Paramount Pictures made a lot of money in the first half of the 1990s by bringing TV characters to bigger screens: The Addams Family and Wayne’s World became massive surprise hits, spawning sequels, imitators, and ample tie-in merchandise. Other studios followed suit with TV-based smashes like The Fugitive and Maverick, and by 1996 Paramount was ready to play perhaps their biggest card yet: a big-budget adaptation of the old spy series Mission: Impossible, starring Tom Cruise, directed by Brian De Palma, and seemingly ready-made for sequels. For the first entry, at least, Mission: Impossible followed the game plan as rigorously as a trained IMF agent. It made a ton of money, in the U.S. and overseas. It became one of Cruise’s biggest hits yet. And it spawned seven sequels over the course of 30 years, before finally, maybe, possibly coming to rest with last year’s Final Reckoning. Mission accomplished.
But
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