twisty plot and integrated action that never lets one of the plates drop.
It had been on the tip of many tongues for a while, but here, it seems Ethan Hunt had overtaken James Bond.
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Christopher McQuarrie had proven himself as a master thriller writer with The Usual Suspects, and this expands that, throwing in new elements like Ilsa Faust and evolving static aspects like Renner. The finale, in which the scheming, emotionally involved villain is captured in a moody London night, earned copious comparisons to Spectre, almost deferential to Mission: Impossible. It had been on the tip of many tongues for a while, but here, it seems Ethan Hunt had overtaken James Bond.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
Released In 2023
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6.5/10 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning PG-13ActionAdventureCrime
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is an action-adventure spy thriller from director Christopher McQuarrie. It’s the seventh entry in the Mission: Impossible series and a direct sequel to Mission: Impossible – Fallout. The title will star Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ving Rhames.
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*Availability in US Director Christopher McQuarrie Release Date July 12, 2023 Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Cast Tom Cruise , Ving Rhames , Simon Pegg , Rebecca Ferguson , Vanessa Kirby , Haley Atwell , Shea Whigham , Pom Klementieff , Esai Morales , Rob Delaney , Henry Czerny , Cary Elwes Runtime 164 minutes
As the seventh film in the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise, it is incredible that the series can still be this great this late in the game. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One gives Ethan Hunt more characterization than ever, going more in-depth into the IMF agent’s backstory. The film shakes up the series’ villain formula, with Hunt, this time, having to take on a rogue AI with god-like powers. While the film once again centers around a MacGuffin, it manages to keep the stakes high throughout.
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Once again, the stunts are the highlight of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. The fight on top of the train, the extensive Rome car chase, and Tom Cruise’s now-iconic motorcycle cliff jump are all incredible, although they don’t reach the heights of the helicopter chase and the bathroom fight in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is an incredible film that exceeds almost all of its predecessors, except for one film.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Released In 2018
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7.5/10 Mission: Impossible – Fallout pg-13ActionThriller
A direct sequel to Rogue Nation and the sixth installment in the franchise, Mission: Impossible – Fallout is an action-thriller spy film that sees Tom Cruise return to the role of IMF Agent Ethan Hunt. To avert a worldwide disaster, the IMF agents will join up with a CIA agent to stop a new terrorist cell known as the Apostles. When three nuclear devices go missing, the agents will find themselves racing to stop them from falling into the hands of the deadly bioterror group.
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*Availability in US Director Christopher McQuarrie Release Date July 25, 2018 Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures Cast Tom Cruise , Rebecca Ferguson , Henry Cavill , Vanessa Kirby Runtime 148 Minutes
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In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, everything improves from Rogue Nation. The stunts are more audacious – the 106 HALO jumps make for a hand-clamming sequence early on, while the helicopter chase in the finale is maintained for so long, beats from the trailers were cut – the humor more balanced, and the filmmaking more astute. Like De Palma, action and dialogue are treated with equal opportunity for flair, and the story is more reaching. With its villains, the series manages to use the convoluted story to explore genre clichés.
What makes Mission: Impossible – Fallout great is how it dissects Ethan Hunt. Tom Cruise’s character has evolved across the Mission: Impossible series, but not all of it was organic, something McQuarrie’s worked hard to correct. This started in Rogue Nation, but this entire movie is constructed around attempting to figure out what creates this “force of nature” and recontextualize him in the real world. To see it so earnestly delivered alongside everything else is an emotional powerhouse.
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The Future Of The Mission Impossible Franchise
The next movie in the franchise is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and the first movie makes it look like things are winding to a close for Ethan Hunt and his elite team. It almost seems like it can’t get much worse, and the stakes can’t get much higher. This new movie will come out on May 23, 2025, and trailers have already started dropping before the movies at the end of 2024. However, there are some strong hints that the movie won’t mark the franchise’s end.
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Director Christopher McQuarrie admitted they spoke about the next movie ending the franchise, but that doesn’t mean the decision has been made. He said, “There’s always a plan, the plan always changes, everything goes completely awry, and hopefully everything always turns out alright in the end. But you never really fully understand, or trust where it is you’re going, until you get there.” However, with Tom Cruise 60 now, making more Mission: Impossible movies won’t happen for much longer.