Marvel’s Avengers Release Date Shift Is a Smart Move

Marvel announced the throw of the eagerly awaited Avengers: Doomsday two months ago in a, let’s say, “unique” manner. On social press, the workshop streamed video of solid chair with a certain writer’s name on it. The camera would hold for about twelve minutes, then the Avengers theme by Alan Silvestri would play and the]…

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This article contains some Mission: Impossible &#8211, The Final reckoning spoilers.

Ethan Hunt is briefed on a VHS cassette tape in the most recent and ostensibly final Mission: Impossible movie. That is a marvelous wink to the era in which this franchise began&#8212, a time period where action movies found their second lucrative life inside VCRs, and the MacGuffin could be something as quaint as a glorified floppy disc full of names. Since Mission: Impossible was released in 1996, the world has obviously changed, but these movies have consistently been at the pinnacle of high-quality blockbuster cinema.

And through it all remains Tom Cruise, running, gunning, and smoldering with his various, luxuriant haircuts. Indeed, the first M: I picture was also Cruise&#8217, s first as a producer, made under the banner of Cruise/Wagner productions. He has likely continued to be committed to what was once seen as just a television adaptation for a reason. &#8221, It might have begun as TV IP, but in Cruise&#8217, s hands it has become a cinematic magnum opus that sequel after sequel, and decade after decade, has blossomed into one of the most inventive and satisfying spectacles ever produced in the Hollywood system.

The series ‘ final decade, particularly the run, was groundbreaking. After five movies with five very different directors, aesthetics, and sensibilities, Christopher McQuarrie stuck around &#8212, alongside stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood. Together with Cruise, they turned the series into an old-fashioned, in-camera spectacle that harkens back to the earliest days of cinema. In doing so, Cruise has added a second chapter to his career, one as a daredevil onscreen like Harold Lloyd or Douglas Fairbanks. It&#8217, s been an amazing run, and honestly it &#8217, s a bit arbitrary to quantify it with any sort of ranking. But if we were going to do something like that, let’s say it should go.

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8. Mission: Impossible II ( 2000 )

It’s hardly controversial to put John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II dead last. MI: -2 is a relic of late 90s Hollywood excess, from its overabundance of slow-mo action to its use of Limp Bizkit, even its absurd plot about man-made viruses, which still doesn’t feel timely on the other side of 2020. On the one hand, it’s kind of marvelous that Cruise let Woo completely tear down and rebuild a successful franchise-starter in the Hong Kong filmmaker’s own image. On the other hand, it’s interesting to see how Cruise’s ego was when Woo created the original all-American Ethan Hunt as a god of celluloid marble.

And make no mistake, there is something godlike to how Woo’s camera fetishizes Cruise’s sunglasses and new, luxuriant mane of jet black hair during Hunt’s big introduction where he is seen free-climbing across a rock face without rope. It would come to work as metaphor for the rest of the movie where, despite ostensibly being the leader of a team, Ethan is mostly going it alone as he does ridiculous things like have a medieval duel against his evil doppelgänger ( Dougray Scott ), only both men now ride motorcycles instead of horses. Meanwhile, the on-screen crew scurries slack-jawed as Ethan massacres scores of faceless mercenaries in numerous shootouts.

While gunplay has always been an element of modern spy thrillers, the Mission: Impossible movies work best when the characters use their wits ( and the stunt team’s ingenuity ) to escape elaborate, tricky situations. M: I-2 resembles any other late 1990s and early 2000s actioner that might have starred Nicolas Cage or Bruce Willis in some strange way. Technically the plot, which involves Ethan’s reluctance to send new flame Nyah Hall ( Thandiwe Newton ) into the lion’s den as an informant, has classical pedigree. The movie remakes Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious ( 1946 ) in all but name. Even the ostensibly central romance is cast in the shadow of the movie’s star, because the film is so in love with its star deity.

7. The Final Reckoning, Part II, ( 2025 ) of Mission: Impossible &#8211,

Yes, we admit to also being surprised that what is allegedly intended to be the last Mission: Impossible movie is finishing near the very bottom of this list. Which is not to say that The Final Reckoning is a bad movie. It&#8217 ;s just a messy one— and disappointing as well. Perhaps the expectations were too high for a film with &#8220, final&#8221, in the title. Additionally, it is said that the hype was only fueled by its reportedly eye-popping$ 400,000 million. But whereas the three previous Mission films directed by Christopher McQuarrie, including Dead Reckoning, had a light playfulness about them, The Final Reckoning gets lost in its own self-importance and grandiosity.

Once again we have a Mission flick determined to deify Ethan Hunt with McQuarrie&#8217, s &#8220, gambler&#8221, from the last couple movies taking on the imagery of the messiah. The AI fate of the world is now in his own hands. This approach leads to many long expository sequences where characters blather endlessly about the motivations of an abstract artificial intelligence. While far too little time is spent on the sweet spot for this series, such as Cruise and his co-stars chemistry when he isn’t hanging from some death-defying height. In fact, Ethan goes it pretty much alone in this one, staring down generals, submarine captains, and American presidents &#8212, fools all to think for one instance Ethan is n&#8217, t the guy sent to redeem them for their sins.

