“Pretty cheesy, yeah”: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Star Calling Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 2 Cheesy Was the Last Thing on Our 2024 Bingo Cards

There is a list of great many things on Tom Cruise’s daily planner that he needs to accomplish, preferably before sundown. One of those things does not include being insulted for his already heavily criticized movie – Mission: Impossible II – 24 years after its release. However, Carrie Coon missed the memo on the subject since it is only now that the actress has started binge-watching all of Ethan Hunt’s magnificent globe-trotting adventures.

In the Mindhunter actress’s defense, Coon has been a very busy and well-versed actress herself. But given the niche genre that Tom Cruise’s movies appeal to – the action-hungry, adventure-loving audience – it never occurred to her to get acquainted with the spy franchise until very recently. After all, her co-worker and somewhat best friend Shea Wigham is in the final two installments of the IP.

Carrie Coon Gives an Honest Take on Mission: Impossible II

In a recap of her Mission: Impossible watch-along misadventures, Carrie Coon, in a fun June 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, revealed what she thinks of Tom Cruise’s nascent days as Ethan Hunt, the super spy. After clearing up her brief confusion on which one of the sequels was considered more “notorious,” she went on to claim Mission: Impossible II as “pretty cheesy.”

For any other run-of-the-mill Tom Cruise fan, this might sound like blasphemy. But Coon’s comment was lukewarm at best compared to some of the crushing blows that fans have dealt over the years to this ill-fated sequel to the movie that launched one of the greatest franchises in Hollywood history.

With a weak screenplay, poorly written characters, and an unnecessary number of slow-motion sequences, the only saving grace of Mission: Impossible II was Thandie Newton‘s seductive acting and the film’s expressive stunt choreography.

What Went Wrong With Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible II?

Of all the things that could go wrong in a movie – script, casting, direction, or film editing – it is truly surprising when the whole production goes off without a hitch, and yet the movie ends up putting the audience off after completion. Nothing better than erasing such a movie from its very existence would satisfy one’s soul and Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible II holds a very high rank in this sour list of misfired Hollywood experiments.

With a trigger-happy John Woo sitting in the director’s chair, the second outing of Ethan Hunt was filled with big explosions and rackety gun fights. The only face-off in the entire movie that was worthwhile for the audience was the final hand-to-hand fight between Tom Cruise’s hero and Dougray Scott’s villain, which is surprising for a franchise that would go on to compile some of the biggest on-screen stunts in film history (re: scaling the Burj Khalifa, hanging from the side of an Airbus mid-take off, HALO jump at 25,000 ft, skydiving off a cliff while riding a motorcycle, etcetera).

Walking out of the theaters after 2 hours and 3 minutes of pure retinal torture and with one’s skull still rattling from the film’s egregious lack of substance, it is surprising the critics could report back to their workstations and sign off on an aggregate of 56% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Commercially, however, Mission: Impossible II earned 4.4x more than its $125 million budget by cashing in $549.5 million worldwide [via The Numbers].

Mission: Impossible II is available for streaming on Paramount+

Mission: Impossible 8 is scheduled to premiere on May 23, 2025.