All Mission Impossible Films Ranked

A countdown ahead of The Final Reckoning

Tom Cruise dangles perilously in Mission Impossible (1996). Credit: Paramount

I’m a huge fan of Mission: Impossible. As a child, I grew up watching repeats of the Bruce Geller TV series on BBC2 and loved everything about it. From Lalo Schifrin’s unmistakable theme to self-destructing tapes and latex mask reveals, the twists and turns of each “Impossible Missions Force” episode always held my attention. Later, in my early twenties, I was thrilled when Brian De Palma, one of my favourite directors, decided to helm a big-budget cinema version with Tom Cruise in the lead. Since then, with one exception, I’ve found the big screen take on this classic TV series more consistently satisfying as action spy thrillers than the James Bond films that ran in parallel to it (I didn’t much care for the Pierce Brosnan era, and the Daniel Craig era wildly varies in quality).

With Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise found one of his most memorable roles. His commitment to practical effects and doing his own stunts is now the stuff of cinematic legend. Perhaps Cruise is trying to outdo Buster Keaton, but I daresay his daredevil shenanigans have given many of his directors/enablers (especially Christopher McQuarrie) near heart-attack levels of anxiety. Doubtless, the latest entry, The Final Reckoning, will contain similarly jaw-dropping moments. Is it to be the last in the series, at least with Tom Cruise in the lead? I hope not, but I suppose all good things come to an end. Perhaps it is best to go out on a high. I just hope no one decides to pull a No Time to Die (2021) ending, as that would be as unforgivable for Ethan Hunt as it was for James Bond.

At any rate, with The Final Reckoning hitting cinema screens this week, here’s a countdown of how I rank the Mission: Impossible films, purely in order of preference. Interestingly, most of my ranking is in order of release, meaning this is a rare series that, on the whole, just gets better and better.