Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Yep, there’s an awful lot to be said for perhaps the one major franchise that consistently favours old-fashioned, death-defying spectacle. Pretty much every other major series boasting these sorts of budgets are CG-a-ramas, even the good ones. But there’s an old school approach to the Mission Impossible films, matched by savvy directorial choices like De Palma, Abrams, Bird, McQuarrie and even Woo (although that was closest to a failed experiment) who all have their own unique eye for thrills even if they’re not quite out-and-out auteurs. Even as it settled into something more approaching a ‘house style’, there’s an enjoyably different texture to all the films from MI3 onwards even if they’re all from the same basic materials and fit snugly together.

The good sense for director choices is what sets them apart from Bond - there’s a certain persistent blandness to that series, including the better ones (but especially in cack like Die Another Day), that only Skyfall really properly addressed. That’s not a sense I get with MI, even with the aforementioned ‘house style’.

While CG is hardly a wholly evil tool - and I’m certain it’s used liberally in these films too - spectacle cinema these days is almost universally over-reliant on the...ahem... completely impossible. Here’s one series that takes a somewhat different tact - and even if they’re hardly masterpieces, it’s a shame there’s only the rare other film out there taking this endearing approach on this scale.