Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
In the 1980s, Tom Cruise emerged
fresh-faced as the brightest star in Hollywood.
Everything was there, the smile, the charm,
the physicality.
There is an intensity, a drive,
and that drive and that determination
manifested itself on screen.
More often than not,
you went to see a Tom Cruise movie,
it would be a good movie.
Yet, after a staggering run
of box office hits, at the height of his success,
he suffered an unexpected fall from grace.
In 2005, 2006,
he basically has kind of a public image meltdown.
In terms of whether anyone could have foreseen
that Tom Cruise would manage to rebuild his career,
I think maybe the only person who potentially saw it
was Tom Cruise himself.
With his career in jeopardy,
he refined his onscreen persona
and risked life and limb to get back to the top.
I think there is an element of him wanting to
excel at everything he does, being the consummate,
complete entertainer, wanting to do it all.
That's what makes him so interesting as an action star.
The fact that he's doing something
that's just outrageously dangerous becomes
part of the appeal of the films.
There's another layer of excitement to it,
and there's a certain morbid fascination
with the fact that he keeps doing this
and how far is he going to take it?
This film looks at Tom Cruise's
unlikely and remarkable career revival,
one that has seen him regain his crown
at the pinnacle of the film industry.
People look at Cruise and see him as
a movie star in the classic mold.
There's not a lot of people out there who
Hollywood is still building movies
around their persona.
He's Tom Cruise.
He's not just a big star still.
He's the biggest star,
and I don't know if anybody's had
that long of a stretch where they were
the biggest star in the world when they were 25
and they were the biggest star in the world
when they were 60.
May, 2022.
Having been delayed for nearly two years,
"Top Gun: Maverick" is finally released
into cinemas worldwide.
And all eyes are on its star and producer, Tom Cruise,
who was launched into Hollywood's top tier
by the original film, back in the 1980s.
This sequel brings his remarkable journey full circle,
and it quickly becomes a phenomenon.
Audiences starved of entertainment
and spectacle by the COVID pandemic
now flood back into theaters,
and within a month, the film becomes
the highest grossing release of Cruise's entire career.
Yet, his return to the role of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell,
after a 35-year break, was no surefire success.
If I told you three years ago
that "Top Gun Two" would not only be
one of the biggest money makers
of all time, but that it would be nominated
for Best Picture at the Oscars,
you'd think I was crazy.
I don't think Maverick's success was guaranteed
and I don't think that everyone thought it was going
to be this giant hit.
You have to go back to "Titanic" to see a movie
that was this big of a hit
and also endured as long as it did,
that stayed in theaters,
that was in the top five consistently for months on end.
People really, really liked this thing.
I think it hit the right buttons for a lot of people.
There's sort of a perfect storm
surrounding "Top Gun: Maverick".
By now, Top Gun had been seen
by generations of movie lovers
and had become just more and more popular,
and there had been talk of a sequel for years.
And again, I think Tom Cruise is very smart.
This was the perfect time for that.
People were celebrating going back to theaters.
They were celebrating big, giant, well-made action movies,
and there's Tom Cruise right at the center of it.
And perhaps more surprising
than "Top Gun: Maverick"'s triumph
at the global box office
was the fact that, only 15 years beforehand,
Tom Cruise's future as a headline star
had looked in doubt.
Los Angeles, 2005.
Hitting the red carpet with new romantic partner,
Katie Holmes, by his side,
Cruise is in town to promote his latest film,
Steven Spielberg's adaptation of "War of the Worlds."
He is riding high at the top of Hollywood's A-list,
but this is simply the calm before the storm.
He's been one of the biggest stars
in the planet between 1992 and 2005, 2006.
He has an incredible run,
where almost every movie he does
makes around a hundred million or more, at least,
back when that was actually a lot of money.
So he's incredibly consistent, box office-wise.
Having established his career
with a string of dramatic roles,
in the new millennium, he's reinventing his star persona
and transforming from a heartthrob
to an action hero.
But while the promotional tour is in full swing,
a series of PR blunders risk permanently damaging
his previously impeccable public image.
He becomes action over anything else.
He's going full tilt at this point, really, isn't he?
But then, he also kind of does that off-screen too,
unfortunately, which culminates
in the terrible year of 2005.
He had the incident
where he's on "The Oprah Winfrey Show"
and he's jumping on the couch.
You know Katie once told "Seventeen" magazine-
Yes!
Which became one of the first viral moments,
you know, early kind of YouTube,
and people just having so much fun making fun of that.
But then, it was all the stuff where
where he started talking really for the first time
about his beliefs.
Also kind of doing it in quite an aggressive way
and attacking Brooke Shields for using antidepressants
to deal with her postnatal depression and all of that.
For the first time, kind of the public view of him soured.
He was a figure of ridicule to a certain extent.
He had a huge female fan base.
What happens after 2005, 2006 is
female audiences start to turn on him.
And right around this time,
he basically loses his production deal
with his studio, Paramount.
This was a serious career crisis.
All of a sudden, Tom Cruise, who had had nothing
but really positive PR
for the first, what, 20 years of his career,
was becoming a punchline. That's a problem.
The actor's fall from grace
was as unexpected as it was rapid.
Hollywood's most bankable star had tarnished his reputation,
and many doubted that he would ever find his way back
to the top again.
And his remarkable career revival
would be an uphill battle,
compared to his initial journey to the peak
of the movie industry in the 1980s,
which had seemed so swift and steady.
Tom Cruise was 18 years old when he headed
for the bright lights of New York City,
determined to become an actor.
The teenager from Syracuse,
born Thomas Cruise Mapother,
quickly signed with an agent and, within two years,
landed his first feature film roles.
And although he received high billing
on romantic drama "Endless Love"
and comedy "Losin' It",
it was his work on two ensemble pictures,
"Taps" and "The Outsiders",
that brought him to wider attention.
I think it was pretty clear early on
that he had something, maybe this intangible quality
that's hard to define,
but I think there's a kind of angry energy
to some of his work, that's really key to his appeal.
"Taps", he was part of a group,
and his character was quite a dark character.
He was an aggressive character,
and it is interesting, from those early days,
early Cruise, a lot of people thought
he was kind of like-- he'd be a bad guy,
he'd be the psycho in things.
Shawn!
It's beautiful, man. Beautiful.
But then, that kind of intense psycho energy
got channeled towards the light, towards the good side.
Well, I think he was pretty relentless in his ambition,
his desire, to sort of get ahead.
It's interesting to see Cruise in Coppola's "The Outsiders",
because he's not the Cruise that we know.
But there is a scene, prior to a fight scene,
where he suddenly does this sort of back flip off a car.
Apparently, he improvised it, reminding the director,
the audience, everybody else,
"I may be just one of the characters in the background.
I'm not the lead, I'm not Matt Dillon,
but you're going to look at me."
And with this desire to be center stage,
in 1983, he headed to Hollywood.
With producers recognizing his star potential,
he bagged the lead role in college football drama,
"All the Right Moves,"
which brought him his first million dollar paycheck.
Yet, it was the commercial and critical hit satire,
"Risky Business", that propelled him to stardom.
