Line #11 YMMV/MissionImpossibleFilmSeries


1	* ''[[YMMV/MissionImpossible1996 Mission: Impossible]]''
2	* ''YMMV/MissionImpossibleII''
3	* ''YMMV/MissionImpossibleIII''
4	* ''YMMV/MissionImpossibleGhostProtocol''
5	* ''YMMV/MissionImpossibleRogueNation''
6	* ''YMMV/MissionImpossibleFallout''
7	* ''YMMV/MissionImpossibleDeadReckoning''
8	----
9	* AbandonShipping: Ethan/Brandt, which was once one of the popular ships in the fandom behind Ethan/Benji, gradually dropped in popularity when Brandt didn't appear in ''Fallout'' due to his actor Creator/JeremyRenner having scheduling conflicts with ''Film/AvengersEndgame'' and the low chance that he'd appear in any future installments, with many Ethan/Brandt shippers gravitating to Ethan/Benji instead.
10	* AdaptationDisplacement: Many don't know that the films are based on a TV series.
11	%%NOTE! Do not add any other entries without going to the cleanup thread first.
12	* CompleteMonster: [[TheHero Ethan Hunt]] and company have faced [[Characters/MissionImpossibleFilmSeriesVillains numerous terrorists and other criminals]]. The following, however, are the worst of the worst:
13	** ''Film/MissionImpossibleIII'':
14	*** [[TerroristsWithoutACause Owen Davian]] is a sociopathic, powerful international ArmsDealer who is notorious for selling to different terrorists. Davian wants to find the Rabbit's Foot, a highly dangerous weapon which Davian is going to give to [[spoiler:John Musgrave]] and start a [[WarForFunAndProfit war in the Middle East which would kill many people]]. When he captures an agent who is spying on him, he brutally tortures her and plants a bomb inside of her head, detonating the bomb when she is finally rescued. When Davian is interrogated by Ethan Hunt, he gloats about killing the agent, saying that the only real reason he did it was [[ForTheEvulz because it was fun]], before threatening to do the same to Ethan and his wife, no matter what, which he attempts to do multiple times, even going as far as to disguise his own security chief as Ethan's wife, and then killing her, just to torture Ethan. In his final moments, he keeps his promise, and decides to kill Ethan's wife, with Ethan ForcedToWatch.
15	*** [[spoiler:[[NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist John Musgrave]], the [[Characters/MissionImpossibleFilmSeriesIMFLeadership IMF]]'s [[MoleInCharge Director of Operations]], [[FalseFriend poses as a friend to Ethan]] while plotting for war in the Middle East out of racism. [[TheManBehindTheMan Contracting Davian]] to locate the Rabbit's Foot, Musgrave intends on reporting the weapon's sale to terrorists to justify an invasion, while ready to replace Davian with any other merchant of death should Davian fail. Callously manipulating his fellow IMF colleagues, Musgrave boasts of his plan to a captive Ethan while threatening to have Davian kill his innocent fiancée.]]
16	** ''[[Film/MissionImpossibleGhostProtocol Ghost Protocol]]'': [[PsychoForHire Sabine Moreau]] is a cruel [[ProfessionalKiller contract killer]] who [[EstablishingCharacterMoment introduces herself]] by shooting Agent Hanaway to swipe his briefcase, leaving him on the cusp of death so he'll die in his lover's arms. The contents of the briefcase are nuclear launch codes that Moreau plans to sell to [[WellIntentionedExtremist Kurt "Cobalt" Hendricks]], so he can use them to kickstart a nuclear holocaust. When she meets who she believes to be Cobalt, Moreau tries to have his henchman executed to prove she's serious about the deal. Moreau doesn't care about Cobalt's cause or the billions who will die from the nuclear codes, [[OnlyInItForTheMoney simply wanting diamonds for her services]].
17	** ''[[Film/MissionImpossibleRogueNation Rogue Nation]]'' & ''[[Film/MissionImpossibleFallout Fallout]]'': [[AnarchyIsChaos Solomon Lane]] is a former UsefulNotes/MI6 operative who, after realizing his own sociopathic nature, became enraged and went rogue with [[Characters/MissionImpossibleFilmSeriesTheSyndicate the Syndicate]] to cover up his own deficiencies. Using the Syndicate to carry out devastating terrorist attacks while committing murders himself, Lane was defeated and arrested by Ethan Hunt and his team. Two years later, Lane uses his ally John Lark--aka August Walker--to get free, now [[RevengeBeforeReason hell-bent on revenge]] against Ethan. To that end, he uses stolen plutonium to rig two nuclear bombs to go off in Kashmir, at a medical site where Ethan's ex-wife Julia is working just out of spite. The nukes will irradiate the water supplies of China, India and Pakistan, affecting a third of the Earth's population while Lane is fine dying in the blast so long as he knows Ethan is framed for being Lark and will rot in a jail cell for the rest of his life haunted by the guilt of Julia's death. [[NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist Abandoning all pretense of good intentions]], Lane shows that he is a [[EvilCounterpart dark mirror]] to Hunt himself, stopping at nothing to achieve his ends, no matter how many have to die.