The action sequences are still jaw-dropping when they finally come, and it is always good to see co-stars Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, and an all too briefly used Ving Rhames again, but this feels less like a finale than a breaking point. If Mission does return, it will have to be in a completely different ( and presumably less expensive ) form.

6. Impossible III: Mission: Impossible ( 2006 )

Before he transformed Star Trek and Star Wars into remarkably similar franchises, writer-director J. J. Abrams made his big screen debut by doing much the same to the Mission: Impossible franchise. With his emphasis on extreme close-ups, heavy expository dialogue dumps, and intentionally vague motivations for his villains that seem to always have something to do with the War on Terror, Abrams remade the M: I franchise in the image of his TV shows, particularly Alias. This included making Woo’s Übermensch from the previous film into the kind of suburban everyman with strong Nielsen ratings and a sweet girl-next-door boyfriend ( Michelle Monaghan ).

Your mileage may vary with this approach, but personally we found M: I-3 to be too much of a piece with mid-2000s television and lacking in a certain degree of movie magic. Having said that, the film has two excellent tricks up its sleeve. The first and most significant is a deliciously boorish performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the franchise’s scariest villain. Abrams ‘ signature monologues have never been more chilling as when Hoffman cuts through Cruise’s matinee heroics like a knife and unsettles the protagonist and the audience with an unblinking declaration of ill-intent. The character actor subtly and convincingly imitates Cruise’s leading man charisma during one of the franchise’s famed “mask” sequences where Ethan disguises himself as Hoffman’s baddie.

That, plus introducing fan favorite Simon Pegg as Benji to the series ( if in little more than a cameo ), makes the movie worth a watch if not a regular revisit.

5. Mission: Impossible &#8211, Dead Reckoning ( 2023 )

According to more than a few critics in 2023, the then-newest installment in the series was also the best one. I respectfully disagree. The first half of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise’s Dead Reckoning epic, which at one time looked like it would be the grand finale for the franchise, is certainly every bit as ambitious and visually spectacular as the two collaborations which preceded it. There is a crackerjack chase scene in Rome where a handcuffed Cruise and franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell battle for control of a failing Fiat, and the much-promoted stunt where Cruise drives a motorcycle off a mountain is as astonishing as it is.

In terms of old school spectacle and breakneck pacing, Dead Reckoning is easily the most entertaining action movie of summer 2023’s offerings. However, when compared to the best entries in the M: I franchise, Dead Reckoning leaves something be desired. While McQuarrie’s counterintuitive instinct to script the scenes after designing the set pieces and essentially make it up as they went along paid off in Fallout, the first half of Dead Reckoning‘s story is hazy and muddled. The second act is especially disjointed when the film arrives in Venice, and the actors seem as uncertain as the script is over what exactly the film’s nefarious A. I. villain, codename:” The Entity”, wants.

The fact that this is the movie’s portion of it also mercilessly kills off fan favorite Ilsa Faust ( Rebecca Ferguson ) does the film no favors. Elsewhere in the film, Hayley Atwell proves a fantastic addition in her own right as Grace—essentially a civilian and audience surrogate who gets wrapped up in the M: I series’ craziness long enough to stare at Cruise in incredulity—but the inference that she is here to simply interchangeably replace Ilsa gives the film a sour subtext. Still, Atwell’s Grace is great, Cruise’s Ethan is as mad as ever with his stunts, and even as the rest of the ensemble feels underutilized, seeing the team back together makes this a good time—while the unexpected return of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge is downright great.

4. Mission: Impossible &#8211, Ghost Protocol ( 2011 )

Many fans will tell you that the Mission: Impossible franchise, as we know it, got its start with this Brad Bird entry in the 2010s, and it’s obvious why. As the first installment made with a newly chastened Cruise&#8212, who Paramount Pictures had just spent years trying to fire from the series &#8212, it’s also the installment where the movie star remade his persona as a modern day Douglas Fairbanks. Here he becomes the guy you could count on to commit the most absurdly dangerous and ridiculous stunts for our entertainment. What a drool.

And in terms of set pieces, nothing in the series may top this movie’s second act where Cruise is asked to become a real-life Spider-Man and wall-crawl—as well as swing and skip—along the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s a true showstopper that dominates the remainder of the film. Not that there isn’t a lot to enjoy elsewhere as Bird brings a slightly more sci-fi and cartoonish cheek to the proceedings with amusing gadgets like those aforementioned “blue means glue” Spidey gloves. Even more amusingly, the damn things never seem to work properly.

The entire team feels crucial to the success of the adventure, including a now legitimate sidekick in the returning Pegg and some solid support from Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner, in this Mission: Impossible film. For a certain breed of fan that makes this the best, but we would argue the team dynamics were fleshed out a little better down the road, and in movies that have more than one stunning set piece to their name.

