I watched every Mission: Impossible movie back-to-back so you don't have to. This is how it went
'And he literally just drove straight off a cliff, no second thoughts! I don't think this guy is going to be done until he's dead!'
That was the comment that pricked up my ears and, to be fair, conversations like that aren't too far off some of the things you'll hear coming from the breaking news and crime desks. But this was a culture convo – colour me intrigued.
The dots joined themselves quickly. They had to be talking about the latest Mission: Impossible movie, starring the guy whose midlife 'crisis' seems to involve collecting specialist equipment licences like they're Pokemon cards. Plane, boat, bazooka – you name it, Tom Cruise is qualified to do it. There are eight of these films over almost 30 years but I had not seen even one.
My mission, I was soon informed, 'should I choose to accept it', was to watch all eight of them in one week and report back.
Me being me, I devised a nerdy ratings system to help illustrate my thoughts on the exploits of elite Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise), rating each film out of 10 for the following categories:
Villain: The bad guy.
Team: The elite team of IMF agents Hunt assembles.
Bosses: Hunt's always got some no-good, button-pushing suit breathing down his neck.
Mask reveals: Having Hunt hide then dramatically reveal his identity is a series hallmark.
Action sequences: Cruise's stunts get more insane with every passing film.
Impossibility: Just how Impossible is this Mission?
Romance: He never misses on the streets but Hunt is hit-or-miss between the sheets.
Plot: You know what this is, folks.
Cold open: All eight films open with a splashy sequence before the iconic opening credits roll. They range in length from about three minutes to nearly 30.
Equipped with a plan and a lot of snacks, my cinematic journey began. This is what I discovered.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Perth Now
6 hours ago
- Perth Now
Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise backed out of starring in Ford v Ferrari together
Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise opted out of starring in Ford v Ferrari after the Mission: Impossible star realised he wouldn't be "driving much". The 61-year-old actor has been on the track for his role as Sonny Hayes in F1 but explained that he was due to collaborate with Cruise on the 2019 sports film about the battle between the two car manufacturers at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race before his fellow star went cold on the project after discovering that his character - car designer Carroll Shelby - wouldn't be getting behind the wheel. Brad told The National: "Tom and I, for a while there, were on Ford v Ferrari with Joe (Kosinski, to direct). This was about 10 years before the guys who actually made it - and made it a great movie. "What it came down to is that we both wanted to drive, and he wanted to play Shelby, and I wanted to play Ken Miles. And when Tom realised that Carroll Shelby would not be driving much in the movie, it didn't come through." Ford v Ferrari eventually came to fruition with James Mangold directing and Matt Damon and Christian Bale portraying Shelby and Miles respectively. Pitt and Cruise haven't worked together on the big screen since the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire but the World War Z star is open to collaborating with the film icon again - as long as he doesn't have to do any crazy stunts. Speaking to E! News, Pitt said: "Well, I'm not gonna hang my a** off airplanes and s*** like that. "So when he does something again that's on the ground [then yes]." Meanwhile, Pitt is open to the possibility of an F1 sequel but said that he "would want to drive again, selfishly speaking". He said: "F1 is still the focus. It needs to be on Joshua Pearce - Damson Idris' character - and the rest of the team fighting for a championship. Where does Sonny fit in? I'm not sure. "Sonny's probably out on the Bonneville Salt Flats, setting speed records or something like that. So I'm not sure beyond that, just yet." Pitt has previously starred in the sports genre in the 2011 movie Moneyball - in which he played baseball revolutionary Billy Beane - and says they are his favourite type of film. He told NFL stars Travis and Jason Kelce on their New Heights podcast: "I love a sports movie when they work... It's the greatest. I look back at Gene Hackman and Hoosiers and (Robert) Redford and The Natural, there's even something more. Sports for me, even one game is an entire lifetime." Pitt added to the Kelce brothers - who have both won the Super Bowl in the NFL: "We watch you guys, we watch your fate. We watch how you deal with adversity, how you fight through it and it's really an amazing metaphor for a lifetime."
