Five movies in, and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has really worked his way through a rather alarmingly large number of co-workers.
Whether it was through issues with upper-management, pay concerns or just plain old fashioned death, the members of the Impossible Mission Force have come and gone like it was a branch of a fast food restaurant.
But with the arrival of Mission: Impossible 6 imminent – including a stunt that took the Cruiser a year to prep for – we decided to look back over the other movies and see how his previous IMF cohorts ranked.
This was a gargantuan undertaking that we almost immediately regretted starting once we realised just how many of these team-members there actually were across the five movies, but we’re nothing if not thorough.
And yes, there are some of his bosses in here, and others who we thought were his good-guy buddies but actually turned out to be secret bad-guys, but Ethan worked alongside them all, so they get ranked.
Oh, and obviously, spoilers. Now, on with the rankings, starting with the worst
22. TIE – Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas), Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez) and Hannah Williams (Ingeborga Dapkunaite)
We start with Ethan’s very first team, who all come in dead (LOL) last because it took them all of, what?, ten minutes to get mass murdered? Jack gets squished in an elevator, Hannah sits in an exploding car and Sarah walks right into a stabber’s big stabby knife, proving that none of them are worthy of the IMF name. For shame!
19. Nya Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton)
Never in the history of time has there been a person more prone to imminent death than this woman. She’s apparently a master thief, but all we really see her do is ballet-dance her car off the edge of a cliff, and then inject herself with a killer virus before wandering the busy streets of Sydney. Are we sure she wasn’t secretly the villain?
18. Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers)
We were initially very happy to see one of our own get a look-in (Brendan Gleeson appeared in M:I-2, but he was kind of a bad guy, so he doesn’t get a mention here). Until Declan tried to flirt with another member of the team by asking her to … read him some poetry? We’re sure he probably did more in this movie, but we honestly can’t remember what that might have been.
17. Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins)
This felt like stunt-casting, and since Ethan’s last boss turned out to be a bit of a d-bag, he was obviously going to be a little bit weary of this new guy. But that doesn’t mean that have to give Hopkins absolutely NOTHING to do. Except for that one great line: “This is not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt, this is Mission: Impossible.”
16. John Musgrave (Billy Crudup)
M:I-3 had a great bait-and-switch because the whole way we thought it was Lawrence Fishburne’s too-stern boss that was secretly the bad guy, but no, it was this too-helpful second-in-command guy who managed to lip-read his way out of trouble. He would’ve got away with it too, except the extent of his evil plan was to use his boss’s phone and not his own phone to make his evil phone calls to evil Philip Seymour Hoffman. Huh.
15. Theodore Brassel (Lawrence Fishburne)
Didn’t notice his underling was using his phone to make evil phone calls. As the head of an international spy agency, that’s kind of a basic thing to be overlooking, Theo.
14. The Secretary (Tom Wilkinson)
Seems like a cool dude, totally understanding of Ethan’s plight, and is more than willing to help him out. But seems to overlook the fact that he is a high-valued target, doesn’t make the windows of his car bullet-proof, and promptly gets shot in the head. Ah well…
13. Trevor Hanaway (Josh Holloway)
Another example of seeming like a cool guy, totally kick-ass and doing lots of cool spy stuff, but then an evil spy chick walks right up to him in the middle of the street and shoots him dead.
12. Claire Phelps (Emmanuelle Beart)
She was the only survivor of Operation Kill The Famous People at the start of the first movie along with Tom Cruise, which included the “apparent” death of her hubby/boss. So when it turns out she was in on it the whole time, that was a nice twist. Until she gets caught out by the fake mask trick, which she had seen used EARLIER THAT DAY on somebody else. As a rule, we would be tugging on everyone’s face all of the time in lieu of shaking hands.
11. Zhen Lei (Maggie Q)
There is a good chance that Zhen is an amazing spy in her own right, but aside from deflecting Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s weird poetic come-ons, there’s very little else for her to do other than look super hot getting out of expensive cars, distracting rich people with her “Can we even call this is a dress?” dress, and then blowing up said expensive cars in order to cause further distractions. However, she does do pretty much all of that really, really well… so.
10. Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny)
People seem to forget this, but Kittridge was actually the good guy of the first M:I movie. His workers had all been killed, and he was sure it was the only survivor (not our Tom!) who was responsible. Had Tom come in and answered some questions quietly, maybe the fish in that big fish-tank might still be alive. However, maybe as the head of a spy agency, Kittridge should have been more open to the idea of a double-cross originating elsewhere. Takes two to tango, you guys!
9. Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin)
It takes a big man to realise he’s made a mistake. Initially, Hunley was all “Shut down the IMF! They keep blowing up small parts of the planet!”, but by the end he’s been promoted to the head of the IMF, and he’ll be back in the same position (a first in the series for a boss to make it through more than one film) come M:I-6.
8. Franz Krieger (Jean Reno)
Pro: Can keep Ethan afloat above a pressure sensitive floor while killing rats single-handedly.
Con: Doesn’t seem to understand simple sleight-of-hand magic tricks.
7. Jim Phelps (Jon Voight)
He’s obviously a bit of a genius, having managed to kill just about everyone in his team and get Ethan to take the blame for it, all for the sake of a bit more money so he and his wife could run away together and live a rich and happy life. Points off for his getaway plan involving a helicopter collecting him from a speeding train, and at no point did he pull the emergency stop lever.
6. Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg)
It has been fun watching Benji develop from a tech-nerd to a fully fledged part of the team, but while we’d rather have him for moral support rather than actual “Cover me!” support, we can’t help but feel he turned rather quickly on IMF with Ethan – who was accused of being a traitor at the time, remember! – started shouting at him over the phone.
5. Jane Carter (Paula Patton)
More than capable of holding her own during a fist fight, and isn’t afraid to use her feminine charms to seduce a rich guy into giving over his secrets, before threatening to break his wrist if he doesn’t give over even more secrets. Has a bit of a habit of kicking very high asset witnesses out skyscraper windows, but hey, nobody’s perfect.
4. William Brandt (Jeremy Renner)
Was initially assigned to Ethan’s rag-tag team as a bit of an afterthought, before getting right in the thick of it by throwing on magnetic underwear and floating through giant computers for the sake of man-kind. Was rumoured to be taking up the mantle after The Cruiser was done, but it looks like he’s been replaced by Henry “Superman” Cavill for M:I-6, so we guess not.
3. Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell)
This was Ethan’s protege before he retired to become a happy family man, and she was sent in on a very important mission and was being the kind of kick-ass we would’ve loved to have seen in a movie of her own. But then her brain kinda blew up, which was a really good scriptwriting shorthand to show off just how evil the bad guy really is.
2. Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames)
He’s the only one aside from Tom who has been around for all of the movies, and while he kicked off the series coming from the same side of the law as the French rat-killer who would eventually turn on everyone, Stickell has been a loyal team-mate to Ethan all of the way through. True, he does little more than supply weapons and tech at this point, but can you imagine these movies without him? When – not if, when – they kill him, there will be tears.
1. Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson)
The only one in all of the movies to prove to be any kind of equal to Ethan, and that’s including the villains. For all of Rogue Nation we had no idea if she was a goodie or a baddie, such was the level of perfection that Ferguson played the role. A perfect mix of strength and smarts, we’re very happy to hear that she too will be returning for M:I-6, because while she may have almost killed Ethan on that motorcycle chase, she also saved his life in that computer washing machine, so he clearly needs her around more than he realises.
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