The Most Mediocre Mission: Impossible Movie Was Secretly The Most Important

J.J. Abrams’ stock has been low ever since he put Star Wars in a bind it’s still extracting itself from. The Rise of Skywalker was the sequel trilogy’s critical and commercial low-point, and while it still hauled in a hefty sack of cash for its galactic overlords at Disney, the franchise doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself now that the Skywalker Saga has reached its empty end.

But Abrams never would have been put in that position if he hadn’t earned it, and he’d proved himself a shepherd of ailing franchises well before Palpatine somehow returned. He helmed The Force Awakens, of course, but he’d earned that gig by guiding Star Trek through a big-screen revival at a time when the franchise was moribund. And three years before that, he was a steward of a franchise that went on to do ridiculous, remarkable things.

Mission: Impossible III is easily the M:I franchise’s okay-est film, and perhaps secretly its most important one. As Impossibologists know, the series was still searching for an identity when III hit theaters 20 years ago today; the 1996 reboot was a relatively grounded Brian De Palma thriller, while II was the John Wooiest John Woo flick you ever did see. III split the difference as an unremarkable but competent action movie, one that, in retrospect, kept the franchise engaging and relevant long enough for it to become the modern king of stunt work.

The last movie in the franchise to cling to the premise that Ethan Hunt is a normal human being, III sees him engaged and retired from field duty, happy to be an IMF trainer by day and just another civilian by night. It’s a bit silly to watch now, knowing that four movies with increasingly ridiculous villains and stunts are waiting in the wings, but at the time, Tom Cruise was already 44, and it seemed reasonable to conclude that he and his character were mere mortals like the rest of us.

Naturally, Hunt is called back to action by the capture of his top student, and what follows is a bombastic back-and-forth affair between Hunt and arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) for control of a deadly plot device called the Rabbit’s Foot. Hoffman is an icy presence who seems capable of defeating Cruise through sheer ruthlessness, and while there are places where the plot barely holds together, the plot is not what sold tickets.

Fans came for the action, and Abrams delivered with a bombastic raid on a German industrial compound, a chase through the streets of Shanghai, an explosive shootout on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and, most notably, an extended sequence set in Vatican City that features Hoffman playing Cruise in disguise as Hoffman. It sometimes veers into incoherency — the film was made during the obnoxious height of the shaky-cam era, and it was Abrams’ first movie after decades of TV experience. But the moments that work really work, and watching Cruise careen between Chinese skyscrapers was a preview of the series’ growing ambitions.

And while Mission: Impossible III was never going to win any awards for characterization (Maggie Q and Jonathan Rhys Meyers make their only appearance in the franchise as empty vessels who help Hunt out), it’s still intriguing to see Cruise play a role he can’t always sell: a regular human being who shops at 7-11, owns a practical vehicle, and calmly expresses love. Cruise and Ving Rhames’ banter about whether their careers can accommodate relationships could be ripped from any spy film, but by the time The Final Reckoning arrived last year, they were so busy exchanging plot points that it was difficult to remember they were human at all.

While M:I III was generally well-received, some critics suggested that the franchise was still searching for an identity in the world of Bourne and Daniel Craig’s Bond. That was fair — this is a movie where Cruise inexplicably saying “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall” after scaling Vatican City’s exterior is what passed for wit — but Abrams’ boilerplate approach paid the bills long enough for the franchise to go do its soul-searching. After ping-ponging between Cruise as an analyst forced into action and Cruise as a leather-clad motorcycle duelist, “competently straightforward” was a safe but necessary step for the series.

Five years later, Brad Bird’s Ghost Protocol would take the franchise to cartoonish heights before Christopher McQuarrie locked down the final four films with a steady blend of envelope-pushing action and convoluted, self-serious stories. McQuarrie’s films have soaring pros and exhausting cons, but you knew exactly what you were getting when you sat down for each one. Would he — and we — have had the chance to establish that tone if Abrams, who stayed on as a producer for the next three films, hadn’t kept the rudder steady for a while?

Maybe, maybe not. But since we’ve given him so much flak for his deleterious effect on Star Wars, it’s only fair to give credit where credit is due. Abrams’ conventionality worked in his favor on Mission: Impossible III, providing the franchise a clear direction it desperately needed. He may not be a great franchise fixer, but for one franchise, at least, he was a savior.

Mission: Impossible III is streaming on Paramount+.