18	* FandomRivalry: There are passionate arguments between ''M:I'' fans and Film/JamesBond fans about which is the best SpyFiction film series of the current era, more exactly between the ''M:I'' movies since ''Mission: Impossible III'' and Creator/DanielCraig's Bond films.
19	* FanonDiscontinuity: Diehard fans of the original series like to pretend the films never existed mainly due to [[spoiler: Phelps turning out to be a villain]] and Creator/TomCruise stealing the spotlight.
20	* FanPreferredCouple:
21	** Ethan Hunt/Benji Dunn aka [[PortmanteauCoupleName Benthan]] is the biggest ship in the fan base. This is mainly due to the chemistry between Creator/TomCruise and Creator/SimonPegg and the HoYay that they have in later films. On most sites like Tumblr or [=AO3=], Ethan/Benji easily outranks Ethan being shipped with either his former wife Julia Meade or his new canon LoveInterest Ilsa Faust.
22	** Julia was married to Ethan before eventually getting remarried to Erik. Despite this, pairing Ethan and Julia also remains very popular among fans today, mainly because Erik has very little characterization beyond being a NiceGuy.
23	* EvenBetterSequel: An unusual case where each film generally has (bar Creator/JohnWoo's entry, see below) received better critical reviews than the last one, with many now calling ''Fallout'' the best installment. The Website/RottenTomatoes ratings for the first six are, from one to seven: 63%, 57%, 70%, 93%, 93%, and '''97%''', while the Metacritic scores are, from one to seven: 59, 59, 66, 73, 75, and '''86'''. The series seems to have reached a ceiling with ''[[Film/MissionImpossibleDeadReckoning Dead Reckoning]]'' having a still impressive 96% and 81 respectively.
24	* GrowingTheBeard: The first film was generally well received but had some backlash due to liberties taken next to the original tv show while the second film was a success as an action film but even further divorced from the espionage. The third film triggered two things, one was an emphasis on the whole team performing complicated missions together and the other was demonstrating a notably different tone from both the first and second films. It was a modest success critically and financially compared to the previous films, but this culminated in the fourth film ''Ghost Protocol'' which was able to combine the best aspects of prior films into a massive blockbuster. The films since then have received comparable acclaim.
25	* JustHereForGodzilla: Starting with ''Ghost Protocol'', a large selling point for the series is its impressive in-camera stunts performed by Tom Cruise with NoStuntDouble.
26	* MagnificentBastard: [[YMMV/MissionImpossible1996 Max]], [[YMMV/MissionImpossibleGhostProtocol Kurt "Cobalt" Hendricks]] and [[YMMV/MissionImpossibleFallout White Widow]]. See their pages for details.
27	* MemeticBadass: Ethan Hunt (and/or Creator/TomCruise himself). He almost doesn't need any additional elevation given the death-defying stunts he has to pull in every instalment, but he's nevertheless elevated to near-immortal status in the public consciousness.
28	* MemeticMutation: The many impressive stunts performed by Tom Cruise for the series have led to jokes about increasingly ridiculous things he has supposedly done to make the movies "more realistic", such as actually murdering the actors playing the films' villains or having plastic surgery done for scenes involving masks.
29	* MyRealDaddy: Creator/JJAbrams, who directed and wrote the third film and has remained onboard the series as producer for all subsequent installments, and Creator/ChristopherMcQuarrie, who contributed to the fourth film and wrote and directed the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. Under their involvement, the films have been seen blending a very strong mix of the more cerebral mind game aspects of the original movie and the more over-the-top action set pieces of the second, as well as [[IconicSequelCharacter introducing mainstays]] in the series like Benji Dunn and Ilsa Faust, with the more consistent cast allowing a greater focus on the whole team ensemble that some detractors of the first two films felt were missing. Since the two have gotten involved the series has been [[EvenBetterSequel getting better reviews]] with each film, with the sixth getting the strongest yet. This also extends to Ethan's characterization in the movies beginning with ''M:I 3'', combining his personality as TheChessmaster who outsmarted his enemies and never fired a gun or threw a punch in the first movie, with his gun-toting action hero portrayal in the second, and having them complement each other, so that while he is adept in a fight and can hold his own well, he primarily prefers out-thinking his opponents and only relies on direct combat if he's left with no other recourse. It's this characterization that stuck, and has continued through all the sequels after the third.
30	* SophomoreSlump: While some moviegoers appreciated the easier-to-follow storyline, ''Film/MissionImpossibleII'' is considered inferior despite (or ''because of'') the flashy action (noticeably, it gets the smallest real estate on the six-film collection box art seen on the main page). The third film was seen as much better and getting things back on track. The fourth, fifth and sixth are the best reviewed films in the series.
31	* StarTrekMovieCurse: Watch the first 6 movies and decide for yourself.
32	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The series has a tendency to introduce a new agent to Ethan's IMF team only to have them no longer appear in any future films with [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse no explanation]] as to what happened to them. Some examples include Billy from ''II'', Zhen and Declan from ''III'', Carter from ''Ghost Protocol'', and Brandt after ''Rogue Nation''. Brandt in particular being a major case since him getting a second film made it look like he was going to be a new main-stay.

Context YMMV / MissionImpossibleFilmSeries