It was Cruise's presence in "Risky Business".
It was his big lead breakthrough role,
and everything was there, the smile,
the charm, the physicality.
♪ Just take those old records off the shelf ♪
It plays on his image of a hunk,
but there's also something kind of ridiculous
and adorable about him.
That iconic scene where he's dancing in his tighty-whities,
it's funny.
He looks ridiculous and that's kind of
always been Tom Cruise's appeal.
He's a little too good-looking,
but he's also able to kind of
slightly poke fun at his image.
So how we doing?
Looks like University of Illinois.
In his early films in particular,
Cruise had this brashness, this cockiness,
and I think he just had that mix of
charm and physicality.
Even though he did make actually a real variety of films,
he always seemed quite similar in all of them,
but he was so likable and so good at doing that
that it didn't really matter.
With all the great Hollywood stars of the studio period,
the roles are variations of themselves.
They're not character actors.
They're stars, and Cruise, from the earliest days,
was a star.
And he was just waiting for the right time
for that star power to be unleashed.
Although hopes were high that his next feature,
Ridley Scott's dark fantasy epic "Legend"
would propel him into the A-List,
it was a surprising box office disappointment.
Yet, the director suggested him for the lead role
in his brother Tony Scott's new film.
Produced by the duo behind breakout hits "Flashdance"
and "Beverly Hills Cop", Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer,
"Top Gun" was looking for a charismatic actor
to play Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.
And with John Travolta, Matthew Modine,
and Rob Lowe having already passed on the opportunity,
Cruise stepped in.
His presence would prove vital, both for the film
and his own career, and "Top Gun"
would become the highest-grossing blockbuster
of 1986.
I think that you can really play down
too much the importance of Cruise
to the success of "Top Gun".
Simpson and Bruckheimer, when they were prepping,
they wanted someone for Maverick who would be aggressive,
but in a positive way.
What's your problem, Kazansky?
You're everyone's problem.
That's because every time you go up in the air,
you're unsafe.
I don't like you, because you're dangerous.
That's right, Iceman.
I am dangerous.
If there's one thing Cruise knows how to do,
it's command a movie,
and he certainly commanded "Top Gun".
I feel the need.
The need for speed.
Even at that young age,
where he only had a limited star persona,
the notion of Tom Cruise playing that character,
that way, in a uniquely Tom Cruise way,
was a huge reason of why "Top Gun"
was as big of a hit as it was.
It very much captures the vibe of the MTV 1980s generation,
and in terms of its aerial adventure,
it was on a scale that had never been seen before.
It played as, and was received as,
an earthbound "Star Wars".
Whoo!
Splash four!
It wasn't made for critics.
It was made for the mass audience.
It's entertaining as hell,
but it's also really cheesy and really corny.
But Tom Cruise fit the role perfectly.
"Top Gun" was the beginning of Tom Cruise as a movie star.
And as a movie star,
Cruise chose to tread a very different path
than many of his contemporaries.
Rather than follow "Top Gun" with another action blockbuster,
he instead looked to develop as a dramatic actor,
and he set his sights on working
with the most talented professionals in the business.
Even very early in his career,
he made a point to work with the best directors
he could possibly get.
Even before "Top Gun",
he was working with Ridley Scott in "Legend",
and then, after "Top Gun", he would work with
people like Martin Scorsese in "The Color of Money",
Barry Levinson in "Rain Man",
which was a Best Picture winner
and the biggest grossing movie of 1988,
which is unthinkable in this day and age.
Today, that'd be like a 10-hour streaming miniseries,
and nobody would watch it.
It was Cruise deliberately putting himself
onto projects or putting himself into things
that paired him with, either or both, great actors,
like Paul Newman and Jack Nicholson later
in "A Few Good Men",
and just great directors.
This is a pattern where he would absolutely just think,
"Who will bring the best out of me?
And who can I really, really learn from?"
Despite this ambition,
he was being viewed with skepticism by many observers.
In America, under President Ronald Reagan,
the 1980s was a decade of excess, materialism,
and conservatism.
And as Cruise continued to play variations of the same role,
he was seen to be embodying the yuppie ideal.
The Young Cruise is the quintessential '80s actor,
that very individualistic '80s zeitgeist feeling,
that came in Reagan era,
he embodied on screen definitely.
I think, while a number of Tom Cruise characters
could be described as stereotypically cocky
in an '80s way, I do think one thing
that set him apart from some of his peers
is that his characters were intelligent enough
to know that they were mortal and fallible
and they might not win.
Most of those characters end the film
by being taken down a peg.
If they do start the film as a stereotypical '80s asshole,
they don't end the film that way.
And Cruise's final role of the decade
was a departure from this trend.
He was taken back to a darker time
in the country's recent past,
one which still haunted America in the Reagan era.
Again, working with one of Hollywood's leading directors,
Oliver Stone, in "Born on the Fourth of July",
he played real-life Vietnam veteran
turned campaigner Ron Kovic,
who had been confined to a wheelchair
during the conflict.
With no heavyweight co-stars
from Hollywood's past alongside him,
for the first time,
Cruise carried a dramatic picture by himself.
"Born on the Fourth of July" was very essential,
in terms of, where even some doubters, not all,
began to see him as more than just a matinee idol.
"Born on the Fourth of July" is a huge role for him,
both for his career, for his critical appreciation,
and for the country in a way.
The beautiful thing about "Born on the Fourth of July"
is he's still playing Tom Cruise.
The early scenes of that film, he's running, he's wrestling,
he's a high school star,
he's confident, he's driven,
he knows what he wants to do.
This is like Tom Cruise, the Tom Cruise persona
in a nutshell.
And then, he goes to war and is broken.
Goddamn it.
It's taking that very Tom Cruise image and then,
just shattering it, turning it on its head,
and putting that character through the journey
that Ron Kovic went through, to become protestor of war.
Cruise goes to some very dark places
in that film emotionally,
that we've really never seen him do before.
You tell them all,
tell them all what they did to me,
what they did to this whole block, this whole country.
They're going to call the police this time.
We went to Vietnam to stop communism.
We shot women and children.
You didn't shoot women and children.
What are you saying?
The church blessed the war, communism,
the insidious evil.
They told us to go.
Yes, that's what they told us.
It was surprising to a lot of people.
A lot of people didn't think he had it in him,
including Ron Kovic, who was like,
"Why is this guy going to play me?
What are you talking about?"
What turned Kovic around
was he was waiting to have his first meeting with Cruise,
and he looked out the window, car door opens,
Cruise gets out, gets straight into a wheelchair,
and that impressed Kovic.
And that's so Cruise.
He's known for commitment, his absolute 100% commitment.
And the results were absolutely spectacular.
His wheelchair, our wheelchairs, this steel,
our steel is your Memorial Day on wheels.
We are your Yankee Doodle Dandy come home.
It's an incredible performance.
He got a ton of acclaim for it.
Obviously, he was nominated for a ton of awards.
I think, today, it's aged incredibly well.
It's one of the great films of the 1980s.
Despite an Oscar nomination,
rather than follow the obvious route,
with more highbrow roles,
Cruise re-teamed with director Tony Scott
for action drama "Days of Thunder".
