Sure, Tom Cruise has hung off the side of an airborne plane, driven a motorbike off a cliff, climbed a skyscraper and sprinted across rooftops to entertain the movie-loving masses. But has he dared to take on a truly harrowing assignment and put the “Mission: Impossible” movies in order from worst to best? Not so much.
Nobody’s better as his own stuntman than Cruise, and he’s back doing things that would have mere mortals in a fetal position in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” (in theaters May 23). In the eighth (and potentially last) film in the franchise – a spinoff of the TV show from the 1960s and ’70s – the A-lister’s superspy Ethan Hunt returns for another world-saving adventure, this time in a final faceoff with a digital supervillain.
Since Tom hasn’t accepted the mission yet, we’re doing the “Impossible” and ranking all eight films so far. (If you need to catch up, the first seven are streaming on Paramount+, as is the old series.)
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8. ‘Mission: Impossible 2’ (2000)
Director John Woo is an action-movie master but his “Mission” was a whiff in comparison to films like “The Killer” and “Face/Off.” When a deadly genetically modified virus and its cure are stolen by a former agent (Dougray Scott), Ethan teams up with a professional thief (Thandiwe Newton) to stop him from creating a pandemic. Oh, and did we mention she’s the bad guy’s former lover? This is a case of too much style and too little substance, as melodrama and excessive slo-mo overshadow the few explosive scenes, including a decent motorcycle chase.
7. ‘Mission: Impossible III’ (2006)
Director J.J. Abrams’ one crack at a “Mission” films feels almost like a danger-filled episode of “Felicity.” Ethan tries to make a somewhat normal life for himself and even gets hitched. But marital bliss goes kablooey when Ethan has to rescue a former protege (Keri Russell) and also his kidnapped new wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan), plus steal a biohazard device and further enrage his bosses. The highlight by far is a fantastically villainous turn by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as a sadistic arms dealer.
6. ‘Mission: Impossible’ (1996)
It pales in comparison to a lot of what came after, yet director Brian De Palma’s continuation of the old show and its tropes (mask reveals, self-destructing messages) made the property cool again. Twists, turns and betrayals abound when Ethan is framed for the deaths of his team and has the government after him. It’s interesting in hindsight to see him as just a member of the Impossible Mission Force rather than the de facto leader, and the tension-packed sequence where Ethan breaks into a booby-trapped CIA vault from the ceiling is still an all-timer.
5. ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’ (2023)
Who else but Ethan are you going to call when a rogue artificial intelligence called The Entity threatens the entire globe? Our hero is in a race to get a key that could destroy the digital baddie before it gets into the hands of countries greedy to have its power. Ethan finds a new partner in spycraft with Grace (Hayley Atwell), a skilled pickpocket, as they go on an epic car chase through Rome and a gnarly ride on the Orient Express. (Plus, Cruise pulls off a seriously impressive mountain jump from a motorbike with a memorable landing.)
4. ‘Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning’ (2025)
Bringing closure to a three-decade story arc, the installment sends Ethan and his crew all over the world, from the Arctic seas to the South African skies, to keep The Entity from causing a global apocalypse. Old faces return, new ones show up (welcome to the “Mission” club, Tramell Tillman and Hannah Waddingham!). And after a slow early going, Cruise goes ballistic in the movie’s awesome second half, spelunking a sunken submarine and pulling off some aerial derring-do that’ll have your jaw on the theater floor next to some spilled popcorn.
3. ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ (2015)
The IMF gets shut down at pretty much the worst time for such a thing, just as a sinister bunch of operatives from around the world called The Syndicate have emerged to give everyone fits. Director Christopher McQuarrie begins a doozy of a run with this fifth “Mission,” where Ethan’s a fugitive, ex-MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) comes into Ethan’s life and Cruise shows off his breathtaking lung capacity for a spiffy underwater rescue sequence.
2. ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ (2018)
Cruise and Henry Cavill destroying a public bathroom during a hellacious fist fight is enough to rank “Fallout” high. But the movie, which hinges on Ethan and Co. dealing with stolen plutonium and a heinous nuclear bomb plot, has so much going for it. Cruise dangles from a helicopter and does a HALO jump from 25,000 feet in the air, Ethan’s ex Julia comes back into the picture, Ilsa is more awesome than usual, and a mustached Cavill plays a double agent no one would want to stare down.
1. ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ (2011)
Director Brad Bird’s lone “Mission” was a game-changer for the franchise and set the stage for the spy intrigue, interesting ensembles and death-defying stunt work that would become the series’ hallmarks. After Ethan gets blamed for an explosion at the Kremlin, his crew is tasked with preventing the use of stolen nuclear launch codes and staving off a showdown between America and Russia. The characters and plot pop, and Cruise scales the 163-story Burj Khalifa in Dubai for a bit that’s important to the narrative but that also made us all as a culture say, “This dude is nuts, but we love him anyway.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Every ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie ranked including ‘Final Reckoning’
