Set your hero an impossible task that can only be accomplished through devilish cunning and godlike derring-do, involving planes, trains and automobiles, and watch the money come rolling in. Then make him do it all over again. And again.
This might be a reductive way of looking at the Mission: Impossible series, over whose seven-film span nuclear catastrophe has been prevented, biological warfare averted and international arms dealers foiled, but it is what generations of fans have come to expect.
