As Tom Cruise Brings ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ To Cannes, All Five Franchise Directors Look Back At The Wild Ride

After seven movies, nearly 30 years and more than $4 billion in global grosses, Tom Cruise looks set to retire his Ethan Hunt character with the eighth climactic installment, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Here, the five directors who helmed the eight Mission: Impossible films look back at their parts in the evolution of Ethan Hunt into America’s answer to James Bond. And De Palma had a radical plotline: “The first problem was that Tom wanted Mission: Impossible to be about five guys doing impossible tasks. “No one understands story structure, keeping pressure on a character, more than Tom Cruise,” he says. And so, they were joined at the hip for the final four Mission: Impossible films, facing real-life hurdles ranging from the broken ankle suffered in a jump on Mission: Impossible – Fallout to the difficult process of filming the final two installments when Hollywood was cautiously putting pictures back into production following the global pandemic.