Five unforgettable scenes from ‘Mission Impossible’ franchise
The main reason we all keep going back to the “Mission: Impossible” franchise is the stunts, of course.
Watching Ethan Hunt as he scales mountains, jumps onto planes and dangles from skyscrapers fills us with eye-rolling delight.
Here are some of our favorite ridiculously daring action scenes, excluding the ones in “Fallout.”
• “Ghost Protocol”: The stunts increasingly get more over-the-top as the series progresses. My favorite — the fourth in the series — finds Cruise doing aerial acrobatics outside the world’s tallest building, located in Dubai. Anyone with a fear of heights will be a mess watching this.
• “Rogue Nation”: The flat-out crazy Hunt/Cruise antics in this fifth entry start unspooling in the opening minutes. It finds Cruise racing to jump on a military transport plane as it’s taking off. It’s a wild ride, one of the most outrageous in the series.
• “Mission: Impossible”: Brian De Palma’s cinematic reboot of the TV series had its slow patches, but it did featured a tourde-force sequence as Hunt dangles from the ceiling like a Cirque du Soleil performer to hack into a CIA computer. Let’s see the Russians try that.
• “M:i2”: One of the most implausible entries in the series, John Woo’s hyperactive chase flick opened with Hunt/Cruise doing some intense rock climbing at Dead Horse Point in Utah. Once again, if you have a fear of heights this opener will get you.
• “Mission: Impossible 3”: J.J. Abrams’ turn at the helm also highlighted just how good Cruise is as running through chaos. Remember that aerial attack on the bridge?