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Earlier this week, an audio clip of the London set was leaked Mission: Impossible 7 of Tom Cruise yelling at the crew for violating COVID-19 protocols. “We are the gold standard!” He shouts. “They are in Hollywood making movies right now thanks to us. Because they believe in us and in what we are doing. “
It’s a perfect, explosive, jingoistic performance. Cruise’s words are clearly articulated, but slightly softened by a mask: “I’m on the phone with all the damn studios at night, the insurance companies, the producers and they are watching us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, mothers. I never want to see him again. Never!”
Cruise picked up some criticism on social media for its abusive toneBut many writers and Hollywood insiders, including George Clooney, praised him for being on the right side of the coronavirus culture war. But the really interesting thing about the clip, which first appeared in Sun and was later verified by production sources to Variety and the New York Times, is Cruise’s way of presenting himself as nothing less than the savior of the movies. “You can tell people that they’re losing their damn homes because our industry is closed,” says Cruise. “It is not going to serve them food or pay for their college education. I sleep with that every night: the future of this fucking industry! “
You imagine Cruise’s camp wasn’t too upset because this clip somehow got out to the world. It positions him as a baron of song and dance in a Hollywood golden age musical – the mighty stern but golden hearted agent who just wants to do magic in the movies and help the little one in the process! He’s Mr. Movies, and it’s a role he’s been playing for years.
For more than two decades, Cruise has insisted on performing his own stunts, which increase in intensity with each new ME movie, free solo climbing in the opening sequence of Mission: Impossible 2 to hang from a plane mid-takeoff in 2015 Rebel nation. What greater sign of commitment to crafts could there be? In 2018, he and ME Director Christopher MacQuarrie launched a public service announcement against television’s motion-smoothing – “video tweening,” as Cruise puts it, like a president warning of a threat to democracy – pleading with viewers to turn off the feature for watch movies the way the filmmakers want them. And then there was the high-production 35-second film that launched on Twitter this summer, in which Cruise embarked on a grand adventure to see Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster beset by COVID Beginning. He gets in a car, is recognized by teenagers on the street who are younger than him ME franchise, and then jump to the movies. “Here we are,” he proclaims, spreading his arms like a mayor welcoming you to his award-winning city, “back to the movies!”
Of course, Cruise needs to get back to the movies, although he once balanced his blockbusters with crunchier dishes like Jerry maguire and Magnolia, is now focused on big action hero shows (sort of American made) that need theaters to generate hundreds of millions of dollars around the world. But he has also struggled with an image damaged by two dangerous divorces, of Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, he reports that he hardly spends time with the daughter he shares with Holmes and, of course, the well-documented crap of Scientology. While there is no reason to doubt your love for movies, becoming an ambassador for them is also something that cultural journalists with their own fears about the future of the medium find it difficult to resist.
The other advantage of the role of Mr. Movies is that it has nothing to do with Cruise’s personal life: “what I sleep with at night,” as he said in that audio clip, “is the future of this industry.” Cruise is now the guy who cares about Hollywood, the aging statesman who has been committed to the craft of preserving a certain level of filmmaking for four decades. Maybe that “back to the movies!” Short was the romantic drama of the year.
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