Is Tom Cruise really Hollywood’s last true movie star? Audiences can decide for themselves as Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The big finish to hugest franchise of Cruise’s career, and one of Hollywood’s better series, marks a rare case in which a star of Cruise’s calibre headlined a franchise over three decades from start to finish. Or, at least, one with this many entries. The stunts are greater than ever and the mission proves more impossible than conceivably (im)possible. But as Ethan Hunt careens across the planet, and Cruise performs death-defying stunts on land, in air, and by sea, does Final Reckoning deliver the best adventure of them all?
It’s an impossible mission, but one we chose to accept. That Shelf ranked all of Ethan Hunt’s big screen adventures for the most definitive of Mission: Impossible lists, taking into account the dizzying stunts and Hollywood maximalism that helped make it the franchise a summer movie staple. (This website will self-destruct in three seconds.)
8. Mission: Impossible III
(Dir. JJ Abrams, 2006)
One year after Cruise’s disastrous War of the Worlds press tour that included the infamous Oprah couch jump, Cruise’s arrival at the box office with a new Mission: Impossible movie reflects an ominous cocktail of overexposure and sequelitis. Three movies in, the franchise still doesn’t have its groove. Moreover, director JJ Abrams brings a very different perspective to the series after Brian de Palma and John Woo. But, let’s face it: Abrams is something of a nothingburger metteur en scene.
This sequel offers serviceable, if generic entertainment, and doesn’t deliver much excitement in the action department, while Cruise feels somewhat on autopilot. His turn as Hunt seems like a well-earned paycheque, but it isn’t exactly as satisfying as his steely turn in Collateral two summers before. Not even Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as the snarling baddie can save this one! It’s a template for streaming titles that provide background noise for cleaning the house or folding laundry.
7. Ghost Protocol
(Dir. Brad Bird, 2011)
Perhaps the least memorable entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Ghost Protocol struggles to distinguish itself from the relatively similar movies that Cruise was making at the time. Getting it confused with Jack Reacher? At least that one has Werner Herzog to help it stand out, while one practically has to pull up the IMDb credits to remember who was after Ethan Hunt and company in this mission. (It was Michael Nyqvist of the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies.)
Director Brad Bird also has difficulty balancing action and humour with Simon Pegg in the picture as Hunt’s ally Benji, who needs a few movies to find his place in the IMF, while Jeremy Renner’s introduction to the series mostly serves underscores the X factor that sets Cruise apart from other aspiring action stars. But the film also features one of the most recurring downfalls of franchise filmmaking: it goes really big in its opening act with an effort to draw the audience in and one-up the film that came before it. But nothing else in the film comes even close to matching the thrilling explosion of the Kremlin. It starts at ten, but sags to a six or five by the end.
6. Final Reckoning
(Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2025)
The franchise, unfortunately, does not go out with a bang. Dead Reckoning – Part 1 tees up a grand finale for Ethan Hunt, but Mission: Impossible duffs its final swing. The film just gets bogged down in techno babble as everyone tries to explain the villainous “Entity,” which already feels dated, as if the A.I. fearmongering of the screenplay doesn’t actually understand artificial intelligence. Characters spout too many prophetic statements, too, as the film aims for a grandiose and life-affirming endnote that feels unearned.
Moreover, the seven films that precede Final Reckoning prove that people don’t go to a Mission: Impossible movie to feel good. They go for the adrenaline rush. When Final Reckoning finally gets going, it delivers some pretty spectacular action. That sequence of Ethan Hunt escaping a submarine, and getting tossed around hundreds of feet underwater, marks one of Cruise’s most dizzying stunts…it’s just too bad that Hunt and company talk about the difficulty of the feat ad nausea beforehand and then the writers throw all those caveats out the window. Dead Reckoning would have completed the series with a bigger bang, but Tom Cruise’s last coup as Hunt proves satisfying enough…which seems to be the bar for Hollywood these days.
5. Mission: Impossible II
(Dir. John Woo, 2000)
I’m in the minority on this one, but the first M:I sequel delivers solid entertainment. Sure, it definitely veers from the espionage and spy games of the first film and hews closer to 1990s’ action movie brawn, but with action master John Woo at the helm, it marks a satisfying turn towards the maximalism that would carry the popcorn movie franchise throughout the next 25 years. With a breakout turn by Thandiwe Newton as Ethan Hunt’s sidekick Nyah and the development of Ving Rhames’ franchise regular Luther as Hunt’s friend and collaborator, plus some spectacular motorcycle chases and a doozy of a rock-climbing stunt that Cruise insisted on doing himself, M:I2 deserves reappraisal for laying the foundation for the franchise rather well.
It also marks something of a turning point in Cruise’s career, as he arguably got hooked on the high of those zany stunts. Sandwiched between some of his career-best performances and films—Jerry Maguire, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, and Collateral—it perhaps feels like a shabby comedown. But it in retrospect, it’s great entertainment in its own right, largely thanks to a confident star turn for Cruise at a time when “sequel” still felt like a dirty word.