And although the film was dismissed by many
as "Top Gun with cars,"
on set, he began a romantic relationship
with co-star Nicole Kidman.
And when the pair married at the end of 1990,
Cruise was transformed from a movie star into a celebrity.
There's always been this fascination
with Hollywood power couples.
For better or worse, there's this renewed interest,
this combined star power, so Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
And of course, they kind of looked a little mismatched.
She's Australian, she's taller than him.
So yeah, it's just going to increase both
of their star wattage, when you have two huge stars
who are together.
And although their first film together
as a couple, "Far and Away",
failed to ignite the box office,
Cruise followed this with a string of hits.
Legal thrillers "A Few Good Men" and "The Firm"
further cemented his reputation as a dramatic leading man,
while his performance as Lestat
in "Interview with the Vampire"
gave him the opportunity to show greater range.
A new challenge was on the horizon for Cruise, however,
and it was one that would involve his longtime associate,
Paula Wagner.
Paula Wagner started off as a stage actress and then,
became an agent with CAA, Creative Artists Agency,
one of the biggest agencies in the world,
and became Tom Cruise's agent.
She started working with him
when he was relatively unknown and he just had a presence,
a sort of a charisma, that sort of struck her immediately.
He was always a great actor,
from the time he did a picture called "Taps",
and which was the first film really that he did.
And you could see that he had amazing talent as an actor.
Great potential.
So Paula Wagner, he trusted implicitly.
She was his manager for 12 years,
obviously had guided him
and helped him pick out some great projects.
Now, they form a production company,
and this is the first time
where Tom Cruise gets a lot more freedom.
And in May, 1996, Cruise/Wagner Production's
first feature film
made its star-studded premier in Los Angeles.
"Mission: Impossible" was handpicked by Cruise
as the company's inaugural project,
reviving a classic TV series,
and reworking it for the big screen.
With veteran director Brian De Palma on board
to bring his own unique style to the film,
it was nevertheless a Tom Cruise vehicle,
both as its star and, for the first time in his career,
its very hands-on producer.
And as his first action film, it was a risk.
This is actually the biggest movie
I've ever been involved in, in terms of production.
It's very satisfying.
You come up with an idea, you bring everyone together,
and you start seeing it come to life, and, uh...
that level of creativity was exciting.
"Mission: Impossible" is really
very surprising to people.
Tom Cruise is the producer on the project,
and we've heard a ton by this point
about how Tom Cruise is the engine
behind this production and this whole idea
of reviving the "Mission: Impossible" series.
But Tom Cruise hadn't really done a ton of action movies.
"Top Gun" is an action movie, but it's a fighter jet movie.
"Days of Thunder" is kind of an action movie,
but it's about car racing.
Tom Cruise was not an action star in a typical sense,
and in fact, a lot of people wondered
whether this would work.
I am going to venture that pre-"Mission: Impossible",
of all the major stars in Hollywood,
he was responsible for the lowest body count.
But I think the timing was absolutely right,
in terms of where action cinema was going,
because we were coming out of this period
of the one-man-army, muscle men movies
typified by Schwarzenegger or Chuck Norris
or Sylvester Stallone, of course,
and coming into an era of sort of more...
lithe and wily action heroes,
and it just felt like a very natural evolution.
The first "Mission: Impossible"
is not the best "Mission: Impossible".
It's a good solid big budget action film
but it's interesting, because Hollywood was trying
to make a movie out of "Mission: Impossible",
the television series, for decades.
"Mission: Impossible" was about
the Impossible Mission Force,
so it was really an ensemble piece.
And the first "Mission: Impossible" movie,
at least they kept the same names of a lot
of the characters from the original,
and it was about the Impossible Mission Force.
But it became clear about halfway through the film
that this was going to be the Ethan Hunt storyline.
This is Ethan Hunt.
- They're dead. - Wait, who's dead?
My team. My team is dead.
- Jesus. - The list is gone.
They knew we were coming, man.
They knew we were coming, and the disk is gone.
I do think it was unusually savvy of Cruise
to make that play with "Mission: Impossible".
If you watch "Mission: Impossible" on TV,
it was a sort of an ensemble show.
It wasn't about the glorification of one person
at its center, and Cruise says, "I can take this,
I can use this intellectual property
that people are aware of, and we can sell that.
But at the center of it, it's really going to be about me."
It gave Tom Cruise the opportunity to play James Bond,
which he was never going to play,
because he wasn't right to play James Bond.
But this was his James Bond franchise.
And the role of Ethan Hunt allowed Cruise
to bring his physicality to the foreground.
Always a part of his acting arsenal,
from his strutting performance in "The Color of Money"
to the kinetic chase sequences of "The Firm",
it was crucial in "Mission: Impossible",
that he convince as an action star.
And unlike the majority of his contemporaries,
he took this to another level
by performing several of the film's key stunts himself,
including its most iconic set piece,
the break in at Langley.
You don't really appreciate it
when you're watching it at the time.
It's only in retrospect, knowing what we know now,
that you are looking at what he's doing there,
holding his entire body inches off the ground
for a long time, really,
and it's really him doing it.
You have to really kind of stop and think about it and go,
"No, wait a minute.
That's really difficult.
As a physical exertion, that's really intense."
That's not really something that was baked into
the first "Mission: Impossible" film really.
Even though actually it was Cruise getting drenched
by the aquarium and he did insist
on the scene where he is blasted backwards,
even though obviously it's not a real explosion,
everything, he did it. "That's got to be me.
You got to see that that's me."
But I just think it was so new, it was, at the time,
it wasn't really dwelt upon.
It wasn't really highlighted that much.
Soon, this would become a major part
of the Cruise brand.
But in 1996, the main focus was seeing whether audiences
would accept him in an action role,
and "Mission: Impossible" proved a towering success
at the box office,
Cruise's highest grossing release to date.
I think it's kind of amazing that Tom Cruise
was able to transition from being
sort of a Hollywood pretty boy
was how he was seen by a lot of people and
to kind of seamlessly transition
into being an action star is kind of remarkable.
Honestly, I think it just helped
that "Mission: Impossible" was good
and that people liked it.
His continual pursuit of action roles
that allowed him to put his physicality front and center,
made that transition possible.
And while he continued
carving his own unique path in the movie industry,
Hollywood began frantically looking for the next Tom Cruise.
Talented young actors from Matthew McConaughey
to Matt Damon were being hailed
as the future heirs to his crown.
Yet, audiences were clearly happy
with the Tom Cruise they already had.
His purple patch continued
with romantic comedy "Jerry Maguire" in 1997,
but then Cruise suddenly disappeared
from both Hollywood and the limelight
for over two years.
The filming of Stanley Kubrick's final project,
"Eyes Wide Shut", opposite his wife,
would take the star out of the game
at the very height of his success.
And when it was eventually released,
it was quickly followed by another offbeat performance,
as part of an ensemble cast in "Magnolia"
by up and coming director Paul Thomas Anderson.
With these fascinating roles,
Cruise was expanding his range further than ever before.
