10 Reasons Why Mission: Impossible Is The Best Film Franchise Ever

Unlike many action franchises, M:I has had the chance to grow with each installment - and with that has come a further refinement of just what can be done to make such a genre film tick on the paper.

Though clearly known in the public consciousness for its stunts, the franchise - particularly in its McQuarrie years - has always demonstrated a care for its characters and the situations they find them in, operating at a level both sly enough to recognise the inherent ludicrous qualities in their missions and their MacGuffins while rarely devaluing the genuine weight of the relationships between them.

Fallout, by nature of effectively reuniting most of Ethan Hunt's closest allies into another ticking clock scenario where the stakes felt more oppressively personal across the board, exemplified this to brilliant effect; it showed an understanding of how each individual clicks together as part of a wider puzzle while managing to engineer a narrative whose occasionally retroactive nature felt particularly genuine.

The James Bond outing Spectre tried to pull this trick five years ago with somewhat fumbled results, while the Harry Potter series enough key beats in earlier adaptations to leave freight train-wide plot holes down the line, which only furthers just how tightly knit these films are on a narrative level.