3. Mission: Impossible ( 1996 )

The last four entries of the series have been so good that it’s become common for folks to overlook the movie that started it all, Brian De Palma’s endlessly stylish Mission: Impossible. That’s unfortunate because there is something admirably blasphemous to this day about a movie that would throw the basics out the window. In this case, that meant turning the original show’s hero, Jim Phelps ( played by Jon Voight here ), into the villain while completely rewriting the rulebook about what the concept of” Mission: Impossible” is.

It’s the kind of creative move studios would never dare to make right now, which made a novelty of the 1960s spydom TV a 90s action classic with a strong emphasis on post-Cold War politics and techno espionage babble. The movie can at times appear dated given the emphasis on floppy disks and AOL email accounts, but it’s also got a brisk energy that never goes out of style thanks to De Palma’s ability to frame a knotty script by David Koepp and Robert Towne ( the latter of whom penned Chinatown ) into a breathlessly paced thriller filled with paranoia, double crosses, femme fatales, and horrifying dream sequences. In other words, it’s a De Palma special!

Additionally, the filmmaker and Cruise create a number of set pieces that would become the series ‘ defining trademark. The finale with a fistfight atop a speeding train beneath the English Channel is great, but the quiet as a church mouse midpoint where Cruise’s hero dangles over the pressure-sensitive floor of a CIA vault—and with a drop of sweat dripping just out of reach! is the subject of the popcorn myth. It’s how M: I also became as much a great heist series as shoot ‘ em up. Plus, this movie gave us Ving Rhames ‘ stealth MVP hacker, Luther Stickell.

2. Mission: Impossible &#8211, Rogue Nation ( 2015 )

Rogue Nation has a slightly low key tone in retrospect, as absurd as that might be to say about a film that begins with its star literally clinging for dear life to the outside of a plane at takeoff. Yet given how grand newcomer director Christopher McQuarrie would take things in the following three Mission films, his more restrained first iteration seems charmingly small scale in comparison. Even so, it remains an action marvel in its own right, as well as the most balanced and well-structured adventure in the series. The idea of making Ethan Hunt a real character first appeared in this one&#8217.

Rightly assessing Ethan to be a “gambler” based on his inconsistent yet continuously deranged earlier appearances, McQuarrie spins a web where Hunt’s dicey lifestyle comes back to haunt him when facing a villain who turns those showboat instincts in on themselves, and which pairs Ethan for the first time against the best supporting character in the series, Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. Ferguson’s MI6 double ( triple, quadruple ) is a cause, right? agent was the first leading lady in the series to become a recurring character. She gives a star-making turn as a woman who is in every way Ethan’s equal while keeping him and the audience on their toes.

In addition to her, a returning Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames strengthen the definitive Mission team, while McQuarrie creates elegant set pieces with classical flair, including an iconic scene from The Man Who Knew Too Much ( 1956 ), as well as a Casablanca chase between Ethan and Ilsa, which is the best motorcycle scene in the series ( if only they were stopped by Rick’s ). Also McQuarrie’s script ultimately figures out who Ethan Hunt truly is by letting all those around him realize he&#8217, s a madman. And Alan Hunley, Alec Baldwin&#8217, gets this gem of a line that sums up the entire series:

” Hunt is uniquely trained and highly motivated, a specialist without equal, immune to any countermeasures. There is no secret he cannot extract, no security he cannot breach, no person he cannot become. He is most likely anticipating this very conversation and is eager to strike whatever direction we choose. Sir, Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny—and he has made you his mission”.

1. Mission: Impossible &#8211, Fallout ( 2018 )

If one were to rank these movies simply by virtue of set pieces and stunts, pound for pound it’s impossible to top Mission: Impossible &#8211, Fallout ( forgive the pun ). There are too many giddy mic drop moments to list, but Tom Cruise’s one doing a real HALO jump out of a plane at 25, 000 feet was captured by camera operator CraigO’Brien, who had an IMAX camera strapped to his head, and the extended fight scene between Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Liam Yang in a bathroom where the music completely drops out. Also noteworthy is that the bizarre moment when Cavill needs to reload his biceps like they’re !

There was no better adrenaline rush in Hollywood in the 2010s than this movie, which is in large part a credit to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie. As the first filmmaker to helm more than one M: I movie, McQuarrie had the seemingly counterintuitive innovation to meticulously hammer out all of the above action sequences as well as others —such as a motorcycle chase across the cobblestones of Paris and a helicopter climax where Cruise is really flying his chopper at low altitudes—with stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood and Cruise, and then retroactively pen a surprisingly tight and satisfying screenplay that continues to deconstruct the Ethan Hunt archetype into a man of flesh and blood.

McQuarrie also reunites all the best supporting players in the series—Rhames, Pegg, and his own additions of Rebecca Ferguson as the ambiguous Ilsa Faust and Sean Harris as the dastardly Solomon Lane—into a yarn that is as zippy and sharp as you might expect from the screenwriter of The Usual Suspects, but which lets each action sequence unfurl with all the pageantry of an old school Gene Kelly musical number. Many people will claim this to be the best Mission: Impossible film, but we won’t argue otherwise.

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