- Hello, everyone.
Tom Cruise is back for his sixth outing
as super spy and man with, literally, no regard
for his physical wellbeing, Ethan Hunt,
in Mission Impossible: Fallout.
This week on Heat Vision Breakdown
we look at where the series stands among
the best action franchises of all time.
It's at least top three for theme songs.
(upbeat music)
Back in the year 1996, a time when picking up the phone
while your brother was browsing the world wide web
resulted in a black eye.
Yeah, Brad, I still remember that.
Cruise and Paramount took a gamble by adapting
a 1960s spy TV show for modern film audiences.
Well, it might not seem like that risky of a move nowadays,
remember that back in the mid-1990s Cruise
wasn't thought of as the action star he is now.
Most of his filmography up until that point
had been dramas, and even the few films with action
sequences in them did not see Cruise as a bravado-fueled
alpha male punching his way out precarious situations.
Remember that scene in Cocktail when Tom Cruise
holds on to the side of a cargo plane mid-takeoff?
Yeah, me either.
The first Mission Impossible did, of course,
turn out to be a hit.
Topping the box office in its first two weeks in theaters,
and going on to gross over $455 million worldwide.
It's success launched a franchise that even
God, himself, couldn't foresee,
and that is still going strong low these 22 years later.
All in all, the series has earned nearly $3 billion
at the global box office.
That's a lot of money.
Mission Impossible's lasting relevance is unique
for any franchise,
but it is particularly impressive for an action series
that maintains the same leading man.
A genre that see quite a bit of turnover.
Not the pastry.
Mission Impossible is not alone in the realm
of action series that have spanned decades, of course.
And in the world of explosives, fast cars,
and high-tech gadgetry,
one name looms above them all.
Bond, George I mean James Bond.
- It worked.
It landed.
While the Bond films have been moonraking
in box office gold for nearly 60 years,
the list of actors who have stepped into the tuxedo
of Agent 007 has grown quite long.
Starting with Sean Connery's iconic portrayal
in 1963's Dr. No,
seven actors have played the suave MI6 agent.
The flip side of Bond's constant reinvention
is the Die Hard series which has seen Bruce Willis's
John McClane go from an ordinary cop caught
in the crossfire of international bank robbers
to a superhuman bald man capable of jumping off
10 story buildings and making Jai Courtney
the second least charismatic actor in a film.
The series, as a whole, has amassed over a billion dollars
at the box office,
and the 1988 original is viewed by many
as one of, if not the, best action film of all time.
But 2013's A Good Day to Die Hard was the lowest
grossing in the franchise and killed much of the hype
for the upcoming Die Hard 6 currently in the works.
The same fatigue is evident in decades old action franchises
like Arnold Schwartzenegger's Terminator series,
and Sylvester Stallone's Rambo.
Both of which tried to resonate with modern audiences
and failed to do so.
Nailed that impression.
- (beeps) you, (beeps) hole.
- In more recent years, The Fast and the Furious franchise
has been a cash cow for Universal
and has grown from a film series about street racing
to scenes in which the gang, literally, out races
a submarine in the Arctic.
How did we get from here to here?
The series cast has also ballooned to include
Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, and Ludacris.
Spreading the burden of carrying an action franchise
from the shoulders of Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker
across many broad backs.
The end result of the series vast departure
from its roots is that it hardly feels the same
and fans keep returning, not because of the star power
but because of the franchise itself.
Despite the best efforts of the films to throw
you off the trail by crafting, literally,
the most convoluted titling system of all time.
The Fast and the Furious,
2 Fast 2 Furious,
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Fast & Furious,
Fast Five,
Fast & Furious 6,
Furious 7,
Fate of the Furious.
(cat screeches)
Whew.
Mission Impossible films are similar
in that each time Cruise returns to the role
of Ethan Hunt, he seems to top himself
in terms of crazy stunts,
which have become a staple of the franchise.
The first film's most memorable scene revolved
around Cruise dangling from a wire
and maneuvering through a field of laser beams
which seems almost laughably low stakes
when compared to scaling the Burj Khalifa in capri pants,
or choreographing a scene that required
over 100 HALO jumps to get right.
Tom Cruise is a maniac,
and I shutter to think of what his
insurance premiums look like.
The truth of action films is that stars,
eventually, out age them and the physical demands
become too high, and a series begins to fizzle out.
Mission Impossible and Tom Cruise's incredible physique,
seriously, the dude is 56,
eat a carb Tom,
prove to be an exception as every single film
in the franchise has opened at number one at the box office.
While series like Bond and Fast and Furious
have found ways to work around the fatigue of their stars,
Cruise's tenacity has carried the Mission Impossible
series long past what many likely saw
as its expiration date,
and that, in itself, is really the closest thing
to an impossible mission that Ethan Hunt has ever completed.
- And you really think we can do this?
- We're going to do it.
- He completes every single mission.
None of them are impossible.
I am relatively certain I have whiplash from falling down,
but don't let that stop you from telling me
where you think Mission Impossible ranks
in the pantheon of greatest action film series of all time.
Let us know in the comments right down there,
and don't forget to subscribe
which is right over here.
(upbeat music)