Since 1996, the Mission: Impossible movies have been highly regarded as making up one of the best action franchises ever to grace the big screen. Many credit this feat to Tom Cruise and his team as they continue to pull out all the stops with the most incredible stunts and action sequences imaginable. But with close to 30 years worth of high-octane jumps from planes, explosions and masks galore, how can you possibly categorize which of these films reigns the best, especially with new entry, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, now added to the mix? Well don't worry, we ranked the movies and got you covered.
NOTE: should you choose to accept the mission of continuing down this article, there are spoilers ahead!
7. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 (2000)
While all installments in the Mission: Impossible franchise are solid, this one doesn't quite hold up as well when compared to the other films. John Woo is one of the greatest living action directors in Hollywood. And his work translates to some fun moments in the movie. But there’s not much else there to sustain our attention.
Dougray Scott’s hammy forgettable villain, Sean Ambrose, is way too over-the-top. But the rest of the movie is so bland, it makes standup actors such as Thandiwe Newton and Anthony Hopkins deliver performances so unbecoming of their talent, we never once question what became of these characters five movies later. The action scenes aren’t bad, but Woo tends to overuse slow motion and odd camera angles in unnecessary moments.
6. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)
It might seem harsh to put the Brian DePalma-directed classic so low on the list, but it’s fair when you think about how much better the series has evolved since 1996.
The first Mission: Impossible started it all, and introduced us to roguish badass Ethan Hunt. It possesses some of the best and most iconic scenes in the franchise, such as Ethan’s tense ceiling drop and the "you’ve never seen me very upset" Kittredge scene. However, it’s also a lot more convoluted and much less exciting than what the future had in store for this franchise. It also committed a major sin in turning the most prolific hero from the Mission: Impossible television series into a traitor and overall villain, to the dismay of many of the series’ original fans.
5. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III (2006)
Mission: Impossible III serves as the foundation for what would define the overall direction and tone of the Mission: Impossible franchise as we know it today. It is underrated, in many ways, with a tense conflict between Ethan Hunt and one of the series’ best villains to date, Philip Seymore Hoffman’s Owen Davian.
The first of many Bad Robot-produced installments in the series, the film introduced us to the now-mainstay character, Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and gave Ethan Hunt a realistic and sympathetic love interest in Michelle Monaghan’s Julia; a character whose impact would resonate throughout the franchise for future films. Thrilling, funny and fun, the plot was just the right amount of simple and emotional.
4. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL (2010)
If Mission: Impossible III was the first step toward the direction this franchise would be headed in, then Ghost Protocol was what took everything into the stratosphere. Ghost Protocol resurrected the franchise in many ways, working as something of a reboot of sorts.
The Brad Bird-helmed installment made waves with Cruise’s first major publicized stunt of scaling the Burj Khalifa; something that paid off in helping to revitalize the superstar’s own career at that time. Additionally, a much more consistent IMF team started to take shape with the return of Pegg’s Dunn, and the introduction of Jeremy Renner’s William Brandt. It was a thrilling and fun installment that changed everything for the franchise.
3. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (2023)
What’s sure to be a controversial decision on this list, Dead Reckoning – Part One is a stellar installment that’s an absolute step up from an action perspective, but a slight step back when compared to the previous two installments. While no one can question the sheer awesomeness of the action, the intensity of the moments within the movie and standout performances from Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff and Esai Morales, the film does set the franchise back in terms of some of the narrative choices it commits, such as killing some very key characters off in very "silly" ways.
The shift from a tangible villain to a digital one can also be seen as a less interesting direction than the IMF’s battle with the Syndicate in the previous two films. But again, one can’t argue with how explosively entertaining this installment is, or how excited we are for Part Two.
2. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION (2015)
Rogue Nation ups the stakes even higher from Ghost Protocol by having Cruise hang off of a moving plane for the movie’s introduction, and then later hold his breath for six and a half minutes in a 6m deep water tank to pull off a stunt in one take. The sheer level of insanity he commits to in this movie for our entertainment is wonderful.
But there’s so much more about this underrated installment that makes it one of the best, from the best car chase to motorcycle scene in the franchise (the Marrakech Car Chase scene) to the introduction of two really terrific characters: Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust and Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane. Lane becomes the most formidable and memorable villain in the franchise commanding the Syndicate. While Faust, with Ferguson’s commanding, scene-stealing performance, easily became one of the toughest and most interesting heroes in the franchise, and arguably the best love interest for Ethan Hunt to date.
1. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT (2018)
Not only does Fallout continue the intriguing storyline from Rogue Nation, but it also escalates it with the inclusion of Henry Cavill’s nefarious John Lark and Vanessa Kirby’s scene-stealing White Widow. Add real emotional stakes for Ethan Hunt, amazing fight scenes (the bathroom brawl) and the greatest stunts in the franchise, like skydiving out of a plane and hanging off a cargo net from a helicopter, and you have perhaps the best installment in this franchise to date. It’s a culmination of several storylines set up since the third movie in the series, but manages to pay them off in an incredibly satisfying way.
Here’s how you can watch Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One right now. You can watch previous films in the franchise on Paramount Plus in the US and Sky TV in the UK.