Just in those four years between "Mission: Impossible"
and "Mission: Impossible 2",
he almost completely redefines himself again as an actor,
just with those three pictures,
"Jerry McGuire", "Eyes Wide Shut", and "Magnolia".
By 1999, he is known enough as a guy
that works with great directors
and makes interesting movies
and only occasionally will make a stereotypical blockbuster,
like "Days of Thunder" or "Mission: Impossible",
that I think him working with Stanley Kubrick
almost feels like, "Oh, that makes sense."
"Magnolia" is a little different,
because this is Tom Cruise
not working with a veteran legendary director.
This is Tom Cruise calling up some kid
who made one really well-liked movie,
that got a lot of raves, and is like,
"Hey, help me help you."
And it's such a wonderful, generous thing for him to do,
knowing that it wasn't going to be a big hit.
But in May, 2000,
having disappeared from the public eye for so long,
Cruise was back in front of an audience
eager to see him return to mainstream cinema.
"Mission: Impossible 2" was a landmark in his career,
as he had previously resisted making sequels.
Yet, as both star and producer,
he embraced the opportunity
to develop the franchise as a series.
And for this film, from the opening sequence onwards,
his remarkable stunt work took center stage.
"Mission: Impossible 2" is marketed
with that opening scene of him free climbing,
and everybody talks about
how he's doing his own stunts.
This is, I think, the first time
that this becomes a thing for him.
It's Cruise clinging to,
I think, Dead Horse Rock in Utah,
and there's a moment during that sequence
where he literally looks directly into the camera.
He's looking directly at the audience as if to just say,
"Yeah, it's me, it's Tom Cruise,
I am on the side of a mountain.
I am doing this."
I do think that "Mission: Impossible 2" is the moment
where the idea that Cruise was doing his own stunts
in these movies became part of the press cycle,
became part of the chatter around them,
and the fact that he's doing something
that's just outrageously dangerous becomes part
of the appeal of the films.
Some of the stunts in that are insane.
In the climax when he almost gets stabbed in the eye,
they did that.
They tied a rope to the end of the knife.
They didn't do that digitally.
He was, at that point in his life, saying,
"I have to do this stuff myself."
But with Hong Kong director John Woo on board,
this sequel was a very different proposition
than Brian De Palma's first outing.
And not only have the tone of the film changed,
so too had Cruise's action persona.
Tom Cruise, prior to "Mission: Impossible 2",
he not only was not primarily known as an action hero,
even when he did make films with action in them,
he wasn't running around killing people.
This was the first time we saw Tom Cruise not just
as an action hero, but as a gun-toting action hero.
He was making something that you might have seen
from Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone.
When you're eight years old
and you're wearing your leather jacket
and you have sunglasses and you're pretending
to be an action hero in your backyard,
"Mission: Impossible 2" is that movie to a T.
Although its critical reception was mixed,
the film was a smash hit with audiences worldwide,
quickly overtaking the original "Mission: Impossible",
to become Cruise's biggest success at the box office.
Having returned from three years away from the limelight
and buoyed by the film's reception,
now he began planning a string of blockbuster releases,
keen to cement his reputation as an action star.
After "Eyes Wide Shut",
he's Hollywood's number one sort of box office draw,
and he doesn't want to let his crown slip.
How do you prove you're back?
By making blockbuster after blockbuster after blockbuster.
You are compensating.
So you've gone off on sabbatical,
you've done your odd thing in England with Stanley.
Now, it's time to sort of pay back Hollywood.
Once the "Mission: Impossible" franchise takes off,
Tom Cruise, I think, understands to some extent
the limitations of doing the smaller movies.
Remember, he's now a producer as well.
He needs to make films that will kind of continue to sort
of sustain his star power.
Following one final fling
with more left-field material
in Cameron Crowe's "Vanilla Sky",
Cruise now launched himself into action roles,
beginning with 2002's "Minority Report".
The following year, he would be back
with "The Last Samurai", while the summer of 2004
saw him play his first villain since "Taps",
in Michael Mann's propulsive thriller, "Collateral".
All of these films pushed his intensely physical presence
to the fore, and his journey as a serious dramatic actor,
from "Born on the Fourth of July" to "Magnolia",
was now put on hold.
Certain aspects of his star persona
kind of fell to the wayside.
He realized that, as a movie star,
the thing that people liked from him the most
was this kind of determination, this kind of steeliness,
this kind of hyper-competence.
"As a movie star, what my thing is
is I'm just constantly pressing forward."
It's determination made flesh, basically.
I think Cruise's age is starting to play into this.
I'm not saying it's a midlife crisis,
but is a little bit of "I'm getting older,
but why should I get older?"
And it's almost like the roles he did
when he was younger were the kind of roles
you'd expect someone to do later in their life
and the roles he's doing later in his life
are the kind of roles you'd expect people
to do earlier in their life.
Perhaps a significant factor
in this change of gear was his divorce
from Nicole Kidman back in 2001.
Although it was a very public split,
Cruise took solace in his fans,
making headlines when he spent over an hour
signing autographs and posing for photos
at the premier of "Minority Report",
and again, when dedicating over two hours to the crowd
for the release of "The Last Samurai".
It's fun.
You get out and have a chat and sign.
It's really nice. It's nice that they show up,
and I want to let them know that I appreciate it.
Yet, although he was happy
to get up close and personal with his audience,
they knew very little about the man himself.
Cruise wasn't somebody who a lot of people
knew a lot about his private life.
He was somebody who they knew mostly
through the flash bulbs and they saw on magazine covers.
He doesn't do a ton of interviews.
He'll do appearances, he'll do premieres,
he'll do red carpets and things like that,
but there's a very controlled quality to his public image,
up until this point.
Yet, in 2003, he began to speak more openly
about his involvement with the secretive
and controversial Church of Scientology.
After his publicist, Pat Kingsley,
who had been by his side since the early '90s,
tried to dissuade him from discussing his beliefs
on promotional tours,
he replaced her.
His sister Lee Ann took over the role,
but without Kingsley's guiding hand, very quickly,
Cruise's public image was in free fall.
Pat Kingsley was the publicist for Tom Cruise
for I think about 14 years.
You think of publicists as people who get stars
onto TV shows, into newspapers, onto websites.
Her significance was as much for keeping him out of trouble.
For two decades, she was at the center
of Cruise control, famed for her red carpet tactics,
guiding him round with military precision.
On her watch, his interviews were paragons
of marketing virtue, avoiding the subject of Scientology.
As his sister becomes his publicist,
I think the fact that he is a Scientologist
becomes a much bigger part of who he is on the outside,
as well as who he is on the inside.
And that does manifest itself in some media-unfriendly ways.
The reception to the promotional campaign
in and around "War of the Worlds",
it wasn't just that he was associated with Scientology,
it's that some of those interviews
came off as judgmental,
in a negative and almost hurtful way.
With his unprovoked on-air criticism
of his friend Brooke Shields,
his argumentative interviews with Matt Lauer in the US
and Peter Overton in Australia
and his widely mocked appearance on Oprah Winfrey,
the wheels had come off the Cruise machine.
In August, 2005, summing up the wider public's reaction
to these events, "Vanity Fair" ran the cover story,
"Has Tom Cruise lost his marbles?"
