1. That title is a mouthful, huh?
2. The finale with the train, as you may have heard, is a total knockout. What an ending.
3. All of the more recent Mission: Impossible movies - that is, everything that came after the J.J. Abrams' very decent Mission: Impossible III - are fantastic and thrilling, but also mostly interchangeable. Don't ask us to explain the plots (or even the nonsensical titles that sound cool but rarely describe the movies) because most of us know by now that the storylines exist solely to connect the big action set pieces.
4. We must deduct points for the fact that these movies eventually fall back on the "agents gone rogue" premise so that our heroes have to execute their impossible mission while evading both the bad guys and also the good guys who Don't Understand What's Really Going On.
5. We love that the Mission: Impossible films always include a TV-show-style credit sequence with the theme song blasting and lots of quick action cuts of the movie we're about to see, as if it's something we just tuned into on ABC in 1974. It always gives us goosebumps.
6. We honestly could not follow the plot here. Eventually, we gave up trying to work out who was doing what to who and why. Spy movies can be complicated, sure, but it's not good when they're totally obtuse.
7. The cruciform key gimmick was clever, though.
8. Strange that someone so familiar with Impossible Mission Force shenanigans would fall for the mask gimmick, which is surely the IMF's most renowned trick.
9. As smart as these movies can be, we still have a hard time watching Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg hack any system anywhere in the world at will with just a few keystrokes.
10. No spoilers, but the way the movie callously disposes of a heretofore key member of the team felt to us not only completely pointless but disrespectful to the character. We're hoping the next movie somehow rectifies that.
11. New movie star crush: Hayley Atwell.
12. A lot was made in the marketing about this supposed death-defying motorcycle/parachute stunt that Tom Cruise performs for the movie. We don't doubt the danger or the skill required, but viewed in the scope of everything we've seen in this franchise and considered from a purely visual perspective, that jump might not even crack the top ten Mission: Impossible stunt moments. It's impressive, but we didn't get a sense it was somehow unprecedented or historical when we saw it.
13. Cruise is 61 now and getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing, but there's no reason he can't start to take a more passive mentor role in the franchise, recruiting and teaching a new generation of heroes.
14. The filmmakers did Rebecca Ferguson's character wrong. Not cool.
15. It's pretty good, but not great. It's the first Mission: Impossible movie from writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (this is his third) that doesn't feel like a slam dunk.
Our current rankings:
1. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - the one where Tom Cruise climbed the skyscraper
2. Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) - the one with the dueling helicopters
3. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) - the one with the opera assassination attempt
4. (tie) Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) - the one with the train ending
4. (tie) Mission: Impossible III (2006) - the one with the Rabbit's Foot MacGuffin
6. Mission: Impossible (1996) - the one with Tom Cruise suspended over the floor
7. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) - the one that John Woo directed
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