‘Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation’s’ improbable feat: Consistency

The fifth movie in a long-running franchise, when it even comes to fruition, usually shows some rust around the edges. Characters age, story lines degrade and audiences start dribbling away.

Yet when “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation” opened this weekend, it did what most “Mission” movies do — it earned a solid opening and stuck the landing.

In box office terms, “Mission” has been a notably consistent franchise since the film series debuted in 1996. That first installment, directed by Brian De Palma, took in an inflation-adjusted $68 million in its opening frame, and since then the first-weekend totals for the Tom Cruise vehicle have never deviated by more than $15 million in either direction. [All of the below figures adjusted for inflation.]

The follow-up, John Woo’s “Mission: Impossible II” in 2000, notched $83 million. The third movie in 2006, helmed by J.J. Abrams, came in at $57 million. This weekend, Christopher McQuarrie’s edition stayed right in line with that — it tallied $56 million, despite some experts’ prediction of a falloff.

The 2011 pic “Ghost Protocol,” directed by Brad Bird, is a bit harder to gauge, since it had a more limited run in a few hundred theaters in its first weekend and then a proper widening in its second. Even so, it had gathered up a $62 million by the end of that wide Sunday — right in the wheelhouse.‎ Like its star’s visage, there’s a kind of Dorian Gray quality to “Mission,” which hardly seems to age or change even as the rest of us keep spotting the gray hairs in the mirror.

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In comparison, James Bond movies, that rock of action-adventure box office, has swung far more widely over the last five films. (“The World Is Not Enough” gathered $50 million on its first weekend in 1999; three years ago, “Skyfall” came in at $88 million.)

“Rogue Nation’s” eventual totals should put it in fine franchise company as well. Strong word of mouth could power the movie to as much as $225 million — shy of the record of $298 million enjoyed by the second film in 2000 and the $275 million of the 1996 opener but ahead of both “Ghost Protocol” and the third “M:I.”

And then of course there’s “Mission’s” international box office, at $65 million after opening in a handful of territories, ahead of the “Ghost Protocol” numbers in many key countries.

All of this would suggest a kind of timeless appeal to “Mission.” And there may indeed be an element of that. But comparable numbers are not simply a function of churning out comparable material. To keep fans coming back or replace those who’ve left, improvements and adjustments need to be made. Commercial constancy requires a creative dynamism.

That’s where “Rogue Nation’s” strength lay — the film’s box office would seem in part due to its fresh story, clever twist on stunts (see: that tense bit of underwater silence) and a filmmaker in McQuarrie who is the series’ first director also to be his film’s lead writer, lending the enterprise a degree of cohesion (and the strong reviews and word of mouth that come with it).

Meanwhile, Paramount’s campaign shrewdly made use of such moments as a death-defying airplane stunt, selling the film in part on the devotion of the people who made it.

It’s worth noting in all this what the numbers are not: They’re not at the high end of the effects-driven films a la “Jurassic World” or “Avengers.” They’re also not, no matter the flowery adjectives of some outlets, earth-shattering or record-breaking for the franchise: You get to that stratum only when ignoring important factors like inflation.

But at a moment in its life cycle when audiences welcomes are long worn out — and, not insignificantly, given a star whose durability is pretty much questioned seasonally — “Mission” keeps drawing them in. Entertainment circa 2015 is a business in which franchises grow old and entertainment choices keep coming at us. With all these factors prevailing, “Mission” may have achieved the most impossible feat of all: repeating an earlier success.

Twitter: @ZeitchikLAT

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