Mission: Impossible III

Essential, and for two reasons that are easy to miss. It introduces Benji and Julia, both of whom matter considerably later, and it is the film that decided Ethan Hunt should have something to lose. Every later entry is built on that decision.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is the other reason. Owen Davian is an arms dealer with no theatricality at all: he does not monologue, he is not enjoying himself, and his first scene consists of calmly explaining what he will do to a man's wife and then doing it. He is the only villain in eight films who reads as genuinely dangerous rather than impressively equipped, and the bridge ambush that follows is still the most frightening sequence the series has staged.

J.J. Abrams was directing his first feature after Alias and brought the television habits with him, mostly for the better: a cold open that flashes forward to the worst moment and then backs up, an ensemble that talks like people who have worked together for years, and a MacGuffin called the Rabbit's Foot that is deliberately never explained. That last joke has aged very well.

The weak part is the Shanghai third act, which skips its own heist with a cut and resolves on a chase through alleys. It underperformed at the time against expectations and sent the series into a five-year pause, which is how Ghost Protocol came to be a reinvention.