How Mission: Impossible 3 Became The Tokyo Drift Of The Series

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Here's how Mission: Impossible 3 became to its franchise what Tokyo Drift is to The Fast And The Furious saga. Since the early 2000s, Tom Cruise has become a regular face in action movies and is famous for doing his own stunts. It was really Mission: Impossible 2 that introduced audiences to this version of Cruise, with the John Woo-helmed sequel featuring scenes where the star was really hanging from a cliff or riding through flames on a motorcycle. The Mission: Impossible movie series has since sold itself on Cruise being some kind of special effect in himself, where in addition to featuring involving stories and great characters, audiences have come to expect Cruise in some jaw-dropping stunt setpiece.

The franchise has been going from strength to strength, with the sixth movie Mission: Impossible — Fallout being one of the most successful entries so far. In retrospect, it's strange to look back on Mission: Impossible 3 as the sequel that almost killed the series. This 2006 film was the debut feature of J.J. Abrams and was released during an era of high visibility for Cruise. His personal life — especially his relationship with then-partner Katie Holmes and his couch jump incident on Oprah — turned some viewers off the actor, and while Mission: Impossible 3  — where Thandiwe Newton's Nyah didn't return — received good reviews, it became the lowest grossing of the series.

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This led to Cruise breaking a long relationship with Paramount, as the studio placed the blame for the sequel's underperformance on him. When it came time for a fourth movie, Paramount was actively pushing for Cruise's Hunt to retire during the story and pass the torch to Jeremy