Every week in September gets you a new Mission: Impossible listicle. Why? Why not.
Here are the four total articles we did on Mission: Impossible:
Ranking the films overall
Ranking the villains
Ranking the Tom Cruise stunts
Ranking the recurring ensemble members
LAST: Michael Nyqvist – Kurt Hendricks
This film series has probably never invested so little time, energy, and effort into a villain than they did with poor Michael Nyqvist. He was just left out there to dangle with just nothing and came out of this otherwise great film looking weak as hell.
8. Esai Morales – Gabriel
Caveat: Gabriel is the villain for a two-part film so my placement of him might change after Part Two is released. (Update: it did not.)
Esai Morales was asked to do two things in this film: look like a smokeshow and look believable at killing people in close contact range. He did both things! His character is too lightly sketched out to have much of an opinion on him before that. I thought he succeeded in what he was asked to do for sure though. A couple years later and a second film later, I do not rank my Morales much higher on the list. If anything, his work in Reckoning Part One worked better for me because he was just an AI fanatic, and that has aged way too well.
7. Sean Harris – Solomon Lane
This boring-ass man gets points for lasting more than one of these films and that is pretty much it! At this point in the franchise they really needed like a Javier Bardem in Skyfall type villain if they were to be reoccurring. Instead, this dour man serves mostly as an idea to keep the plot moving. He’s also a classic case of a villain in one of these movies who is largely asking the right questions about what the hell is wrong with these evil intelligence companies but they then have to make irrational on some level so that we never stop rooting for the American superhero spies.
6. Philip Seymour Hoffman – Owen Davian
Generally speaking, his work gets a lot of praise (based on what I have gleaned over the years. Others might perceive the reaction differently). I honestly cannot say why that is the case though. He mostly appears to be sleepwalking through everything, and I cannot recall ever watching him appear to be so emotionally divested from the work. The one interesting sequence for him is when Tom Cruise is wearing a PSH mask, and then PSH does an Ethan Hunt impression, physically. It’s the best five minutes of the movie.
5. Dougray Scott – The Joker
Dougray Scott missed out on Wolverine due to this movie going long in order to play The Joker in this film. It’s a totally mad performance that would feel out of place in any other film in the series except for the one directed by John Woo.
4. Jean Reno – Franz Krieger
Jean Reno is one of the most effortlessly cool people in the history of Hollywood. He just glides through this film and commands the audience’s attention the entire time. The way he is able to swing back and forth from someone worthy of suspicion to someone you might think is aight to a definitive villain was truly impressive. More Jean Reno in more things, please and thank you.
3. Henry Cavill – John Lark
Cavill seems like a really dumb guy, and he plays a character so dumb here that he has no idea how out of his element he is at times. He’s got all the talent and ability and skills in the world, but his logic and decision-making are so poor that it costs him dearly. It was just delightful in every way. He also pumps his arms before he punches.
2. The Entity
Caveat: The Entity is the villain for a two-part film so my placement of it might change after Part Two is released. (Update: no, not really).
Making Rogue Artificial Intelligence is simultaneously so hacky and yet so perfect. Obviously, Dead Reckoning is not the first work of fiction to deal with this idea, but there feels something appropriate about Tom Cruise fighting computers and there is basically just nowhere else left to go with the series beyond A.I. I loved it. The second Reckoning film did not really pay it off well, but I give it points for being so cool in Part One.
1. Jon Voight – Jim Phelps
Clearly, Voight’s character feels like he was from a different time and place than so much of this series. I do think though that he really nails the role, and his betrayal is played so well and impacts our entire understanding of the world and shapes the characterization of Ethan Hunt for all the future films. Jon Voight, you may be crazy but you were sometimes a great actor.
The Reel World 