10 Times Changing The Tone Saved Movie Franchises
9. Mission: Impossible Goes Back To Suspense (Mission: Impossible 3)
Mission: Impossible 2 was divisive, to say the least. Very much a product of its time, the film was a strange hybrid of a lacklustre Bond entry and an East-Asian Martial Arts flick while trying too hard to emulate The Matrix. Clearly, they hadn't sussed out the right formula for a Mission: Impossible film yet; typified with Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt shoehorned in an awkward love triangle, with all the forced romance, clunky dialogue and slow pace that brings.
When JJ Abrams got to make his directorial debut for Mission: Impossible 3, he was laser-focused on what the franchise needed. As though a film may only be as good as its villain, a series is only as good as its protagonist. So it's no surprise that fixing Ethan Hunt's character worked wonders, turning him back into the efficient spy ready to sacrifice everything for the mission.
Abrams made an injection of adrenaline and suspense that went a million miles an hour, showcasing relentless action scenes with more personal stakes. It's a far cry from the series' best, but M:I3 provided a template for its sequels to go on and produce some of the best contributions to the spy genre in recent memory.