For the first time, the kind of public view of him soured.
I don't think he was able to really process that.
Like "Why have people got a problem with what I'm saying?
Usually, everything's fine."
He was a figure of ridicule to a certain extent,
and suddenly, he's this weirdo jumping on couches
and attacking Brooke Shields,
and yeah, people start to turn on him,
and this is his audience turning on him.
This isn't just like people who never liked him
turning on him. This is the people
who liked him turning on him,
and it puts him in a tough spot.
And this is a huge thing for all huge stars.
If you don't have somebody around you to say "no"
or to take you aside and say
"You're going down the wrong path,"
left to their own devices, like any of the rest of us,
you're going to make a lot of big mistakes
and he made huge mistakes.
And although this crisis erupted
just as he was promoting his new Spielberg blockbuster,
"War of the Worlds",
it didn't affect that film's commercial fortunes.
The following year however,
with the shockwaves having spread across popular culture,
Cruise returned to the big screen
with "Mission: Impossible 3".
And although it turned a profit,
it was the least successful film in the franchise so far
and was considered a disappointment
by its studio, Paramount.
I don't think you can discount this kind of
souring of opinion on Cruise
having an impact on "Mission: Impossible 3".
The reviews were strong,
but for whatever reason, the buzz was muted.
There was certainly a real world impact
in terms of Tom Cruise's reception.
Was "Mission: Impossible 3" an underperformer
because of how it was associated with the PR stuff?
Maybe. Do I think it killed the film? No.
But even if it didn't kill the film itself,
the backlash did kill Cruise's deal with Paramount Pictures.
The studio had signed an exclusive distribution agreement
with Cruise/Wagner Productions back in 1992,
and as the scandal escalated,
this crucial partnership was terminated.
Sumner Redstone, who was the head of the company
that owned Paramount Pictures, saying
"This guy is hurting our brand."
Amazingly, the number one brand in movies,
all of a sudden, is considered to be a liability.
So he was in a real career crisis at the time.
The fall from grace was complete.
Immediately firing his sister Lee Ann,
the star was in crisis management mode.
Looking for a new deal, Cruise/Wagner Productions
was thrown a lifeline by MGM, who approached them
to revive the floundering studio, United Artists.
Yet, their first film of this new arrangement,
Robert Redford's "Lions for Lambs",
with Cruise on board as both producer and co-star,
met with a tepid critical and commercial response.
And then, in late 2006,
when he appeared to be running on empty,
he was contacted by Christopher McQuarrie,
an award-winning writer-director at a similar low ebb.
It's interesting, you see these stories in Hollywood,
where people who have been through the mill
and had a great success and then,
are kind of on tougher times, will turn to each other.
Because Christopher McQuarrie wins the Academy Award
for "The Usual Suspects",
one of the greatest screenplays of all time.
And now, here's somebody,
it's only 10 years after he won the Oscar,
and he can't get arrested in Hollywood.
He had a big success with "The Usual Suspects",
which he wrote, and then tried directing himself.
And he made a film, which I think is brilliant,
called "The Way of the Gun".
It wasn't a hit for any number of reasons.
It was a very dark picture, it was very grimy,
but for whatever reason, he ended up in director's jail.
And it was a very long time before he made another picture.
The project McQuarrie brought to Cruise
was "Valkyrie", an historical thriller
focused on a real-life plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler
by a group of rebel Nazi officers.
Cruise agreed to finance the film through United Artists
and took the lead role
with McQuarrie's "Usual Suspects" partner, Bryan Singer,
on board as director.
And although early reports were negative,
upon its release, "Valkyrie" proved
a minor critical and commercial success.
I think "Valkyrie" is just a rock solid studio programmer,
and it kind of reminded people that, "Oh wait, that's right.
Most Tom Cruise movies are good."
I think, in a lot of ways, "Valkyrie" may prove
to be one of the last gasps, for now,
of Tom Cruise, actor,
as opposed to Tom Cruise, action star.
- They will wipe you out. - It doesn't matter.
It only matters that we act now
before we lose the war.
Otherwise, this will always be Hitler's Germany.
And we have to show the world
that not all of us were like him.
That is not enough for me.
There has to be a chance of success.
Then find a way.
Even though it didn't do huge business,
it wasn't a complete bomb, and I think that, in a way,
that was almost good enough,
that it wasn't a complete-- it got mostly good reviews.
It did fairly well. It did okay,
so I think, because expectations were so low,
it might have worked in his favor.
I think the arrival of Christopher McQuarrie
in the Cruise story is absolutely huge.
I think Cruise and McQuarrie is just an amazing partnership.
It really made Cruise turn a corner from that bad period.
So while "Valkyrie", which actually is a pretty good film,
while that film wasn't a particular success, and again,
has been kind of forgotten about in the Cruise story,
however that film turned out,
I think that that relationship was established.
And although Cruise had a key new creative ally,
the road to recovery would not be simple.
Following the release of "Valkyrie",
the United Artists deal fell apart,
and Cruise split with his long-term partner,
Paula Wagner.
Without his own production company
to launch films that he could control,
he was now thrown back into the uncertain acting world,
auditioning for roles in studio projects,
like "Salt" and "The Tourist".
He eventually took the lead in "Knight and Day",
alongside Cameron Diaz,
before entering discussions with Paramount
to return to the "Mission: Impossible" franchise.
But when the film was released,
it was a commercial and critical disaster,
and many questioned whether Cruise would ever
be able to headline a blockbuster again.
It's interesting with "Knight and Day",
because on paper, you'd think this is a surefire hit.
He's reunited with Cameron Diaz from "Vanilla Sky"
in a very different kind of movie.
She's so likable and has done all these great comedies
that were huge hits, but for some reason--
and it's not a good film--
I think Tom Cruise found out people either wanted
to see him playing in a romantic comedy or a drama
or in an action film with real consequences.
I think the failure of "Knight and Day",
it certainly upped the ante in terms
of what he needed to achieve with "Ghost Protocol",
the fourth "Mission: Impossible" film,
bearing also in mind
that it's the "Mission: Impossible" film
that follows the least successful
"Mission: Impossible" film as well.
In that sense, he had to go back
to the series that he'd set up himself,
had now come to define him.
He has returned to that, but he had to make it better
than it had ever been before.
And in December, 2011,
"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" was released.
At the premier and in its promotion,
Cruise was front and center once again.
Yet, ongoing doubts at Paramount
over its star's popular appeal
had seen initial versions of the script
sideline his character, Ethan Hunt,
and the final cut was a very different film
than the original concept.
It was supposed to originally be
Ethan Hunt's last appearance
in a "Mission: Impossible" movie.
So they brought in Jeremy Renner as somebody
who would step up and become a new team leader.
If you look back on that idea now,
it seems completely absurd.
Renner is a terrific actor,
but he doesn't have the kind of charisma
that Tom Cruise does.
That's what you need in a "Mission: Impossible" movie.
You need charisma.
You need him to be Ethan Hunt.
Having repaired his relationship
with Paramount kingpin, Sumner Redstone,
during the production Cruise drafted in
his new creative partner, Christopher McQuarrie,
to rework the script and shift the focus back onto Hunt.
