It’s easy to mistake hubris for ambition. In 2018, Christopher McQuarrie became the first director to make multiple Mission: Impossible movies when he went out and topped his own Rogue Nation with Fallout, arguably the franchise’s critical high watermark and certainly its biggest box office success. Having overcome innumerable obstacles in making that movie and no doubt riding high on accomplishing what no one thought could (or even should) be done, it only took a few months for series star Tom Cruise to announce that McQ would be helming an additional two Missions, to be shot back-to-back. The challenge was set, and so the universe went out of its way to make this called shot as damn near impossible as it could possibly be. Mission had never had a returning director before, now McQ will have made half the series – will that kill the magic? The franchise has thrived thanks to Tom Cruise’s dedication to death-defying stunts – can he keep topping himself as he enters his sixties? Fans like me were nervous, but it turns out those were the least of their problems.

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