All ‘Mission: Impossible’ Movies, Ranked

This mission is gonna be harder than Rudy Giuliani’s battle to keep his own mouth shut. Harder than Majorie Taylor Green’s quest to find a beer that she can drink at the bar. This mission—for my eyes only—is just downright difficult: ranking the Mission Impossible movies from worst to best.

I keep telling myself that I have it easier than Mission Impossible’s hero, Ethan Hunt. I don’t have to hang on to the wing of a moving plane. I don’t have to scale the side of the world’s tallest building. My laptop isn’t even gonna self destruct in five seconds. And yet, this will be the most challenging task that I have attempted in my entire career. After all, the Mission Impossible movies are doing something that no one—not even top government agents—could ever suspect: They are getting impossibler and impossibler. And better and better every time.

So here they are, ranked impossibleast to impossiblest.

7. Mission: Impossible II

While the particular mission of Mission: Impossible II is not quite as impossible as some of the others on this list, it certainly is implausible. From director John Woo (the brilliant mind behind action classics like Hard Boiled and The Killer) comes a film where Ethan Hunt is assigned a mission: improbable where he must track down an ex-IMF agent who intends to unleash a bioweapon upon the world … Resident Evil style.

Weirdly enough, this Mission: Impossible doesn’t exactly feature as much of the impossible as John Woo’s other films. Don’t get me wrong; there’s still plenty of over the top action sequences that are certainly “mission: difficult,” but nothing as high flying and explosive as John Woo’s past work. It’s not a bad film by any means; it simply pales in compare to some of the high octane stunts of the following films in the series.

6. Mission: Impossible III

Like Mission: Impossible II, J.J. Abrams’ trilogy-making film doesn’t quite match the hype of the other films on this list. It’s a solid film, sure, but nobody is scaling the Burj Khalifa (yes, they actually do that in later films). Mission: Impossible III pits Ethan Hunt against an arms dealer named Owen Davian, played by the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Hoffman simply steals the show. He’s easily the most memorable villain ever cast in a Mission: Impossible film (sorry, Henry Cavill) and makes for a truly bone-chilling antagonist. Without Hoffman’s genius shouldering the weight of this film, Mission: Impossible III’s somewhat bland plot would cause it to sink to the very bottom of this list.

5. Mission: Impossible

Brian De Palma’s original film—while the least impossible film on this list—deserves credit where credit is due. Before the Mission: Impossible became a scenery-chewing, building-scaling, budget-blowing action movie franchise, it began humbly as a modest thriller. Super spy Ethan Hunt is framed by a CIA mole and must go on the run from the long, hairy arm of the law while trying to prove his innocence.

The film’s wire-hanging sequence quickly became iconic, and was even parodied in Shrek. Also, who could forget the masterpiece of a main theme composed by Lalo Schifrin? Obviously not the production team, considering it’s been appearing in subsequent Mission: Impossible movies ever since.

4. Mission: Impossible 4 – Ghost Protocol

Mission: Impossible – 4 Ghost Protocol marks the series’ departure from the highly improbable to the truly impossible. After Ethan Hunt and friends are mistakenly blamed for a terrorist attack and hunted down by the government, they have to take matters into their own suction cup-covered hands in order to clear their names. And boy do those suction cups make for good cinema.

Ethan Hunt’s gecko-like scaling of the Burj Khalifa—the world’s tallest building—was a dizzying, death-defying stunt. What’s even wilder is that Tom Cruise ACTUALLY DID IT. Say what you will about the man, but he is truly fearless. I don’t know what the source of his faith in himself is from. Cocaine? Scientology? Commitment to the craft? A heady mix of the three? Who knows? But Cruise’s willingness to actually perform the impossible marked this series’ transition from good to great.

3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Surely nothing could top Ghost Protocol, right? After all, you can only scale the Burj Khalifa once. Topping that feat would be … impossible??? Yes, it is, but the Mission: Impossible team did it. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation pits Ethan Hunt and his team against a deadly group of international criminals known as The Syndicate. Rogue Nation features one of Tom Cruise’s most difficult stunts to date. Ethan Hunt has to swim down into an underwater vault (because plot), and in order to pull off the feat, Cruise trained himself to hold his breath underwater for SIX MINUTES.

2. Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Mission: Impossible – Fallout accomplished the truly impossible by managing to keep audiences entertained for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. That is a Lord of The Rings, Martin Scorsese level run time but with NONE OF THE CHARACTER DEPTH. This film’s nearly three-hour runtime was propped up PURELY by action. How is that even possible? It isn’t, but the team did it anyway.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout relies on the classic Mission: Impossible plot: blame Tom Cruise for something he didn’t do. It doesn’t win any award for originality, but it DOES win awards for featuring Henry Cavill as the series’ second-best bad guy. Who could forget his iconic “arm reload” in the hand-to-hand combat fight scene? I sure didn’t.

1. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (Part One)

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning couldn’t POSSIBLY be the best film on this list? How could Tom Cruise’s body POSSIBLY keep up with the rigorous stunts demanded of him? How could he top the action sequences that he did in his youth? Through the power of grit, determination, and Scientology, I’m guessing.

Dead Reckoning pits Ethan Hunt and his team against a timely villain, an AI known as The Entity that manages to worm its way inside the team’s ranks and sow the seeds of distrust. The stunts are bonkers, the plot feels relevant, and—most charmingly—the AI’s ability to control modern technology causes the IMF to rely on old school ’90s tech, in a callout to the original Mission: Impossible film. It’s impossibly good.

(featured image: Paramount)