Who was the most evil bad guy in the Mission Impossible franchise?

I agree with you. MI3 went way dark thanks to Hoffman's masterful performance!

Definitely Owen Davian.

Davian for sure, Lane comes close

Owen Davian has been the high point of the series thus far. The films have been remarkably consistent, with only the 2nd one being outright garbage, but part 3 is the best of the bunch, in large part due to Hoffman's performance.

yeah Phillip Seymour Hoffman/Owen Davian.

Do the movies even have bad guys anymore? They haven't been any good since the second one.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/31/mission-impossible-movies-best-worst

5. M:I:iii

The biggest bug with this movie is, for some people, its central feature. Always a keen observer of upcoming talent, Cruise plucked J.J. Abrams from small-screen cult glory and gave him his first shot at a megabudget feature film. So the third Mission is recognizable as a spiritual sibling to Alias: A spy thriller that treats the central agent as a kind of superhero, alternating between their Normal Life and the Spy World. Abrams loves to make things personal — he would later kill Kirk’s father and Spock’s mother in the same movie — and so the third film is the one that tries hardest to dimensionalize Ethan Hunt. He’s retired and happily engaged; he only comes back to work for a this-time-it’s-personal rescue mission. (Abrams initially pitched Alias with the question “What if Felicity were a spy?” and so it’s appropriate that, in his first movie, Felicity actually is a spy.)

The problem with this is simple: I’m not sure Ethan Hunt is really supposed to be a typical human person. Monaghan’s fine in a thankless role — her whole purpose is representing “normality” — but their chemistry lacks the sparks of Cruise/Ferguson and the gauzy-goofy melodrama of Cruise/Newton. M:I:iii hired legitimate genius Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, but his Owen Davian is maybe the most abstract bad guy (in a franchise that already trends toward abstract megalomanics.) This is an Abrams production through and through, which means it starts with an exciting flashforward — that ultimately leads into a deflating less-cool-than-you-think reveal.

The film knocks one scene out of the park — I’d put the Vatican City infiltration in the franchise’s top five setpieces — but Abrams was still a big screen newbie, and the early helicopter-chase sequence feels choppy. (Another Mission that’s a movie of its time: The whole thing plays a bit like a Bourne movie riff, all shaky-cams and monochrome nightscapes.) It’s servicable—and forgettable. But the film did provide us with one immortal moment: Tom Cruise doing casual small talk.

Alan Hunley.