Mission: Impossible III

Mission: Impossible III proved to be a turning point for our boy Tom. It had been six years since the previous installment came out and ended up being the biggest hit of his career up to that point. Cruise followed that up with Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, The Last Samurai, Collateral and War of the Worlds, all of which grossed at least $100 million domestically (with Worlds unseating M:I-II as Tom's biggest hit). The man was on a hot streak. And it seemed like Mission: Impossible III was poised to continue that trend. 

For this installment, Cruise hired veteran TV director/producer/writer JJ Abrams (LOST, Alias, Star Trek, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) to direct M:I-III, his first feature. Abrams comes out of the gate confident, delivering one of my personal favorite entires in the whole series. 

Spoilers for Mission: Impossible III to follow. 

I was 20 years old in 2006, the absolute right target for this slickly produced action sequel. The trailers were intense, promising a power house villain in Phillip Seymour Hoffman (!) and highlighting the film's show stopping set piece on a bridge, and I ate that shit up. This was before we knew just how good this series was about to get, so at the time just getting a ridiculously fun and entertaining action yarn was a huge plus (and to be fair, this installment basically lays the groundwork for where the series would go). And honestly, the movie turned out to be exactly what I wanted to see in that exact moment, which is always a memorable occasion, so i still have a lot of fun with this one all these years and installments later. 

Even if you're soft on this entry, you cannot deny how great Hoffman is as the big bad, probably my favorite villain of the entire series. It's clear he's having a blast here, and he gives it his all, even holding his own in a fist fight with Cruise near the end (never mind that Tom has a tiny explosive in his head that is about to go off). And Michelle Monaghan is the most believable love interest yet. Her and Cruise have great chemistry, and they do a lot with what little time we get with those two characters, giving the audience just enough to care when she gets kidnapped. 

As for Tom, he's as good as ever. For the first time we see Ethan Hunt as an actual human, having conversations about love and life with his partner and friend, played by Ving Rhames. He's constantly going out of his way to save innocent lives. The character is actually evolving, even if only a little. But again, this is the movie that laid the seeds for what the franchise would become, so it's no surprise it's as good as it is. 

If anything, the film suffers from a "very expensive TV episode" feel in various ways and sequences throughout the runtime. Of course, most of this can be attributed to the fact that it was Abrams first movie, but still, it's probably the least cinematic of the series. 

But overall JJ delivers a massively entertaining movie, warts and all, so it's shocking to me to know that it's the least grossing entry in the franchise by a mile. With $134 million domestically and $398 million worldwide, the movie barely broke even with a huge $150 million budget plus marketing cost, which is often the price of the film itself.  How could such a solid entry in a massively popular action series do so poorly?

First off, summer 2006 was pretty stacked, with The Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand both coming out two and three weeks after Mission: Impossible III. Neither of those two are good movies, mind you, but they did make BIG money. So the film had some competition. But also, with the worldwide promotional tour, the insane Oprah interview that the internet memed to death, and the weirdness of Scientology and his involvement coming to light, I think it's safe to say that for the first time in his career audiences were sick of Tom Cruise. Okay, sick is a strong term, but he was definitely over exposed at this point and it backfired. Even with the continued success of this franchise, Tom's career never fully recovered. He never stopped making quality films of course, but that loyal audience of his no longer showed up every single time. 

The actor was able to do some damage control a few years later with his insane bit part in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, but for the most part, Cruise struggled to get a decent sized hit in the years following Mission: Impossible III, the movie that seemingly ended his two decade run as the world's biggest movie star. 

So of course he made another one.