Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a 2018 American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It is the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and the sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. The ensemble cast includes Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, and Alec Baldwin. Set two years after the events of Rogue Nation, Fallout follows Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team in their efforts to prevent a nuclear attack by terrorist Solomon Lane (Harris) and the mysterious extremist John Lark.

Work on a sequel to Rogue Nation commenced before its 2015 release. The series' first returning director, McQuarrie intended for Fallout to better explore Ethan's character and emotions, believing previous entries had left him primarily a cipher for audiences, and to test the limits of Ethan's abilities, morality, and personal relationships. The script was brief, only 33 pages, serving as an outline driven primarily by the interesting filming locations and allowing for improvisation and significant changes to scenes throughout filming. Principal photography began in April 2017, on a $178–180 million budget, in Paris, continuing on to London, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates by early 2018. Filming was delayed for several months after Cruise broke his ankle during a stunt, significantly inflating the budget while the production waited for his return but also providing McQuarrie the opportunity to further develop unfinished scenes in the script.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout premiered in Paris on July 12, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 27. The film garnered universal acclaim, particularly for its standout setpieces, and received several awards. It also broke box office records for the series and grossed $791.1 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the Mission: Impossible series and the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2018. Fallout was followed by two sequels: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025).

Plot

Two years after the capture of rogue British agent Solomon Lane, his terrorist network, the Syndicate, has reorganized as the Apostles, a terror-for-hire group. They are recruited by extremist "John Lark" to acquire three plutonium cores for nuclear bombs he will use to dismantle the existing world order.

Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt fails to recover the cores in Berlin after the Apostles take his teammate Luther Stickell hostage; Ethan chooses to save Luther, allowing the Apostles to steal the cores. Ethan, Luther, and teammate Benji Dunn capture Lark's nuclear weapons specialist, Nils Delbruuk, and trick him into providing schematics for Lark's bombs. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Erika Sloane confronts Ethan and IMF secretary Alan Hunley over the team's failure to recover the plutonium. She insists on sending her agent, August Walker, with them to find the cores, directing him to consider anyone expendable.

Ethan and Walker perform a HALO jump above Paris and infiltrate a nightclub where Lark is to purchase the cores from arms broker Alanna Mitsopolis. They approach a man who they believe to be Lark but after an intense fight in the men's restroom, Ethan's ally MI6 agent, Ilsa Faust, intervenes and kills the man to save Ethan. Assuming Lark's identity, Ethan meets Mitsopolis, who gives him one core, explaining that the Apostles will deliver the others after he attacks a police convoy and liberates its prisoner, Lane. Meanwhile, Walker gives Sloane evidence suggesting Ethan is the real Lark.

Ethan deviates from the plan and rams the truck carrying Lane into the Seine to protect its police escort from Mitsopolis's mercenaries. He leads the police away while Benji and Luther secure Lane and thwarts an assassination attempt on Lane by Ilsa. Meeting with Ethan, Ilsa explains that MI6 assigned her to kill Lane to prevent foreign governments from interrogating him and prove her loyalty after working undercover as a Syndicate agent. She was ordered to protect Lark and ensure Lane's escape, but disobeyed to protect Ethan.

The team brings Lane to London for the exchange, but Hunley confronts them with Walker's evidence. The team tricks Walker into admitting he is Lark, and Sloane sends a CIA unit to arrest them all. However, the Apostles intervene, and in the ensuing gunfight, Walker kills Hunley and escapes alongside Lane. Ethan gives chase until Walker reveals he has located Julia—Ethan's ex-wife, who was sent into hiding to protect her from his enemies—and threatens her life. Walker is unable to kill Ethan, as Lane is withholding the remaining cores until he can take revenge on Ethan.

Ethan, Benji, Luther, and Ilsa track Lane and Walker to a medical camp near the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir, treating a smallpox outbreak orchestrated by the Apostles. Ilsa deduces that Lane will use the bombs to irradiate the water supplies of bordering India, Pakistan, and China, threatening billions of people. Benji explains the bombs operate as a circuit, meaning defusing one bomb will trigger the other unless the detonator is first disabled. At the camp, Ethan discovers Julia and her new husband are leading the medical team at the request of an anonymous donor, implied to be Walker. The bomb countdown is started, and Walker leaves with the detonator by helicopter, while Lane remains behind to die. Luther and Julia work together to defuse one bomb, while Ilsa and Benji subdue Lane and begin defusing the second.

Meanwhile, Ethan hijacks a helicopter and crashes it into Walker's, causing both helicopters to crash on a cliff, leaving one suspended over the edge by its cargo hook. Ethan releases the hook, which impales and kills Walker, before disarming the detonator. The wounded Ethan is recovered to the medical camp by Sloane, who has Lane returned to MI6, freeing Ilsa. Ethan apologizes to Julia for the perils he has put her in, but she expresses gratitude for his efforts to safeguard the world and her new life. Ilsa and Ethan share a moment together as narration by Sloane praises him for caring about every individual life.

Cast

• Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt: A highly skilled, determined, and self-sacrificing IMF agent
• Henry Cavill as August Walker: A ruthless and burly CIA assassin
• Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell: An expert computer hacker and loyal friend to Ethan
• Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn: A skillful IMF technician and Ethan's friend
• Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust: A cunning and capable MI6 agent
• Sean Harris as Solomon Lane: A clinical ex-MI6 agent turned rogue international terrorist
• Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane: The pragmatic deputy director of the CIA, and Hunley's former assistant
• Vanessa Kirby as Alanna Mitsopolis: A high-level European arms broker and con artist known as The White Widow
• Michelle Monaghan as Julia: A doctor and Ethan's ex-wife who went into hiding from his enemies
• Alec Baldwin as Alan Hunley: The former CIA director now serving as the IMF secretary

The rest of the cast includes Wes Bentley as Erik, Julia's fellow doctor, and husband; Frederick Schmidt as Zola, Alanna's gangster brother; Liang Yang as the decoy John Lark; and Kristoffer Joner as Nils Delbruuk, Lark's nuclear weapons expert. Alix Bénézech portrays a Parisian policewoman; and Caspar Phillipson appears as the European. Fallout also features cameo appearances by news host Wolf Blitzer portraying himself (in actuality a disguise worn by Dunn); disc jockey DJ Harvey as himself; and director Christopher McQuarrie voices Ethan's mission briefing.

Production

Development

A sixth entry in the Mission: Impossible film series—based on the 1966 TV series of the same name—began development shortly before the successful release of the fifth entry, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, in July 2015. That month, the series' lead actor Tom Cruise announced that filming was planned to begin by August 2016, as production studios Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media wanted a quick turnaround on the sequel.

In November, Christopher McQuarrie, writer and director for Rogue Nation, confirmed he would return to both roles, marking the first time in the series that a director would lead more than one installment. McQuarrie was initially reluctant to return, having found filming of Rogue Nation difficult, partly because of the complicated stunt sequences and the expectations to exceed those segments in a sequel. He was also conscious that fans had come to expect a different director with each installment. Cruise, however, wanted McQuarrie to lead the sequel. McQuarrie, Cruise (via his TC Productions company), J. J. Abrams (via Bad Robot), and Jake Myers served as Fallout's producers; Skydance executives David Ellison, Don Granger, and Dana Goldberg were executive producers. Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media provided the film's finance. Chinese film company Alibaba Pictures provided investment financing in exchange for serving as a local marketing partner in China.