How Impossible Are The Mission: Impossible Films?

Ethan Hunt: super-spy, quasi-leader of top-secret government agency, and foundation of $2 billion film franchise. The humble 1960s American television show on which the series is based has been left far below the lofty skyscrapers from which Hunt is inclined to hurl himself in his repeated bids to save to world. Played by Tom Cruise with passion, determination and charisma, it is now no longer a surprise, yet always a delight, to see Hunt climbing the world’s tallest building or hanging onto a plane mid-take-off, with the genuine actor tangibly involved in the stunts. Cruise’s deep connection to Mission: Impossible is clear: how many other sequels has the star made? Zero. With round two for Top Gun and Jack Reacher in the pipeline this won’t always be true, but over his impressive 34-year career Hunt is the only character Cruise has reprised in a second feature film. And a third, fourth, and fifth.

Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to provide a full briefing on the past exploits of Ethan Hunt and his IMF – Impossible Missions Force (seriously) – team of world-class actors, starting from their first dramatic explosion into cinemas in 1996 and leading up to the upcoming fifth film, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. With a title like Mission: Impossible, expectations and entertainment value should rightly be high. The films will be judged both on the impossibility of the mission, within the limits of cinematic sense, and on the impressiveness of the stunts utilised to accomplish the objectives. Light the fuse; let’s get started.

Courtesy of: Paramount Pictures

Mission: Impossible (1996)

After a bold opening, which cleverly peels away the original television show, the mission is assigned through an in-flight movie: rescue a list of operatives based in Europe and catch the traitor who plans to sell it. Initially the mission is actually impossible, a Kobayashi Maru for spies, but despite double-crosses and Hunt being forced to go rogue, the mission remains intact, downgraded to only near-impossible. Hunt has to break into an incredibly secure vault inside the already impenetrable CIA headquarters, outsmart the IMF, and find time to uncover an undercover turncoat to clear his name and avenge his friends.

MISSION RATING: 4/5

Courtesy of: Paramount Pictures

The gadgets and technology may have aged along with the effects, but their ability to raise tensions to new highs and create awe-inspiring stunts hasn’t weakened two decades later. Two heart-thumping uses of explosive chewing gum (“RED LIGHT! GREEN LIGHT!”) and a chase on a train roof with a helicopter in pursuit inside the Channel Tunnel are contenders, but nothing beats the famous hackrobatics scene: Tom Cruise breaking into secure CIA files floating centimetres off a floor which will sound alarms if a single bead of sweat touches it or if he makes a sound. A masterclass in suspended suspense.

IMPOSSIBILITY RATING: 5/5

Mission: Impossible II  (2000)

A victim of its time from the start – dodgy effects, long hair, questionable gender-politics – M:I2 still effectively taps into the Y2K zeitgeist. In this case the millennium bug is super-influenza used as a biological weapon, and Hunt must stop a psychotic, cigar-cutter wielding rogue agent (Dougray Scott) from releasing it in order to get rich selling the cure. When the film’s love-interest gets infected, the clock ticks as Hunt is left with just 20 hours to save the girl and the world. Sounds difficult? As Anthony Hopkins’ spymaster says “it’s mission impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park”.

MISSION RATING: 3/5

Courtesy of: Paramount Pictures

Hunt is reintroduced free-climbing, high up, unsupported and showing off for the camera. It’s an impressive opening, which much of the film fails to match, with heart-in-mouth moments as he leaps, slides, hangs and climbs to the top. Add to this more fake faces than Face/Off, gun-fu and a motorbike chase bursting through flames, it’s clear that director John Woo has an IMF agent’s taste for theatrics. Hunt prefers acrobatic insanity over direct confrontation, so it is little surprise that the infiltration of a top-secret laboratory starts with indoor skydiving through air vents and ends with a base jumping escape.

