Impossibleseries aren't immune to the recent trend of messy franchise retrospectives. Time and time again, the final entries in our most popular franchises, rather than going out with a bang, spend their runtime reflecting on the lore and legacy of its primary character.

I needn't have worried: Ethan Hunt lives to fight another day in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. He defeats Gabriel in a mid-air dogfight, and puts the poison pill in the Entity's podkova, allowing it to be trapped in Luther's ingenious 5D data drive.

During a couple of scenes in "Final Reckoning," viewers get a flash of the dossier of Ethan Hunt, the character Tom Cruise has played in the "Mission: Impossible" movies since the big-screen reboot began in 1996. At the top of the first page visible in Hunt's top-secret file is his place of birth — Madison, Wisconsin.