From betrayal to nuclear chaos, nobody does villains like Mission: Impossible. Tom Cruise's nemeses have included the sadistic Owen Davian, the sinister Solomon Lane, the ruthless August Walker, and the treacherous Jim Phelps – some of our all-time favourites.
Missed these baddies? It's time to get up close and personal and reacquaint yourself with these dastardly folk. So, take a stroll and scroll through our rogues' gallery to feel the evil. Whet your appetite with our clips – it'll all come flooding back. Then choose your favourite villain and click the link to rebook the film for the full effect of a larger-than-life baddie on the big screen.
Or go all in and watch the entire series, with all eight movies screening at Cineworld from 1 November to 10 November. Book tickets now – if you've got the courage to face this stream of villains. Grab your popcorn and prepare for pure chaos.
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Owen Davian, Mission: Impossible III
No other M:I villain has topped Owen Davian, flawlessly played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, for sheer implacable sadism. The third movie in the series is helmed by JJ Abrams, at this stage hot from Lost and Alisa, and it has a careering sense of energy that propels Ethan Hunt from the Vatican to Shanghai. Even while we're questioning the logic of it all, Hoffman's calculating nemesis does a tremendous job of bringing things (relatively) down to earth, cutting through Hunt's seeming imperviousness with a genuine sense of menace.
The key to Hoffman's performance resides in how understated it is. He was rarely an actor to chew the scenery and that's entirely to his advantage here: he brings chillingly nonchalant plausibility to a movie that doesn't necessarily invite it, causing Ethan to sweat and panic more than an imminent base jump from a Shanghai skyscraper. It's a performance that single-handedly darkens and elevates the entire movie.
Soloman Lane, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation; Mission Impossible – Fallout
Ethan Hunt's enemies love to work in the shadows, and they don't come more shadowy than the sinister Soloman Lane. Effectively played in raspy-voiced fashion by British scene-stealer Sean Harris, Lane has exerted a global web of deadly anarchists known as the Syndicate. Aware that Ethan Hunt is onto him, Lane achieves the rare goal of ensnaring Hunt and kidnapping him, although it doesn't take long for our hero to escape with the help of compromised agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).
Harris' sheer presence is quiet, methodical and intimidating. Even when he's not physically present, his forces act as a stand-in, putting Hunt through his paces in blistering sequences involving car chases, motorbike chases and more. Lane makes it especially personal when he straps Benji to a bomb vest, initiating the dramatic endgame and the perfect revenge scenario: 'Mr Lane, meet the IMF.'
August Walker, Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Ethan Hunt makes another fatal mistake in trusting someone assigned to his team. Apparent CIA agent August Walker is tasked with shadowing Hunt as he infiltrates the Apostles, a secretive network seeking access to deadly nuclear technology. It just so happens that Walker is the very man for whom Hunt has been searching, Apostles leader John Lark, who's performed the Jim Phelps gambit of hiding in plain sight until choosing to reveal himself at the opportune moment.
Actor Henry Cavill is a valuable addition to this terrific entry in the Mission: Impossible series, capable of conveying both brawny physicality and implacable, calculating evil when Lark's true plan is revealed. He's one of the most slippery of the Mission villains, pairing with Hunt to take down an assassin during the bruising bathroom fight sequence, and later attempting to kill him during the vertiginous clifftop showdown.
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Jim Phelps, Mission: Impossible
Brian De Palma's trend-setting Mission: Impossible movie, the first in the series, had a few audacious tricks up its sleeve. The gutsiest was the decision to rework TV series stalwart and IMF chief Jim Phelps as the main bad guy, played here by the Oscar-winning Jon Voight.
In keeping with De Palma's characteristically slippery and unpredictable approach, we believe Phelps to have been killed during the opening Prague slaughter that eliminates most of Ethan's crew. Phelps then resurfaces in London, conjuring his own explanation as to how he survived. Ethan, of course, is on to him, leading to the climactic stand-off inside the Channel Tunnel atop the Eurostar, during which time Phelps is sent to an explosive death.
Sean Ambrose, Mission: Impossible II
Dougray Scott is the dark yin to Ethan Hunt's grinning, abseiling yang, which results in some self-reflexive amusement when Sean decries having to wear Ethan's face as a mask: 'That was the hardest part of having to portray you… Grinning like an idiot every 15 minutes.'
Sean's plan is nefarious, exploiting a devastating live virus and planning to make a profit from the eventual cure. And in the climactic showdown with Ethan, he holds forth with an impressive array of physical moves, another indication that Sean and Ethan are essentially one and the same, trained by the same organisation but with opposing ideologies.
Kurt Hendricks/Cobalt, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Hendricks is a ghost-like presence who is orchestrating nuclear winter from behind the scenes, exerting a deadly influence without us even knowing it. In a pivotal foot/car chase sequence, he's even adopted a face mask of his henchman Wistrom. Only at the end of the scene does Ethan realise that it's Hendricks he's been chasing all along.
Gabriel/The Entity, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning; Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Esai Morales' icy Gabriel is a great villain. Gabriel is the human representative of an all-encompassing artificial intelligence known as The Entity, which stands to shape the global information war as we know it. (Gabriel also has a unique connection to Ethan's pre-IMF past.) Possibly the most chilling of the Mission: Impossible villains, The Entity is a digital supervillain, self-aware and all kinds of rogue. We're talking a terrifying existential threat unlike anything Ethan Hunt has faced before. How can one man and his team possibly overcome this 'godless, stateless enemy' that is 'everywhere and nowhere'? The stakes couldn't be higher. Global systems including banks and defence networks are at its mercy. It can impersonate voices and identities, manipulate truth itself, and seize control of nuclear launch codes. Humanity doesn't stand a chance – or does it?
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