I think you're right, but I think you can combine the two points and say that if the only franchise "character" the movie had was Tom Cruise, Action Star, Tom went and fucked that up with his I'm a Heterosexual Man-Father Tour. He devalued the closest thing the franchise even had to a character.
Although, yes--since MI2, the way people do sequels has changed drastically. Now they're much closer together, and generally part of a continuing story--even Spider-Man carries the Harry Osborne and Mary Jane storylines from movie to movie. It's not like the '80s, when you'd have a big hit and then come back ten years later to do a creaky and pointless sequel. And at first, when sequels were becoming more frequent it seemed kind of obnoxious, but since then I think it's kind of turned into a renaissance of serialized storytelling. They're not one-more-trip-to-the-well crapfests; after a movie launches successfully, you see people putting thought into what they'd want to do for the sequel and what they'd want to save for the sequel after that. I like that, because the overall quality is raised.
But the MIs are such stand-alones that... really, do I care what happens to Ethan Hunt? He's married now? To a new character I've never met before? Why do I care?
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Although, yes--since MI2, the way people do sequels has changed drastically. Now they're much closer together, and generally part of a continuing story--even Spider-Man carries the Harry Osborne and Mary Jane storylines from movie to movie. It's not like the '80s, when you'd have a big hit and then come back ten years later to do a creaky and pointless sequel. And at first, when sequels were becoming more frequent it seemed kind of obnoxious, but since then I think it's kind of turned into a renaissance of serialized storytelling. They're not one-more-trip-to-the-well crapfests; after a movie launches successfully, you see people putting thought into what they'd want to do for the sequel and what they'd want to save for the sequel after that. I like that, because the overall quality is raised.
But the MIs are such stand-alones that... really, do I care what happens to Ethan Hunt? He's married now? To a new character I've never met before? Why do I care?