Yet, after five years of
underwhelming box office returns,
"Ghost Protocol" was still a pressure project for its star.
But when it opened, it became the biggest hit
of Cruise's entire career.
"Ghost Protocol" is incredible,
because it's the fourth installment of a franchise.
Usually it's by three
that things really fall off the edge
with most great franchises.
And here's "Ghost Protocol", the fourth entry
in the franchise, and it's the best by far.
If none of the other movies had been made
and it was just a standalone film,
it would be considered one of the great action thrillers
of all time.
If you argue
that "Mission: Impossible 3"
marked the end of Tom Cruise
as an unimpeachable, matinee idol movie star,
"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol"
basically saved his career.
And with "Incredibles" director Brad Bird
at the helm, the focus of this fourth installment
was action.
And where "Mission: Impossible 3"' had been light on stunts,
with his return to the franchise,
Cruise pulled out all the stops.
Brad Bird kind of conceived "Ghost Protocol"
as this set piece machine.
In the series, I think that is the one
that most acknowledges that what people love
about these movies is seeing Cruise and company squirm
out of really difficult situations.
I think it has some of the best stunts in the whole series.
I think him climbing the Burj Khalifa is
really hard to top, actually.
I think he's been trying to top it since,
and I don't think there's been a sequence
in the franchise that's as exciting as that sequence.
Okay, now remember, it's a rolling off motion
that disengages the bond.
When the meter is blue, that's full adhesion.
Easy way to remember-- Blue is glue.
- And when it's red? - Dead.
Here's your cutter, okay?
And your server interface both going back here.
One, two.
Okay, Ethan,
the hotel server's 11 stories up
and seven units over. Okay?
- Com check? - Yeah, copy.
So...
"Ghost Protocol" gave Tom Cruise his mojo back
by letting audiences see his fear and laugh with him again.
None of the gadgets work, none of their plans work.
They're constantly perplexed and flustered
and on the brink of death,
because nothing around them goes right.
He's relatable again.
And I think he transitions from Tom Cruise
to being almost like an American Jackie Chan.
Yet, at almost 50 years old,
Cruise was still determined to provide the audience
with a performance of remarkable physicality.
What's amazing about "Ghost Protocol" is,
at this point, it is probably
the most physical performance he's ever given.
It's interesting, because we don't say,
"You know, that Tom Cruise, he's got a lot of star power
and energy for his age."
He just does, and I guarantee
a lot of 30-year old actors are sitting around going,
"What is it with this guy, that Energizer Bunny thing?"
We actually believe he could chase down
the 26-year old bad guy from behind, because he can.
I think it's absolutely astonishing that Cruise,
at the age that he was when he made "Ghost Protocol",
was doing the kind of things that you would
only expect an actor in their 30s to do,
that even he wasn't doing himself in his 30s.
So it just adds to this idea of him being ageless.
The character of James Bond is ageless
because they keep recasting new people as it.
The character of Ethan Hunt is ageless
because he's Tom Cruise.
With some of the best reviews
he had ever received and a worldwide gross
of nearly 700 million dollars,
"Ghost Protocol" provided Cruise's career
with the shot in the arm it so desperately needed.
The reaction to his adrenaline-fueled performance
also provided him with a roadmap for future success.
Yet, when 2012's "Jack Reacher" and 2013's "Oblivion"
divided critics and failed to attract large audiences,
it suggested that Cruise's career revival
was a work in progress, rather than a certainty.
In 2014, however, he returned to the big screen
with the high-concept science fiction thriller
"Edge of Tomorrow",
and critics instantly hailed it
as one of the strongest films he had ever made.
"Edge of Tomorrow"'s a terrific film,
based on some great source material.
It's kind of a "Groundhog Day",
except with much higher stakes.
Adapted from the Japanese novel,
"All You Need is Kill", Christopher McQuarrie
was once again drafted into the script writing team.
And the film's narrative, of a cowardly military officer
caught in a time loop
after dying on the battlefield during an alien invasion,
allowed Cruise to probe his own onscreen persona.
"Edge of Tomorrow" in some ways, I think,
is sort of a culmination of Cruise's career.
That movie is Tom Cruise, I think, acknowledging
and even playing with the audience's
love-hate relationship with him.
At the beginning of the movie, he's playing this kind of
slimy military big wig
who has been sort of thoughtlessly propagandizing
for this war that's causing the death of
thousands of people every day,
and he is drafted into the war and dies on the battlefield.
And I think those early scenes very much play
with the idea that there probably is a portion
of the audience that doesn't like Cruise,
that would really relate to being allowed
to dislike a Cruise character.
The film plays to multiple aspects of his career
and elements of his versatility as an actor.
Come on! The ship is going to explode!
What are you doing?
Find me when you wake up.
What?
Come find me when you wake up.
It is an interesting way to do it,
because he's doing it within the context
of this surreal, fantastical situation,
where he's just constantly dying
and having to repeat this day over and over and over again.
And through that, he builds up his expertise,
which is also such a Tom Cruise thing to do.
It is totally like the young cocky Tom Cruise,
him going from that to the sort of man-of-action Tom Cruise.
It's all about him sort of
redeeming himself in a way, that, I think,
as a movie star, he kind of has over the years,
at least in some people's eyes.
But despite rave reviews
and positive word of mouth,
"Edge of Tomorrow" was yet another disappointment
at the box office.
"Edge of Tomorrow" continues to confound me,
in terms of why it was not more successful.
It's one of his strongest films.
It's a great performance.
It's one of his funniest performances.
The film's really smart.
It's a great sort of sci-fi setup, alien invasion film.
And again, Christopher McQuarrie was involved
in working on the script.
So they've taken it and spun it and twisted it
and done everything interesting they can do with it.
He had a great co-star in Emily Blunt.
So there's all these things, and yet,
for some reason, it doesn't add up
to a box office success.
But obviously, it's become, over time,
appreciated and recognized.
And I guess it's one of those weird things.
It's a Tom Cruise cult hit.
And although the film did gain in stature,
its initial struggle to attract an audience
demonstrated how the landscape was changing.
When Cruise's career was revived by "Ghost Protocol",
back in 2011,
the Marvel Cinematic Universe was only five films
into its unprecedented run of releases.
By 2015, it was king of the box office
and soon to be joined by a raft of remakes, revivals,
rival superhero universes, and the return of "Star Wars".
Refreshing original star vehicles
like "Edge of Tomorrow"
stood little chance of getting noticed
amidst the appeal of the familiar.
The studios are trying to find things
that people are familiar with and then,
just making more and more and more of them.
This does also change the star system.
Stardom is defined not so much as
this actor making whatever they want,
but it becomes this actor playing this character.
Mr. Robert Downey Jr.!
The paradigm has shifted in a really big way,
in terms of Hollywood's relationship to movie stars.
I do think that audiences don't necessarily require it
in the same way they used to,
and it is about the intellectual property,
it's about the characters.
Now, some of the films are good,
some of the films are bad,
some of the films are middling,
but it's almost like it doesn't matter.