Sky News AU
9 hours ago
- Sky News AU
‘It's gonna happen': Tom Cruise set to revive a ‘really exciting' 90s blockbuster following success of Top Gun: Maverick
Movie buffs will be getting a sequel to another much-loved Tom Cruise film, with industry figures confirming a second Days of Thunder is in the works. It comes off the back of Top Gun: Maverick's worldwide success, with the film raking in almost $1.5 billion at the box office to make it the second highest-grossing film of 2022. Now, Cruise has his sight set on a sequel to Days of Thunder, more than three decades after the film first released in 1990. The co-producer of the F1 movie, Jerry Bruckheimer, confirmed an 'exciting' sequel was in the works. 'Well, there's always new technologies, there's always new ways to do things and to see things,' he told Entertainment Tonight. 'Tom is such a great individual – comes up with phenomenal ideas.' 'So, we'll have something really exciting for an audience once we pull it together.' Cruise first teased a sequel in an appearance on Today, when asked whether a third Top Gun could be in the works. 'All of these things we're working on,' he said. 'We're discussing Days of Thunder and Top Gun: Maverick. There are numerous other films that we're actively working on right now.' Hendrick Motorsports chairman and former NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon said he's 'all for' a Days of Thunder sequel. 'Let's do Days of Thunder 2, I am all for that,' he said. 'Tom Cruise has told me it's gonna happen, so let's make it happen.' The original 1990 film was a hit worldwide, earning $150 million at the box office and costing $60 million to make. Gordon said Days of Thunder's success greatly contributed to the growing popularity of NASCAR in the 90s, and hopes a sequel will do the same. 'When I came into NASCAR, Days of Thunder had just come out. It played a huge role in the growth of NASCAR,' he said. 'So let's bring it back.'
The Advertiser
3 days ago
- The Advertiser
If you're going to let dinosaurs run amok, you need these five ground rules
If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP If you're going to let dinosaurs to go on a rampage, it's good to set some ground rules. That's how screenwriter David Koepp saw it, anyway, in penning the script for Jurassic World Rebirth, which opens in cinemas on July 3. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park and its 1997 sequel, The Lost World. But Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, marks his return to the franchise he helped birth. And Koepp, the veteran screenwriter of Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible, saw it as a chance to get a few things in order for a movie series that had perhaps strayed too far from its foundational character. Inspired by the animator Chuck Jones, Koepp decided to put down a list of nine commandments to guide Jurassic World Rebirth and future instalments. Jones had done something similar for the Roadrunner cartoons. His "commandments" included things like: the Roadrunner never speaks except to say "meep meep"; the coyote must never catch him; gravity is the coyote's worst enemy; all products come from the ACME Corporation. "I always thought those were brilliant as a set of organising principles," Koepp says. "Things become easier to write when you have that, when you have a box, when you have rules, when you agree going in: 'These we will heed by'. So I wrote my own, nine of them." Koepp shared some - though not all of them - in a recent interview. "I hate a retcon [retroactive continuity]. I hate when they change a bunch of things: 'Oh, that didn't actually happen. It was actually his twin.' I don't like other timelines. So I thought: Let's not pretend any of the last 32 years didn't happen or happened differently than you thought. But we can say things have changed." "On the first movie, anyone working on the movie would get fined for referring to them as monsters. "They're not monsters, they're animals. "Therefore, because they're animals, their motives can only be because they're hungry or defending their territory. "They don't attack because they're scary. They don't sneak up and roar because they want to scare you." "You can't forget it." "The tone that Steven (Spielberg) found and I helped find in that first movie is really distinctive. I haven't gotten to work on a movie with that tone since then. So to go back to that sense of high adventure, real science and humor, it was just kind of joyful." "And then there were a number of other rules that I would define as trade secrets. So I'll keep them to myself." AP/AAP
