.... Ghost Protocol is the best MI movie, mmkay ?

the earlier ones have the angst of a young agent coming to maturity, to terms with the world and the work. The agent is emotional, falls in love, loses girl, gets girl etc etc so much that the action was more the background . Having plot elements centred around retrieving family members (or dear ones), doesn't make for a super-villain-world-domination play. 

In GP,  the balance is just right. The agent is tempered, the villains are simply NOT flamboyant and rambling, there's a satellite involved ( a killer plot element in every successful movie, starting from GoldenEye and many many James Bonds before it, nothing makes a villain looks like he means business than a hijacked satellite ready to death-ray London to oblivion ).  And let's face it, the team is just KILLER in GP. Brandt could've been a second Ethan Hunt by himself, and brings that much firepower into the winning side. Benji (Beam me up Scotty) does a passable techie role (let's face it, tech sucks today compared to GoldenEye days, now it's all touch screen, 3d images, touch flick touch flick ... agents of yore could press the detonator button with a closed fist and so much righteous deserved vehemence as entire evil lairs went up in balls of fire, that you'd think that pressing harder on the detonator button literally added more explosive power to the booms... ). Paula Patton is a girl, agreed, but she's built like a horse and kicks like a mule. The central message is that these are hard guys ( even the girl). They are uniformly here to kick and kill, and other things are just bonuses. GP gets this absolutely bang-on right. 

And what villain be that villain if not kremlin be he. One more thing where GoldenEye wins.

GoldenEye is the best Bond movie yet. I'll tell you about it another day, dear reader.

The later ones have just blind dumb action sequences and no plot. it's like one long tedious decathlon, starting with the opening scene, and then racing all they way to the climax away from the bomb towards the captives towards the baddie with the secret code away from the police etc etc