10 Reasons Mission: Impossible - Fallout Is The Best Ever

One of Fallout's greatest strengths is McQuarrie's insistence from the get-go that it be a direct sequel.

In the past, the franchise's mentality, expressed several times by Tom Cruise himself, was to have each and every sequel be a standalone feature. Cruise didn't want audiences to feel that they had to have seen the prior films in order to understand the current one.

But with McQuarrie coming back as the first-ever repeat director for the franchise, Fallout tries something different. Instead of forging its own narrative aside from the previous ones, it feels like the culmination of every single prior film. And this isn't just in the narrative but in the thematic callbacks as well.

Whether this is in the character arcs of Benjia status as a field agent being confirmed by him finally getting to wear a mask, or exploring Luther and Ethan's long-standing relationship a bit more in-depth, or Julia's life since going into hiding.

Perhaps the strongest example in the whole film is how McQuarrie illustrates Hunt's changing relationship with Ilsa solely through visuals. In Rogue Nation, the big motorcycle chase scene between Hunt and Ilsa was brought to a screeching halt when Ilsa got off of her bike and stood in the middle of the road as Ethan came around. Ethan saw her, panicked at the thought of hurting her, and crashed his own bike in attempting to stop.

Fallout mirrors this scene almost exactly, except with Ethan in a car. And this time, he runs right through her.

Heck, even Mission: Impossible II gets some callbacks in there with a greater focus on Ethan's failed love lives and the aesthetic references of some very well-timed John Woo-style birds.