In another note, I rewatched M:I 1 and M:I 3 again over the last week. They both feel like different franchises from what McQuarrie built in the last three (while GP is definitely a Brad Bird movie, McQ apparently rewrote much of the script, even though he didn't get credit). Still, M:I 1 stands out as a great spy movie.
I like how in some ways it's a little more "real" than these later films, even though they break into Langley and it ends with Ethan jumping from an exploding helicopter and landing on a speeding chunnel train. So maybe not "real," but they felt more like spies than superspies in that one. I also loved De Palma's highly stylized aesthetic and psychosexual tension. I standby it is one of the best films in the series, even if it feels pretty far removed from what the series rightly became. (Plus, that Vault sequence is still THE best set pieces n the whole franchise.)
MI: 3... this is probably the last time I watch it. It has some nice moments, PSH is terrific as always (really miss him), and it introduced Benji, even if in a throwaway role. But it is just so generic otherwise. It was the height of Tom Cruise's ego, and it shows in how some of the story is presented, and most of it looks and feels like an expensive episode of Alias. The only moments that are particularly cinematic are when they break into the Vatican and the brief moment Ethan and Keri Russell are working together before she dies. Otherwise though, it's a pretty mediocre movie.
I will add though that M:I3 paved the way for how great the next three movies became. And one thing I did not remember is how clunky JJ Abrams inserted a sendup of the Bush administration in it with Billy Crudup's character being the son of "someone who golfs with the president" and his ultimate goal being to create massive amounts of money by destabilizing and then invading some unnamed country (a la the cynic's view about why we invaded Iraq).
It got me thinking M:I3 is the only one made during the Bush years and relatively close to 9/11. The first two are very much products of the Clinton era, and Rogue Nation very much felt derived from the Obama era. I wonder if now that the right wing is obsessed with creating this "Deep State" conspiracy theory to justify Trump's failings will somehow be incorporated into another Mission: Impossible movie, if very loosely? Just kind of a random thought from watching M:I 3, which is the most overt of the era it was made in.
