“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the long-running debates about the action/spy-thriller genre of movies is which super spy is the greatest. Realistically speaking, there are only two possible entries in the debate: James Bond and Ethan Hunt. Everyone else falls a distant second to them. Bond has the advantage of a whole series of books and 27 films. Hunt has 9 seasons’ worth of a television series totaling 206 episodes as well as 7 movies with an eighth to be released next summer. Both are cool, suave, and always collected. They always get the job done. And in getting the job done, they’ve saved the world more times than is worth counting. So then, which spy is the better spy? Having recently watched or rewatched all of the previous six Mission Impossible movies, I would like to stir the debate once again by making an argument in favor of Hunt. Let’s talk about why.

It takes a special character for a single film to become a whole franchise. With the exception of the collection of MCU properties, nearly every successful film franchise ultimately rides on the charisma of one main character. There are Bond and Hunt, of course. Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto is the glue that holds the Fast and Furious franchise together. The Transformers films all have Optimus Prime (even including the Bumblebee solo film). The Rocky and Rambo films had their titular heroes. There are Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, The Godfather, Star Wars (Luke Skywalker was always the glue there even if Disney tried to pass the torch to Rey in the final trilogy), and Pirates of the Caribbean with Jack Sparrow at the center of all the action. Hasbro tried to launch a G.I. Joe franchise, but with a constantly rotating cast from film to film, it never took off.

Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is the anchor for the Mission Impossible franchise. And, while some franchises put less effort into the later entries in the collection resulting in mediocre films, the Mission Impossible series has actually done just the opposite. The longer the series has continued, the better it has gotten. It has been helped by a storyline that has developed smoothly over the course of the final five films in particular.

Before we get to that, let me recap the first two just in case you haven’t seen them. The first Mission Impossible movie was just fun. After a mission gone awry, Hunt is forced to figure out how his team was betrayed. After piecing together some clues all the while evading CIA forces trying to bring him in as the one framed for the debacle, Hunt, with a new team, has to break into the most secure room in the CIA building to steal a list of secret agents serving around the world (which he keeps on a disc…for the kids reading this, discs were the digital technology that preceded flash drives). It was just a fun movie.

Mission Impossible 2 (they didn’t start giving individual films unique names until number four in the series) has Hunt tasked with stopping a former agent-turned aspiring terrorist who seeks to unleash a killer biological weapon on Australia. (It was supposed to be the world, but for some reason the villain thought it would be a good idea to do this in Australia, which could be fairly easily isolated from the rest of the world, keeping most of the global population safe, but we won’t think about that right now.) Honestly, this is the worst entry in the series. It features the only sex scene in the series (which is rather mild by modern standards), and tries to lean too hard in the direction of the Bond franchise in terms of Hunt’s character. It is pretty much entirely forgettable.

With the third installment, we find Hunt retired from the IMF and looking forward to getting married and settling down for a more domestic life. Things don’t go as planned and his fiancée gets kidnapped. While the global threat is yet another mysterious biological agent, it’s really about Hunt’s efforts to save his bride from a vengeful terrorist (wonderfully played by Philip Seymour Hoffman).

The fourth movie, Ghost Protocol, is all about stopping yet another terrorist, but this time who wants to spark a nuclear war that will eliminate most of the earth’s population to reset life on the planet. Rather than simply refreshing the story, though, the film does a great job of dealing with what happened to his marriage at the end of the third film. Hunt and his wife decided to divorce. This was not because he was unfaithful or they stopped loving each other, but because he knew that he couldn’t keep her safe if they were married and she knew he needed to be out saving the world. The end of the movie reveals that he is still keeping tabs on her because of his commitment to the vows he made to her in spite of the necessity of their separation. While the movie itself is good, it is most important for introducing viewers to the Syndicate, a new shadowy terrorist organization that becomes the focus of the next two films, Rogue Nation and Fallout.

That’s a quick sketch of the series itself, but it doesn’t answer the question of why Hunt is the better spy than Bond. The reason is this: Hunt never operates alone. As much as Hunt is the hero of every Mission Impossible story, he never accomplishes anything he does on his own. In fact, he can’t. Bond does. Bond may bring along a Bond-girl for the adventure, and she might play a key role at some point along the way, but at the end of the day, Bond does what he does all by himself. Hunt never does. Now, someone might try to argue that this is precisely what makes Bond the better spy, but I disagree. It is Hunt’s very understanding that he can’t do everything on his own, his willingness to depend on others to help him get the job done, and his undying loyalty to his team that makes him such a formidable foe for his various antagonists.

(I would also add that another thing that makes the Mission Impossible franchise so much better than the Bond franchise – minus the second film – is the lack of reliance on sex to advance the story. In the second set of three films – which are far superior to the first three – there is exactly one kiss and even that was not something Hunt sought or initiated. His developing relationship with Ilsa, a British agent we are introduced to in Rogue Nation, has been slow and touching; something the Bond films really never manage.)

That team originally includes Luther (Ving Rhames), adds Benji (Simon Pegg) in the third film, and Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) in films five, six, and seven (although I’ll have to wait until February to finally see that one). There are some others who pop in and out of the series, but this trio have become staples for the franchise. Cruise’s Hunt may be the star, but without the chemistry he has developed with Rhames, Pegg, and Ferguson, the movies simply wouldn’t be as good. Hunt’s dedication to them is absolute. In fact, one of the major plot points in Fallout is that his unwillingness to risk Luther’s life in order to get ahold of the plutonium cores the villain wants to use to build some nuclear devices creates the chaos he spends the rest of the film trying to stop. By the same token, his teammates know beyond a shadow of doubt that they can trust and rely on him. They fully reciprocate his dedication to them. This makes for an absolutely gripping climax in Fallout.

To put all of this in terms that are more familiar to the Christian worldview, it is Hunt’s willingness to lay down his life for his friends that makes him so great. He loves them like he loves himself. He never seeks to put them in harm’s way if he can help it, and he only does that much when he is putting himself even more fully in harm’s way so that he can protect them. All of this is a great example of what Jesus did for us and what He calls us as His followers to do for others.

Our lives as followers of Jesus are to be lived for others. This doesn’t mean we don’t ever do anything for ourselves, or completely ignore our needs, but rather than we seek to treat others as if they were more important than us. We do this not because they actually are, but because we are following Jesus’ example of doing exactly that for us. Jesus, God the Son, the second member of the Trinity, the one for whom and through whom all of creation was formed and holds together, did not consider His own life as something worth protecting and guarding. Instead, He laid it down willingly, paying the price for our sins, so that we might be able to have life through Him. If He who was the Lord of all Creation was willing to sacrifice Himself for us, then it is only appropriate and fitting that we be willing to lay our lives down for others. That doesn’t necessarily mean we are going to have to die for them, but for the sake of the Gospel, we put their needs ahead of our own. We seek to leverage what resources and strengths and advantages we have for the sake of those around us, so they can be elevated to become more than they could be on their own. We love them as we love ourselves. That’s what Jesus did for us. That’s what Hunt constantly does for his team and the world as a whole. That’s what we are to be doing as well.

Bond is great, yes. His films are fun. But Hunt is the greatest. Now, let the debate begin. Happy Friday.