His only clues: the face of a mysterious man (Sam Harris) clad in horn-rimmed glasses, and a beautiful-but-fierce mystery woman (Rebecca Ferguson) who saved Ethan's life and may or may not be a double agent. The IMF may have saved the world, but CIA Director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) sees the IMF as an outdated threat to national security and convinces the Senate to shutter the impossible mission agency and fold its assets into the CIA.Įthan Hunt (Tom Cruise) refuses the order to come in out of the field instead, he is hell-bent on discovering the truth behind The Syndicate, which is best described as an anti-IMF, or the titular Rogue Nation. Rogue Nation picks up shortly after the events of Ghost Protocol. The first two are, effectively, standalone entries, while parts three through five have attempted to infuse more of an emotional core (Ethan Hunt's romantic entanglements as well as his friendships). While the star remains the same, each entry has seen a new director with his own sense of tone and visual flourishes. The Mission: Impossible franchise is an interesting one.
In a way, we're living in an era where movie studios are making really expensive TV series over the course of several years (or decades). Outside of a few blockbuster trilogies and the James Bond films, franchises plodded along, making cheaper and cheaper sequels with diminishing box office returns.įast forward to 2015 and the third highest grossing movie of all time is the fourth Jurassic Park film, while the seventh Fast and the Furious movie made over a billion dollars, every studio in Hollywood is trying to launch its own cinematic universe, and the seventh Star Wars might just be the biggest movie of all time. Twenty to thirty years ago, movie franchises were a much different ballgame.