4. Rogue Nation
(Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2012)
A look back through Mission: Impossible entries suggests that some serious conversation happened around 2012. Cruise’s big credit that year is Jack Reacher, a spy flick that still feels M:I adjacent and causes a blip in the movie meta-verse one year after Ghost Protocol. Rogue Nation reunites Cruise with Jack Reacher director Christopher McQuarrie and the M:I franchise truly hits its stride with this exhilarating actioner. Rogue Nation feels like a defibrillator charged to rescue a flatlining series.
Part of what helps revive the franchise is the introduction of Rebecca Ferguson’s slick assassin/foil/love interest Ilsa Faust. She marks the first time in the series that Hunt really seems both paired with and pit against someone of his equal. The earlier films all feel lopsided with bland baddies and (mostly) subpar sidekicks, but Ferguson offers a co-star worthy of Cruise’s paygrade. She’s a great presence throughout the films that follow, but the smartest move of the series proves the choice to keep McQuarrie at the helm for the subsequent films. Everything gels in Rogue Nation and Hunt, superspy that he is, finally gets the consistency he deserves.
3. Dead Reckoning, Part 1
(Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2023)
If people credit Tom Cruise for single-handedly saving Hollywood with Top Gun: Maverick after the COVID-year challenges, then he deserves further kudos for helping to stabilize it with this adventure that reminds audiences why movies are best enjoyed in theatres. No Mission: Impossible film, pound for pound, goes bigger and harder than Dead Reckoning does. It’s nearly three hours and the adventure just flies by thanks to the non-stop adrenaline rush.
This entry reunites all the players, giving everyone from Cruise—with a gonzo cliff dive from a motorcycle—to franchise regulars Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby some juicy chances to get in on the action. While the AI plot with “the Entity” is a bit convoluted, Dead Reckoning offsets the techno-babble with thrilling set pieces that harken back to analogue days. This film delights with good old-fashioned knife fights, car chases, and a train crash for the ages. Plus, it introduces one of the franchise’s best characters in Paris, the steely-eyed assassin played by Pom Klementieff. Her sociopathic drive that fuels a parade of destruction and mayhem in Rome will have you rooting for the baddies. If there’s a drawback to Dead Reckoning, it’s only that it’s half a movie and a set-up the up for a grand finale that Final Reckoning doesn’t deliver.
2. Mission: Impossible
(Dir. Brian de Palma, 1996)
How many people can seriously say that they expected Mission: Impossible to spawn a franchise that grossed over $5 billion before the last instalment even starts raking in the cash? Ethan Hunt’s first big screen mission remains one of few series-to-film adaptations to actually deliver. This stylish espionage film gets off to a roaring start by killing off nearly all of Hunt’s allies in an outstanding opening act before supplying a body count to rival Hamlet by the film’s end. While this mission seems fully within the realm of possibility compared to the daring dos of later entries, some of the feats remain the most riveting of the series.
For one, the centrepiece is Cruise’s daring wire act in which he descends into a secure vault to download a file onto a floppy disk without letting a single bead of sweat fall from his brow. The film also boasts some of the most memorable characters in the series, most notably Vanessa Redgrave’s deliciously classy arms dealer, Max, and Kristin Scott Thomas’s sadly short-lived presence as one of Ethan’s girlfriends with short expiry dates. But from the first go, Cruise seems firmly in control here with an assured confidence and sense of play he carries through the series’ end. Belated spoiler alter: it may help to revisit the original before watching Final Reckoning since it ends with a few unexpected callbacks, some of which are fun and some of which are outright ludicrous.
1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
(Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2018)
From the moment that Henry Cavill reloads his arms while trading blows with Ethan Hunt in an early scene, Fallout tells audiences to buckle up. But the seatbelts are key. Not simply because Henry throws a mean punch, but because Tom Cruise is crazy.
There’s no way to avoid stating the obvious after witnessing the flat-out insanity of Fallout. The film’s stunts alone make this entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise the best in the series. They’re also proof that Cruise, even in his later years, remains one of Hollywood’s most intense action stars. The joy of Fallout is witnessing Cruise maniacally assert his manliness by performing his own stunts and upping the ante, yet making sure everyone in the theatre knows that he’s not copping out with a stunt double. The zany HALO jump is worth a ticket alone as Cruise jumps from an airplane at 25,000 ft. and daringly stages a mid-air fight while falling at a rate of 200 miles per hour. The true hero, however, is skydiving camera operator Craig O’Brien who jumped out of the plane first, did the fall backwards, and kept Cruise’s face in focus throughout all two minutes. And let’s not forget that all jumps were performed at “magic hour” with mere minutes to get the perfect lighting as Cruise careened to ground against the setting sun. Legend.
Beyond that one sequence, which ranks among the best action coups ever, Fallout delivers the most seamless adventure. It’s a film where the team finds their groove and develops zany stunts in service of the story and characters—unlike Final Reckoning, which seemingly hits the pause button to deliver some thrills before moving the story along.
