10 Film Franchises That Successfully Recovered From Awful Entries

10. Mission Impossible

The Awful Entry – Mission Impossible 2 (2000)

It’s somewhat astounding that Mission Impossible has become one of the most successful and critically acclaimed action franchises of all time. After switching directors for each of the four films, locking Christopher McQuarrie into the chair for the most recent two has been a stroke of genius, enabling his vision and Tom Cruise’s barbaric wishes to come together like nothing else.

Whilst the financial returns of the series have always been strong and stable, the quality has been far more inconsistent. The original film in 1996 was a fairly formulaic action thriller that attracted significant criticism for its convoluted plot and mistreatment of the lore of the original 1960s television series.

2000’s Mission Impossible 2 then doubled down on the convolution and overdid the ‘it’s another character wearing a mask’ gimmick/plot twist to the point where it became more of a shock when somebody actually was who they appeared to be.

It’s a film that has now been all but forgotten in the wake of Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout dialling down the silliness and focusing on leaner plotting. Today it is more likely to come up in a pub quiz as the film Dougray Scott opted to do instead of play Wolverine in X-Men than in a discussion about the best Tom Cruise films.