Is there a more iconic Tom Cruise movie than ‘Top Gun’? If there is, it’s ‘Mission: Impossible’, the film that launched his longest-running and best-loved franchise – and steered him from the dramatic roles of the 80s and early 90s to the high-octane action films of his later career.

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The movie was released in 1996 and directed by Brian De Palma, which struck Hemal and Brian as an odd choice, given the slightly creepy and weirdly intimate tone he brings, a direction very much at odds with the later, glossier entries in the Mission: Impossible series. 

But the template for those future movies is all here from the get-go: the betrayals and counter-betrayals, the disavowals, Tom Cruise going rogue, the iconic action set pieces, Ving Rhames, and, of course, the stupid masks they’re always putting on.

Rather than the generically serviceable 90s action-thriller it might have been, ‘Mission: Impossible’ is actually a strong opening to one of the biggest (and most lucrative) movie franchises around.