So I was thinking a few weeks ago that it is amazing how great the Mission: Impossible films are when they aren’t written in advance, when they are kind of compiled on the go as the makers come up with particular sequences and then look to see how they can be connected into a story.

I concluded that this process was exactly the same as drafting and redrafting a script, just without the Final Draft writing app and with millions of dollars in camera gear and travel expenses.

Mission: Impossible 1 was written in advance and is very good. MI2 was written in advance and isn’t. I don’t know about MI3, but it doesn’t quite work. But Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Fallout were all done this way and they are all excellent.

In my opinion, of course. But I like those films so much that I’ve watched them often.

The new Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One isn’t as good. It’s fine, there are the most exhilaratingly arresting sequences in it and there’s no question that I won’t be seeing the sequel next year. Whereas MI2 was sufficiently bad that it took years for me to get around to seeing MI3.

Your mileage with MI7 may vary, naturally, but it’s on its way out of cinemas — and appears to have been a relative failure. The extremely high cost of the film caused by COVID delays was a factor and so was the scheduling that saw MI7 denied its usual length of run in IMAX theatres.

But I think there is also just that it stumbles and I want to think this through from a writing perspective. Because these Mission: Impossible films are, well, impossible and you can easily make a case for any or all of them being ridiculous, yet some work and some don’t. Then MI7 comes in the middle: it’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s that it doesn’t work enough.

For me, anyway.

I offer that there are three moments in the whole running time that are problematic. They each took me out of the story and where only two definitely burst the bubble and make you consciously think no, that’s actually impossible, I wonder if all three would have been smoothed over if the film had been written before it was shot.

One issue is the killing off of a major character where the drama is subtracted because we’d believed she died earlier and so we’ve no way to judge that she isn’t going to come back in a minute. Again.

Then there is a gag. Ethan and Grace are in a teeny yellow car which at one point goes tumbling through the air. When it lands, the two characters have switched places. It’s not a mistake: the characters look at each other to emphasise that it’s a gag, but it’s impossible. It’s wrong.

Later on, Benjy is in what becomes a fully self-driving car. But there’s very little reason Benjy has to be travelling to anywhere at this point and switching to self-driving is another gag instead of a dramatic imperative. And it’s impossible. It’s just wrong.

Even including the death of that character, we’re looking at under three minutes of screen time, but each one breaks the preciously thin bubble of these movies.

I’m obviously not saying that I could have done better. But the great Mission films are deeply satisfying because they put characters you care about through such high stakes that it feels like a vice closing in on them — and because when they prevail, it is at a cost, but it’s never a cop-out, it’s never a gag ending.

For instance, there’s a moment in Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation where I was taken out of the film because it was such a perfect sequence. If you’ve seen the film, I mean when Ethan Hunt has to decide which of two assassins to shoot in order to protect their target. The resolution is very simple, but at least for me, it was a resolution I did not see coming and I admire it.

I’m okay with being taken out of a film to applaud. But with MI7, it had these moments where I just had to consciously think okay, let that go, let’s try to get back into it.

I did get back in, each time, but it took a while, every time. And while I imagine I’ll watch it again some time, it won’t be the turn-to favourite that the last three have been.