Tom Cruise’s creative partnership with Christopher McQuarrie might be the best thing to have happened to the action genre in quite some time. The duo has given us Top Gun: Maverick, one of the era’s best legacy sequels, and they also turned the Mission: Impossible saga into the reigning champ of spy thrillers. McQuarrie’s stamp on the latter can be most acutely felt starting with its fifth installment, Rogue Nation, and he’s since helped wrangle a chaotic franchise with his synthesized, stunt-driven vision.
That uniformity makes it easy to dismiss earlier films, especially black sheep like Mission: Impossible II and III. One couldn’t be more different from the other, but when the franchise was in its infancy, such distinctions were essential to Cruise. The actor, then totally disinterested in sequels, would only return to play Ethan Hunt if he could work with different directors who changed the tone of the saga. Before McQuarrie, Mission: Impossible was a mystery box, offering something new with each new installment. Results varied, but that novelty kept audiences on their toes in a way that McQuarrie’s films, despite their incredible set pieces, don’t.
