Mission Impossible Continues Series' Trend to Choose Action Over Plot

Rating: 8/10 (6 September 2015)

Mission Impossible 1, in my opinion, had the plot and the action to go with it. Mission Impossible 2 may have had an okay plot, but the action was over-the-top stylized and was just a bad film. Mission Impossible 3 didn't have much of a plot, but its action and villain made up for it and was the best in the series.
Mission Impossible 4 started the series on the path that puts action over plot as if there was no effort to actually make a plot. It had the series' best set piece, but the action was REALLY unrealistic. The worst was when Tom Cruise jumps off of a skyscraper into a lower part of it only to hit his face on the window above. This would kill him.
In Mission Impossible 5, we find more incidents of Tom Cruise being immortal. He hits his head on metal as he gets flown into a plane by wind. He survives a ridiculous car crash where the car flips over while falling down 3 stories too at full speed. He survives crashing a motorcycle into the ground.
Rogue Nation to include a villain who was as intimidating as Phillip Seymour Hoffman. However, the actor and the events in the film make him feel more tacky than anything.
Mission Impossible 4 and 5's action style is the same Live Free or Die Hard while Mission Impossible 1 and 3's style were more in line with Die Hard 1 and 2. Pretty much everyone agrees Die Hard 1, 2, and 3 are far superior to 4 and 5. I would think people would think the same about the Mission Impossible series.
Right now, Tom Cruise's new Mission Impossible films are not actual movies. They are just excuses to have well-thought action scenes that border on disbelief. They are typical summer blockbuster fluff.