There are no bad Mission: Impossible movies. I don't particularly care for Mi3 - which I know is sacrilege given the performance Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives - but J.J. Abrams' direction can't compete with masters like Brian De Palma or John Woo, who by all accounts knocked it out of the park for the first two instalments.
Like Mad Max however, this is a series that has improved with time. 2011's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol by Brad Bird was brilliantly inventive, while filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie took things to a whole other level of 2015 and 2018 entries Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and Fallout. These films have cemented Tom Cruise as a true "Movies Man" ambassador, accomplishing all kinds of wild stunts and taking time between shooting to emphasise the importance of the cinema as a venue.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - which is set to release later this summer - looks like it will continue this trend.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
