The fifth movie in a long-running franchise, when it even happens, 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.