Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a 2018 American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. The sequel to Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), it is the sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. The ensemble cast includes Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, and Alec Baldwin. Set two years after the events of Rogue Nation, Fallout follows Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team in their efforts to prevent a nuclear attack by terrorist Solomon Lane and the mysterious extremist John Lark.

Work on a sequel to Rogue Nation commenced before its 2015 release. The series’ first returning director, McQuarrie intended for Fallout to better explore Ethan’s character and emotions, believing previous entries had left him primarily a cipher for audiences, and to test the limits of Ethan’s abilities, morality, and personal relationships. The script was brief, only 33 pages, serving as an outline driven primarily by the interesting filming locations and allowing for improvisation and significant changes to scenes throughout filming. Principal photography began in April 2017, on a $178–180 million budget, in Paris, continuing on to London, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates by early 2018. Filming was delayed for several months after Cruise broke his ankle during a stunt, significantly inflating the budget while the production waited for his return but also providing McQuarrie the opportunity to further develop unfinished scenes in the script.

Two years after the capture of rogue British agent Solomon Lane,[i] his terrorist network, the Syndicate, has reorganized as the Apostles, a terror-for-hire group. They are recruited by extremist John Lark to acquire three plutonium cores for nuclear bombs he will use to dismantle the existing world order.

Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt fails to recover the cores in Berlin after the Apostles take his teammate Luther Stickell hostage; Ethan chooses to save Luther, but the Apostles steal the cores. Ethan, Stickell, and teammate Benji Dunn capture Lark’s nuclear weapons specialist Nils Delbruuk and trick him into providing schematics for Lark’s bombs. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Erika Sloane confronts Ethan and IMF director Alan Hunley over the team’s failure to recover the plutonium. She insists on sending her agent August Walker with them to find the cores, directing him to consider anyone expendable in the process.

Ethan and Walker perform a HALO jump above Paris and infiltrate a nightclub where Lark will purchase the cores from arms broker Alanna Mitsopolis. They approach a man who appears to be Lark, but after an intense fight in the men’s restroom, Ethan is almost killed until his ally MI6 agent Ilsa Faust intervenes and kills Lark. Assuming Lark’s identity, Ethan meets with Mitsopolis who gifts him one core, explaining the Apostles will deliver the others after he attacks a police convoy and liberates its prisoner, Lane. Ethan deviates from the plan and rams the truck carrying Lane into the Seine to protect its police escort from Mitsopolis’s mercenaries. He leads the police away while his team secures Lane and thwarts an assassination attempt on Lane by Ilsa. Meeting with Ethan, Ilsa explains that MI6 assigned her to kill Lane, to prevent foreign governments interrogating him, and prove her loyalty after working undercover as a Syndicate agent. She was sent to protect Lark and ensure Lane’s escape but disobeyed to protect Ethan. Meanwhile, Walker gives Sloane evidence suggesting Ethan is the real Lark.

The team brings Lane to London for the exchange, but Hunley confronts them with Walker’s evidence. The team trick Walker into admitting he is Lark and Sloane sends a CIA unit to arrest them all. However, the Apostles intervene and in the ensuing gunfight Walker kills Hunley and escapes alongside Lane. Ethan gives chase until Walker reveals he has located Julia—Ethan’s ex-wife who was sent into hiding to protect her from his enemies—and threatens her life.[ii] Walker is unable to kill Ethan as Lane is withholding the remaining cores until he gets revenge against Ethan.

Ethan, Benji, Luther, and Ilsa track Lane and Walker to a medical camp near the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir, treating a smallpox outbreak orchestrated by the Apostles. Ilsa deduces that Lane will use the bombs to irradiate the water supplies of bordering India, Pakistan, and China, starving billions of people. Benji explains the bombs operate as a circuit, meaning defusing one bomb will trigger the other unless the detonator is first disabled. At the camp, Ethan discovers Julia and her new husband are leading the medical care at the request of an anonymous donor. The bomb countdown is armed and Walker leaves with the detonator by helicopter while Lane remains behind to die. Luther and Julia work together to defuse one bomb while Ilsa and Benji subdue Lane and begin defusing the second.