IMPOSSIBILITY RATING: 2/5

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

M:I3 opens with a dark flash-forward with a more intimate yet potentially fatal tone than before. The cause of this is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s weapons dealer, a villain of quiet menace and savage brutality, comparable to Heath Ledger’s Joker, with a nasty habit of implanting remote-controlled explosives in his enemies’ heads. Hunt’s mission is to track down the ultimate MacGuffin – the Rabbit’s Foot, an unspecifically devastating weapon – secure it and kidnap the dealer. This mission seems relatively straightforward, until Hunt is forced to go rogue by an enemy within the IMF and a threat against his new wife.

MISSION RATING: 3/5

Courtesy of: Paramount Pictures

As director, J.J. Abrams steps up the imaginative action whilst introducing more humour and self awareness. An early break-in at the Vatican, using high-tech grapple/abseil lines as well as traditional polaroids, is one of the slickest operations in the series, whilst a helicopter duel ducking in and out of a wind turbine farm and Hunt’s survival of a vicious attack on a bridge equally thrill. The centrepiece stunt, however, inevitably involves a tall building and/or wire-work: Hunt swinging at high speed between two skyscrapers, sliding down the roof and fleeing, objective completed, through the luckiest low altitude parachute jump ever.

IMPOSSIBILITY RATING: 4/5

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

The series reached a new peak with Ghost Protocol, blending humour and tension with call-backs and ingenuity, masterfully directed by Brad Bird as his first live-action feature. The high-stakes mission is to prevent a mysterious, rogue terrorist from acquiring nuclear launch capability and thwart their plans to near-annihilate humanity. To do this, Hunt’s disavowed IMF team must break out of a high-security prison and break into the none-more-secure Kremlin, before chasing their target across the Middle East and Eurasia. The elaborate plot gives opportunities for the characters and their actors to showcase their skill as it pushes impossibility to new heights.

MISSION RATING: 4/5

Courtesy of: Paramount Pictures

The view from the 140th floor of the Burj Khalifa, Dubai, is breath-taking, or it would be if you hadn’t just been left breathless from watching Cruise climb to it from the outside. This centrepiece stunt is simultaneously vertigo-inducing, nail-biting and side-splitting, as Hunt climbs up, runs down, slips, leaps and entrusts his life to a temperamental pair of sticky gloves. Soon after Hunt chases the villain straight into an encroaching sandstorm. As his vision blurs the screen goes dark, a disorienting assault, and the impossible chase moves from foot to car in a close shot thrill-ride.

IMPOSSIBILITY RATING: 5/5

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

In the fifth Mission: Impossible film, Hunt goes rogue after the IMF is subsumed into the CIA. Out in the cold, with no team and no support, Hunt must recruit former colleagues and convince them that the Syndicate – a mythical international rogue organization, a highly skilled “anti-IMF” determined to destabilise world governments – exists in order to take them down. With the Sydincate’s seemingly unlimited manpower and funding, the CIA breathing down his neck, and the evidence he needs locked away in the most secure vault yet, Rogue Nation really is Hunt’s most impossible, and thrilling, mission to date.

MISSION RATING: 5/5

Courtesy of: Paramount Pictures

Even before the opening credits, Ethan Hunt has held onto the outside of a plane in take-off and hijacked the contents. Rogue Nation starts as it means to go on, with stunt after stunt as Hunt and his crew give it their all to up the ante and upset the anti-IMF. A breath-taking free dive scene, with Hunt taking the worst waterslide ever into an underwater chamber, disorientated and asphyxiated, leads into a heart-in-mouth motorcycle chase, camera above the road and on the wheel. Death-defying barely addresses the nature of these stunts – it’s a miracle Hunt/Cruise makes it out in one piece.

IMPOSSIBILITY RATING: 5/5

The Mission: Impossible series has put Tom Cruise in for a bruising, delivering high-speed chases, exotic locations, inventive gadgets and impossible stunts, all in the name of Cruise’s personal mission: to entertain. Mission accomplished.

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