The next category I’ll rank from the Mission: Impossible film series is SET PIECES.

Almost every M:I film has a major sequence (sometimes more than one) in which the team works together, using fancy tech and their own ingenuity, to pull off a seemingly, yes, impossible mission.

The scenes I’m considering don’t include car or motorcycle chases, fistfights, or standalone stunts. They have to involve a coordinated effort by multiple team members to misdirect and deceive. They are what separates the IMF from other world-saving teams.

#7. Mission: Impossible – Fallout – Mask fake-out

Fallout is my favorite Mission: Impossible movie and one of the greatest action movies ever made, but it does lack a signature set piece of the sort I’m describing. That’s because those elements are sprinkled throughout the film’s many action sequences. The closest we get to what I’m after is when the team disguises Benji as the captured Lane in order to ensnare Henry Cavill’s August Walker. This is an elegant bit of misdirection, and involves admirable acting chops by the IMF members to deceive Walker, but it’s not elaborate enough to top anything else on this list.

#6. Mission: Impossible 2 – Destroying the chimera virus

I’ll give points to this sequence because it turns the tables by having the villain (Dougray Scott’s Sean Ambrose) anticipate Ethan’s moves and counter them. While Ethan and team engineer a clever and death-defying laboratory break-in to destroy a deadly virus, Ambrose and his team lay in wait. That’s all quite good, but (in typical John Woo fashion) the sequence culminates in a massive shootout (this movie has more gunplay that the rest of the M:I series combined). Lame.

#5. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One – Airport

It’s interesting that the two most recent films lack the distinct set pieces that were so prevalent in the earlier films. Come to think of it, Rogue Nation doesn’t quite have one of these either, so maybe writer/director Christopher McQuarrie isn’t as smitten with them as I am. The closest thing in Dead Reckoning is the early sequence at the airport where Ethan and crew are trying to track a courier with half of the cruciform key while evading detection by the authorities. Luther has fun tricking the pursuers with phony face recognition, Benji tries to track down a bomb in the baggage area, and Ethan does some close-up magic after encountering Grace, a thief played by Hayley Atwell. It doesn’t amount to much, however, because the whole enterprise is blown up by the Entity.

#4. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – Server Dive

Benji must access a vault containing a digital ledger. The security is so tight that the team needs to upload his biometric profile to a server — inconveniently located in an underwater chamber. Benji’s role here is mainly to nervously hope Ethan pulls off his part of the mission, but the underwater piece is thrilling. This sequence loses a half-point because it’s a three-person operation, with Luther sidelined.

#3. Mission: Impossible III – Kidnapping Davian from the Vatican

The highlight of the third M:I film finds the team infiltrating the Vatican to kidnap baddie Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) while convincing his team that he’s dead. This involves Ethan and Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Declan Gormley arguing in Italian to stop traffic outside the Vatican, Ethan in a priest costume, Ethan confronting Davian wearing Davian’s face, and Maggie Q in a yellow Lamborghini. The successful mission ends with a shot that has become a staple of the series: the team glamorously zipping away in a speedboat.

#2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – Burj Khalifa / Kremlin break-in

Ghost Protocol gives us two excellent set pieces. I couldn’t decide which was more worthy of inclusion so I’m listing them both. The first is a Kremlin break-in that finds Ethan and Benji utilizing a floating wall-to-wall screen to hide their presence from a security guard. It’s one of the niftiest pieces of tech in the whole franchise. The sequence culminates with Ethan effortlessly shifting from his Russian general’s costume into a Bruce Springsteen shirt to blend in with a crowd of tourists. The other standout sequence is, of course, the Burj Khalifa operation. I’ll have more to say about this later in the week, but for today’s category, I’ll just mention that I love the work the team does to switch hotel room numbers and conduct two meetings at once without tipping off their marks.

#1. Mission: Impossible – Langley break-in

The set piece that started it all remains the best one. Ethan and team have to infiltrate a heavily fortified computer room in the CIA’s Langley headquarters. The presence of a pressure-sensitive floor means Ethan has to dangle from the ceiling, giving the film its signature image and one of action cinema’s greatest moments. Director Brian DePalma ratchets up the tension, getting more thrills from a single bead of sweat on a pair of eyeglasses than should be humanly possible. This is the sequence that solidified this franchise as one of the greats right off the bat.