The importance of Tom Cruise

After the first trailer of _Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation_ played out on the internet some seven years ago, people were awed and aghast that Tom Cruise had attached himself to the outside of a flying plane for a film stunt. In a post-pandemic world where audiences have made peace with watching cinema from the back of their couches or are more than happy to lap up heroes in synthetic suits and capes, Cruise returns both as an oddity and sign of normalcy. The last surviving superstar whose ludicrousness and feverish commitment has been both regaled and criticised, Cruise returns with the promise that cinema’s last surviving superstar is yet to be galloped and rolled into anonymity by the tidal wave of giant ensemble casts, CGI supporting acts and the notion of collaboration when it is really colonisation.

Cruise, on one hand, has never been new controversy. From bizarrely jumping on Oprah’s couch during an interview to his avowed belief in scientology Cruise has seemed as mercurial as he has always seemed daring. In a photo shared on an episode of the Late-Night Show after the release of Ghost Protocol, Cruise is seen sat atop the Bhurj Khalifa – one of the world’s tallest buildings – on what seems like a platform the width of a narrow ledge, without a safety harness. During the shooting of the next Mission Impossible film, Cruise not only broke a leg – and still kept running in the same scene to be able to complete it – but also learned to fly a helicopter to shoot a dizzying climactic sequence. Romanticise this side of the actor as much as you like, Cruise’s aggressive pursuit of authenticity as the cost of self-harm is also what has, to most of the world, given rise to an age of ‘toxic positivity’ and the notion that hustle, is everything.

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But Cruise isn’t just the last great action hero, he has the sprinklings of a star ever since his modest body and innocent face walked onto scenes everywhere. Stanley Kubrick, Oliver Stone, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola. This is not just a list of some of Hollywood’s best Directors but also people who have cast Cruise in starring roles in their films. Cruise might seem like one-trick pony today but he has over the course of his four-decade career traversed range that boasts not just length, but an abhorrent amount of creative width and wealth. Director after Director has banked on the star who has delivered, surprisingly without adequate critical acclaim, in film after film. His late blooming as an action star is simply a function of his stardom, where Cruise is going about doing the things he wants to, like a retirement road-trip through memory and making films for fun along the way. Incredibly, these films are still some of the biggest hits being led a character and not a superhero or CGI suit wearing chameleon in blue (Avatar).

Cruise’s importance to cinema or more so the business of cinema cannot be overstated. He holds out as the one true superstar who has refused to be steamrolled into the belittling tour-de-force that is Marvel Cinematic Universe. A week in which a trailer of Thor: Love and Thunder introduced Christian Bale – DC’s Batman for about a decade – you kind of felt the obscenity of the cash-injecting power Disney now commands. Cinema, its foremost exponents from indie festivals to small-time Directors have all, gradually been swallowed by the tsunami of content that Disney’s many franchises are producing day in and day out. Fault lines have merged, and actors now appear everywhere between streaming, theatrical films and indie gems. Cruise, has in this age of fluid but ultimately trivialising collaboration held his ground as the star who remains outside the reach of the creative world’s deepest pockets. It might still happen, because everyone has a number they cave to, but Cruise is practically defying gut instinct that says the old days of making larger-than-life white saviour stories are all but over. The actor obviously disagrees and has proven time and again, that he is right.

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Top Gun Maverick is already being hailed as a worthy sequel to the original that established Cruise as a sex icon. No wonder then that Cruise spends years prepping for films, and only months shooting them. No wonder then that even at the humbling age of 59, his trademark sprint across an arcade or along the roof of a building is bafflingly adrenaline pumping sight. It’s incredible that an actor, for all his socio-political flaws has held out for the charm of making cinema, the mad, obsessive way it used to be made. Everything else today sadly feels technical wizardry. Cruise on the other hands still believes in sweating it out, putting something on the line. He may not get Oscar nominations for it, but by God does he keep the child in us alive.

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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