Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has been in theaters for about a month and seems to be on track to match the box office performance of its predecessors. Paramount hoped The Final Reckoning would become a billion-dollar hit, especially given the increased budget due to COVID and strike-related delays. Yet, the Mission: Impossible films have consistently grossed around $200 million domestically, varying by about $25 million. While inflation suggests more people saw the first two films, it also adjusts the relatively lower performance of Mission: Impossible III into the series’ norm. The films tend to do well but haven’t reached the mega-status of more youth-oriented blockbusters like Independence Day, Barbie, or Minecraft. What fuels both the series’ success and its limits is that despite Cruise’s attempts with daring stunts, these are quintessential Dad Movies.

They aren’t often pegged as Dad Movies, considering such films are usually described with a simpler, less flashy appeal than today’s major blockbusters. Despite the large budgets behind these MI movies, their viewership is aging. Top Gun: Maverick was a massive hit in 2022, leading some to expect the last two Mission films to soar alongside it. However, the series’ Dad Movie essence kept their box office performances more modest. While Top Gun: Maverick is also a Dad Movie, it capitalized on its Gen-X appeal and remains Cruise’s best-loved role beyond classics in his filmography. The movie’s success extended past just dads, unlike the subsequent Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which performed similarly to the Indiana Jones film from the same summer, all residing in dad territory now.

This wasn’t a shift anyone foresaw when the first Mission: Impossible defied older fans of the TV show with its bold twist: turning Jim Phelps, a hero in the series, into the film’s villain portrayed by Jon Voight. Brian De Palma’s film swiftly removes much of Ethan Hunt’s original team in a gripping opening, making way for Hunt to build a leaner crew of “disavowed” agents, featuring Ving Rhames as a staple and Jean Reno in a one-off role. Mission: Impossible II cemented this approach, focusing more on Cruise than a team, with Rhames reprising his role and a minor addition of Billy Baird for support. Cruise also adopted a new look, signaling a departure from the classic teamwork ethos of Mission: Impossible, and reinforcing its lone-wolf, dad-movie vibes over ensemble dynamics.

But the series eventually circled back around to the idea of teams while retaining the convention that those teams would be mostly or entirely disavowed for fully half the entries, which appeals to the Dad Movie sensibility of flouting authority while still sticking to some well-organized chain of command. The Mission: Impossible movies are able to offer that, plus a James Bond-style comfort watch – and surprisingly, given that Bond movies used to arrive with clockwork regularity, Ethan Hunt has become the more reliable spy. Over the past decade, there have been four Christopher McQuarrie-directed Missions, and just two Bond movies; remarkably, the Mission series is purportedly ending, and yet still feels more active at the moment than Bond. Ethan Hunt started off as a sleek, streamlined, Cruise-y update on the Bond archetype; now he’s Bond reborn as a Christ figure.

McQuarrie may be the key; he eventually brought a kind of masculine solemnity to the series that better matches it to Dad Movie action classics than the more playful, mischievous energy of Brian De Palma or Brad Bird. If that has sometimes sent the movies into a Cruise-worshiping self-seriousness, it also lends them a snarkless sincerity that probably appeals to older audiences. The Final Reckoning reaches a Dad apex by circling around to offer a tacit apology for the Jim Phelps business, turning Dad Movie fixture Shea Whigham into a new, non-nefarious Phelps figure – he’s the son of the movie’s Phelps, you see – allowing him to share a moment of manly acknowledgment with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. A redemption through fatherhood! That doesn’t actually involve any on-screen parenting! (Very few Dad movies do, whether you want to chalk that up to escapism or avoidance.) What could be stereotypically Dadlier? This may not have been McQuarrie’s primary mission, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been accomplished. Whatever the future-dad version of TBS Bond marathons turns out to be, it may be playing Ethan Hunt on a loop instead.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others.