The best Avengers movie and the worst Avengers movie
both make a ton of money,
and it doesn't seem to matter if one is better than the other.
Marvel's success also happened to coincide
with people no longer going to the movies
to see regular movies.
So it wasn't just that Marvel was taking over
the blockbuster ecosystem, which fine, whatever,
but they were basically taking over cinema in general,
because the people that would've seen everything else
stopped going to the movies.
Now, within this world, Tom Cruise, I think,
understands that people like to see him playing Ethan Hunt.
And Cruise returned
in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise once again,
in the summer of 2015, with "Rogue Nation".
Upon its release, it was surrounded
by high-profile comic book blockbusters.
But unlike "Edge of Tomorrow",
it didn't struggle to find an audience.
"Mission: Impossible" had become one of the most popular
and lucrative franchises in the entire film industry.
And Cruise's nearly 20-year tenure as Ethan Hunt
was unprecedented.
It took some amount of foresight
to put himself in this position,
because he made his first "Mission: Impossible" movie
in 1996, and he sticks to it.
Through thick and thin, he sticks to it, and now,
suddenly, he is essentially kind of a superhero.
With Christopher McQuarrie not only scripting,
but also taking the reins as the film's director,
it proved another critical and commercial smash hit.
And "Mission: Impossible" was now more popular
than it had ever been before.
"Rogue Nation" absolutely built on "Ghost Protocol", 100%.
To be honest, it's been escalation ever since
with those films.
"Ghost Protocol" was the best "Mission: Impossible" movie
up to that point, then "Rogue Nation" comes along,
and it's the best "Mission: Impossible" movie
up to that point.
That is the film when you realize that
this franchise has become an ensemble franchise.
They take this ensemble cast and turn them
into a surrogate family, and you want to spend time
with all of them.
It's interesting, because the first film
is about sort of killing off the idea
of "Mission: Impossible" as a group franchise.
It's all about Tom Cruise.
It felt to me like a process of figuring out
which characters people liked
and kind of getting that perfect configuration over the years.
And then, at a certain point, you get a core team
that people really like.
And "Rogue Nation" wasted no time
in introducing this core team.
The opening scene, when they're
waiting for the big plane to take off,
first, you see Simon Pegg.
You're like, "Ah, I remember that character.
I like him."
Then you see Jeremy Renner,
"Ah, I liked him in 'Ghost Protocol'.
I'm glad he's back."
And then you see Ving Rhames.
"Ah, Ving, always happy to see you."
And then, you see Ethan Hunt.
Can you open the door?
- Ethan, where are you? - I'm by the plane.
Benji, can you open the door?"
And it's a perfect introduction to the movie.
And then, you have this crazy ass stunt.
Benji, you open that door right now!
Yeah, I'm trying.
There's a collaborative quality to these films,
and really, Tom Cruise is there
to provide some emotional throughline
and also to do like two or three big stunts.
And into this ensemble,
"Rogue Nation" added both charismatic veteran Alec Baldwin
and an electrifying newcomer, Rebecca Ferguson,
as British agent Ilsa Faust.
That's probably the first "Mission: Impossible" movie
where the most interesting character isn't Ethan Hunt.
Pretty much everybody's favorite character
in that film was Rebecca Ferguson.
She's a brilliant character.
She leapt off the screen, she looked great,
and she was very sexy, but she wasn't there as a sex object.
She was there because she was a really capable agent,
almost as impressive as Ethan Hunt himself, one might say.
Cruise is smart enough to know,
he's always been smart enough to know,
if the whole movie is good, if everyone else in it is good,
it will raise your profile, it will raise your ship as well.
These films have helped regain some of his mojo,
by being, again, willing to step back
and let somebody else be your favorite character.
But although "Mission: Impossible"
had now firmly reestablished its blockbuster credentials,
Cruise's appeal away from the franchise still looked shaky.
A 2016 sequel to "Jack Reacher"
performed even more poorly at the box office
and killed off the franchise,
while the following year's "The Mummy" opened
to the worst reviews of the actor's entire career.
So, following a well-received starring role in the smaller,
more mature feature, "American Made",
in 2018, it was announced that Cruise was
due back at movie theaters once again
as Ethan Hunt in "Mission: Impossible: Fallout".
And this time, during the film's promotional campaign,
an injury he sustained during the production
became a key selling point,
highlighting more than ever his unique daredevil appeal.
The world we live in now, I think,
where all of this pre-release information is out there,
it doesn't surprise me that they would weaponize
the fact that he hurt himself.
There's a certain morbid fascination with the fact
that he keeps doing this,
and how far is he going to take it?
The stunt itself wasn't that remarkable, really.
It was Cruise jumping from one rooftop to another rooftop,
but compared with hanging off the Burj Khalifa
or clinging to the side of a plane,
it seemed pretty mundane, relatively speaking.
He did the jump,
and it went a little bit wrong.
He broke his ankle,
and then, and this is the amazing thing,
pulls himself up, and ever the pro, he doesn't go,
"Oh, God, I've broken my ankle, guys. Stop rolling."
He carries on. He gets up and runs,
so that they can complete the shot.
And that to me is sort of the defining attribute
of Tom Cruise's career in a nutshell,
is that he will break his leg to entertain you.
Cruise was willing to go further than that.
With the key ensemble returning
and Christopher McQuarrie at the helm once again,
"Fallout" featured a blistering array of stunts
and set pieces, including a high speed motorbike chase,
a helicopter battle,
and a dangerous halo parachute jump,
all performed by Cruise himself.
"Fallout", just for the record, I think,
is an absolutely astonishing film.
It's almost up there with "Mad Max: Fury Road" in my mind
as just being a masterpiece of action cinema.
The film is terrific.
The action sequences are incredibly creative,
and because they're doing a lot of this stuff for real,
it has a kind of immediacy
that really translates to the audience.
When you're watching the film, you feel the danger.
You feel the danger for these characters.
I watched "Fallout" convinced Tom Cruise was going to die.
The idea that he's this kamikaze daredevil
who's just like you, but he's willing to do
these crazy things that you won't do
to make the best movie possible,
that plays very well.
And "Fallout" did play very well,
both the highest-grossing film in the franchise,
and in 2018, the highest-grossing film
of Cruise's entire career.
And when he hit the publicity circuit
with his co-stars to promote it,
he was already in production on another blockbuster,
the long awaited sequel to "Top Gun".
Having resisted a follow up
to the iconic '80s hit for 30 years,
Cruise had finally signed on to return
as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.
But in February, 2020,
the COVID pandemic hit
and everything ground to a halt.
There are much huger problems with COVID,
real-life tragedies, but for the industry,
it was a crisis that the movie industry
had probably never seen ever.
Productions were paused and theaters closed,
leaving a huge backlog of unreleased films.
A lot of major studios and a lot of big films,
they were saying, "Well, it's better to get it out.
Let's put it on Disney Plus.
Let's put it on Hulu.
Yeah, it was shot for the big screen,
but we can't just sit on these movies."
With streaming services thriving
due to a captive audience,
the fate of the cinema industry hung in the balance.
