Mission Impossible Reviews: Our Verdict on All Eight Films

Our verdict on the Mission Impossible series is that it peaks in the middle, with Fallout and Ghost Protocol the two films I would hand to a newcomer. Everything below is Cinvibe's own opinion. Money figures come from Box Office Mojo, except Rogue Nation, which uses The Numbers. For a numbered list, see mission impossible movies ranked, and for the series at a glance see the mission impossible movies hub.

Mission: Impossible (1996), directed by Brian De Palma, is a paranoid spy thriller more than an action film, and in my opinion it is still the most grown up entry. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) survives a botched Prague operation that wipes out his team, then has to clear his own name while his superiors suspect him of being the mole. Jon Voight, Jean Reno and Ving Rhames fill out the cast, and Danny Elfman scored it around Lalo Schifrin's theme. It earned $457.7 million worldwide on an $80 million budget. It is slow by modern standards, but the plotting rewards patience.

Mission: Impossible II (2000), directed by John Woo, is the weakest film in the series in my view. Woo storyboarded the action sequences, and a Hans Zimmer score gives the film a distinct sound. The trouble is the story, which hangs on a chase over a virus called Chimera and its cure, Bellerophon, and never builds the layered deception of the first film. Thandiwe Newton and Dougray Scott commit fully to it. The film still made $546.4 million worldwide on a $125 million budget, which says something about how much the brand mattered by then.

Mission: Impossible III (2006) was J.J. Abrams's first time directing a feature, and I think it is the most underrated film here. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the arms dealer Owen Davian with a calm that frightens more than any shouting could, and the film gives Ethan something the earlier ones did not: a life to lose, in the form of his fiancée Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Simon Pegg arrives as Benji. It is also the lowest earner of the eight, at $398.5 million worldwide on a $150 million budget, which I read as the market undervaluing it.

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) is where the series became an ensemble. Brad Bird, making his first live action film, takes Ethan from a Moscow prison to the Kremlin, and Cruise climbed the Burj Khalifa himself for the sequence. Paula Patton, Pegg and Jeremy Renner give the team real chemistry. It earned $694.7 million worldwide on a $145 million budget. If you want the most fun per minute, this is my pick, and it is the easiest place to start.

Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015), the first of Christopher McQuarrie's run as director, gives the series Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust and a proper villain network in the Syndicate. Its best moment is the opera sequence, set to Puccini's "Nessun dorma". The A400M stunt and the underwater tank scene are broken down in detail in fxguide's look at the film's effects. It took $688.9 million worldwide on a $150 million budget, according to The Numbers. In my opinion it has the best single set piece in the series.

Mission: Impossible: Fallout (2018) is the best film in the series, and the box office agrees: $824.2 million worldwide on a $178 million budget, the highest of the eight, according to Box Office Mojo. McQuarrie keeps the pace at 147 minutes, with Henry Cavill as the blunt instrument August Walker and Angela Bassett as CIA director Erika Sloane. Cruise trained for the HALO jump, suffered an ankle injury that affected the shoot, and flew the helicopter himself. Lorne Balfe's score holds it together. If you only watch one, watch this one.

Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), often searched as Mission: Impossible 7, is good, though it plays as the first half of a longer story. Hayley Atwell's thief Grace is a lively addition, and Esai Morales makes Gabriel a credible threat to Ethan. The motorcycle jump off a cliff in Norway is the stunt people remember. The film runs 164 minutes on a $291 million budget and earned $571.1 million worldwide. Part of the problem, in my view, is that its villain, the Entity, is an artificial intelligence, which is hard to put in a room with Ethan.

Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025) is the divisive one, and I think it is better than its reputation. At 170 minutes it spends a lot of its opening on exposition and on tying earlier films together, which I find too eager. Then it recovers with a sequence at the wreck of the Russian submarine Sevastopol, built on tanks at Longcross Studios, and a biplane finale shot in South Africa. It earned about $599 million worldwide on a $350 million budget. It premiered at Cannes and is billed as the finale. For where the series goes next, see mission impossible 9.

If you are choosing where to begin, start with Ghost Protocol or Fallout, and follow the mission impossible movies in order guide if you want the full run. You can find every film on streaming through where to watch mission impossible. To see who plays whom, the mission impossible cast and mission impossible characters pages cover the ensemble, and mission impossible box office has the full money picture.