In the summer of 2020,
when restrictions were being tentatively lifted,
the release of Christopher Nolan's "Tenet"
was the first real test
of whether audiences would return to theaters.
And Cruise, keen to show his support
for the big screen experience,
issued a video on his social media.
It's hugely heartening to have seen Cruise
go out there and bang the drum.
There was an element of that kind of caution,
but at the same time, it's like,
"Well, we can't let this entertainment form,
this art form, die, can we?"
He's a champion of cinema, of movie making,
and of the thousands of jobs behind the scenes
that go with making movies.
And as a producer, Cruise was acutely aware
of his responsibility to those working on his films.
He had been keen to restart shooting
on the next "Mission: Impossible" film,
in an effort to keep the industry going,
with the production governed
by strict health guidelines.
But in December that year,
audio was leaked from the set
of Cruise berating crew members
for not following COVID protocols.
The clip quickly went viral.
You would've thought, certainly, whatever,
looking back on what happened in 2005
or looking back on other incidents, like,
for example, Christian Bale.
Again, he was someone that got caught ranting
at a crew member.
Those things, they don't really come out well.
People quite rightly say "You shouldn't be like that.",
But what's really interesting with Cruise
in this instance,
he came out of it pretty well.
I think the vast majority of people out there were like,
"He's looking out for the safety of people.
He's trying to keep this production
from being shut down,"
which happened with a lot of major movies.
He's saying what other people probably wanted to say
on that set and couldn't say,
because he could get away with it.
So I think it actually worked in his favor.
After his reputation had been so damaged
in the early 2000s,
this response was evidence that Cruise
had turned a corner and that public opinion
was back on his side.
And his standing was further enhanced
when he continued to resist the opportunity
to sell "Top Gun: Maverick" to streaming,
holding out for a theatrical release.
As the producer and the star that he is,
he had the heft
to prevent that from coming out
and just going straight to streaming.
Cruise knows that his particular kind of entertainment
that he offers plays better on the big screen.
The Burj Khalifa scene in "Ghost Protocol",
that's not going to play the same on your TV at home.
At a time that cinema is endangered,
when the streamers have
eaten away so significantly
into global cinema box office,
Cruise's insistence on keeping "Top Gun"
and not releasing it until there was
an opportune moment, it was sort of a case
of Cruise to the rescue.
And Cruise's instincts were right.
Having held back for two years,
when "Top Gun: Maverick" was released
exclusively to cinemas in May, 2022,
it went ballistic.
I was absolutely blown away by it
as a theatrical experience.
It's spectacular.
Visually, it's spectacular.
It's also a very good movie.
It made perfect financial sense.
It made perfect artistic sense.
It made perfect showmanship sense
to hold off on the release of that film
until you knew people could go into theaters safely.
"Maverick" is a really slick legacy sequel
that's trading on people's affection for an old movie,
but it's doing it with this kind of romantic sincerity
that a lot of them don't have.
It's a very canny piece of nostalgia.
When you see him first in the beginning of the movie,
this really rousing main theme that comes up
and whips off that tarp and the old motorcycle is there
and he's zipping around, and it got to me.
He took the IP and the nostalgia as a challenge
to say, "Okay, we already have this.
Can we still make a good movie?"
And for the first time in his career,
Cruise's return to the role of Maverick
in his late 50s would specifically focus on his age.
We're definitely getting a more mature Cruise.
In "Maverick", he's gone
from being the cocky upstart character to being the mentor.
What the enemy doesn't know
is your limits.
I intend to find them,
test them, push beyond.
Today, we'll start
with what you only think you know.
Show me what you're made of.
One of the things that it does with Tom Cruise,
it acknowledges that he's an older man
than he was in the '80s,
while at the same time defying that.
- Break right! - Breaking right!
Rooster just saved your life, fellas,
but it's going to cost him.
Not this time, old man.
"Top Gun: Maverick", everybody knew was going to do well.
Everybody figured would probably get fairly good reviews,
but it exceeded all expectations.
Now, here's this guy. First of all, he looks--
people see him and go, "Jesus Christ.
How does he look like that?"
We believe him on the motorcycle.
We believe him in the cockpit.
Even though we had already known
that this guy is a huge movie star,
it's like, "Wait a minute, he's not just a big star still.
He's the biggest star."
And that was confirmed
when "Maverick" pulled in
a staggering $1.5 billion worldwide,
becoming one of the highest grossing films of all time.
At 59 years old,
Cruise had achieved his biggest hit to date,
but the shockwaves of the film's success
sent ripples across the entire industry itself.
The figure who had stood through COVID
as an ambassador for the cinematic experience
now stood at the forefront of its revival.
While other franchises appeared to be running on empty,
Cruise's relentless work ethic was the driving force
behind his film's remarkable popularity.
One of the reasons I think the Marvel movies have,
the more recent ones, have been a little bit less successful
is that they've operated under the assumption
that they don't need to be as good,
that people will show up no matter what they are,
and that's kind of the anti-Tom Cruise perspective.
Cruise is, whatever you think of him,
Cruise is very much like
"We have to give 110% to everything."
The whole, "I have to be up there in the jet,"
I think, is an extension of that idea,
is that truly entertaining people is about
giving all that you have to give to them.
And as the industry tried to process
just how "Maverick" had managed to become such a phenomenon,
Cruise himself was reevaluated.
Having been written off by many only a decade beforehand,
he had won back his audience and risen to new heights.
Headlines and articles were emphatic,
declaring that not only had Tom Cruise saved cinema,
but that he was also the last movie star.
And as he embarked on completing
the next two "Mission: Impossible" films,
it was announced that, afterwards,
he would be retiring from the role of Ethan Hunt.
It'll bring his historic involvement
in the franchise to a close,
the longest consecutive run
that any actor has played a single character on screen,
and complete another stage of his remarkable career.
And whatever Cruise does next, despite his age,
he is certain to bring the same dedication and daring
that has made him the most distinctive movie star
in the world.
Part of me thinks that Cruise won't stop.
He does not seem like a person who is capable
of turning this off.
A part of his appeal as a star is a mania about him.
It's why I've always said that the Tom Cruise
jumping on the couch,
that Tom Cruise is not that different
than the Tom Cruise we see
in the "Mission: Impossible" films.
That level of enthusiasm and that mania
exists in his performances too.
He's been going for five decades,
but what's remarkable is the level of success
that he's had during that time.
There's been a lot of talk through the years,
like, who's the last movie star?
I think, with Tom Cruise, it's a much more apt label,
because of the way the business has changed.
Even though there are tons of great young actors
and actresses in their 20s and 30s,
there's almost no way they're going to have the career
Tom Cruise has had.
There's so much emphasis on these huge franchise movies
that there's not that much room for the star system.
So in a lot of ways, Tom Cruise probably
is the last movie star.
I don't think Tom Cruise is the last movie star,
but I do think that Tom Cruise is the last of his kind.
And I think a lot of the big stars that came in his wake,
like Matt Damon and DiCaprio,
followed the Tom Cruise playbook
of being an actor first and a movie star second.
And I think, once he retires,
I don't think we're ever going to see another like him.
He's such a unique and singular figure
in the industry that I don't think he's replaceable.