I pulled a muscle the other day picking up a potato chip off the kitchen floor. As I recuperated on the couch, I clicked on the most recent “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” trailer. I watched Tom Cruise fight off a knife attack, plunge into the ocean and hang off an airplane midflight while thinking, “This man is 12 years older than me.”
The last installment in the nearly 30-year-old blockbuster megafranchise catapults the 62-year-old Cruise onto movie screens around the country on Friday. And I can’t help but obsess over Cruise’s late-career pivot to glamorous stuntman. It isn’t just the perfect hair and ageless skin that draws me in; it’s the enthusiasm, the energy. Maybe the secret to eternal youth is playing make-believe? Or being a multimillionaire? Or both?
I can’t help but obsess over Cruise’s late-career pivot to glamorous stuntman.
Or maybe it’s just being boundlessly, unabashedly passionate. I’m not suggesting the crooked path to happiness is becoming a human crash-test dummy, but perhaps the world would be a better place if men cared about a job, a hobby or a project the way Cruise cares about, to quote the great philosopher-actor Vin Diesel, “da movies.”
Say what you will about Cruise, but he never phones it in. The same cannot be said for an increasing number of people raised in online echo chambers.
Instead, I see a veritable generation of men whose ambitions have been stunted by social media-fueled anger and fear, who spend hours listening to other men complaining into podcast microphones. There’s a destructive, self-pitying impulse in bro culture that I sympathize with — to a point. But eventually, one must accept responsibility for one’s life and stop blaming others.
There’s a recent meme asking for the cure for male loneliness. I think the cure might be accepting missions impossible — or possible — with your best friends.
When it comes to movies, I’m omnivorous. The “Mission: Impossible” series explores timeless human themes like man vs. death trap. Every movie is a race to defuse something bad. But to be a fan of “Mission: Impossible,” one must be a fan of its star.
There is a distinct lack of heroes, made up or not, in the zeitgeist. Hollywood used to mint all-American heroes who sold solid virtues like courage and honesty and decency. Today, we have superheroes and anti-heroes, and Cruise, whose Ethan Hunt character is manly and also kind of corny.
Cruise is not a real-life hero, I know that. But I cheer for him anyway. I’m always happy when Ethan Hunt accepts his next impossible mission and pulls it off, with a little help.
The trajectory of Cruise’s 44-year career is a fascinating study in endurance and reinvention. He was a grinning hotshot in early movies like 1986’s “Top Gun,” and quickly matured into an actor who could hold his own against acting legends like Dustin Hoffman in 1988’s “Rain Man,” and work with Oscar-winning directors like Oliver Stone. One of his most popular roles was in Paul Thomas Anderson’s indie classic “Magnolia,” in which he played an abrasive motivational speaker. He proved he has a vicious sense of humor in the 2008 dude comedy “Tropic Thunder,” playing foul-mouthed studio executive Les Grossman.
He survived a career pothole in the early aughts when he seemed out of control, speaking out against psychiatry and jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch as he confessed his undying love for Katie Holmes (she would later divorce him). That episode happened during a promotional tour for 2005’s “War of the Worlds,” the second of two pop masterpieces he made with Steven Spielberg (the first being 2002’s dystopian and arguably prophetic “Minority Report”). Then, there is his relationship with the influential and controversial Church of Scientology, of which he is a celebrated member — a nigh messianic figure. His public intensity toward that fringe religion almost cratered his career.
Almost. But his second act has saved his reputation — and ability to sell movie tickets.
The man has outlasted scandals and flops only to emerge in his middle age as a death-defying adrenaline junkie who once trained for weeks to hold his breath underwater for over six minutes. The man has outlasted scandals and flops only to emerge in his middle age as a death-defying adrenaline junkie who once trained for weeks to hold his breath underwater for over six minutes while shooting a harrowing scene in 2015’s “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.” He is a rare and inoffensive example of positive masculinity in the public eye. Tom Cruise isn’t sarcastic, nor is he cynical. The man works hard for my dollar, like the guy who works the deli counter down the street from my place. He calls me “guy,” I call him “boss.” His Italian subs are out of this world. Are Cruise’s action movies great works of cinema? In “Mission: Impossible 2,” the most misunderstood of the series, directed with chaotic wit by Hong Kong legend John Woo, he hangs off the side of a cliff with Zen-like calm. It’s a beautifully shot scene that is simultaneously harrowing and ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if these movies are great works of cinema. They rule. Cruise is intense. Too intense? Sure. He’s single-minded, but blockbuster filmmaking at that level is collaborative. It takes a team to pull off these kinds of elaborate action scenes. Another skill that has fallen out of fashion in society: the ability to play nice with others to achieve something excellent. I don’t think Cruise and the creative teams he’s worked with over the years, including directors like Christopher McQuarrie of “The Final Reckoning” and Brad Bird of “Ghost Protocol,” are curing cancer, but there’s something to be said for a few hours of high-concept, easy-to-understand escapism, especially a movie franchise about someone competent who thinks the world deserves to be saved. I also appreciate that Cruise has morphed from an A-list celeb and gossip mag regular into a humble, hardworking stuntman — one of the entertainment industry’s most overlooked and storied jobs. The early days of cinema gave us talented comic stuntmen like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, athletic everymen who risked their lives to thrill silent movie audiences. Cruise is part of that tradition; he just got a late start. A good stunt is no different from a well-choreographed dance; they both require rehearsal and guts. For one of his climactic stunts in 2023’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning,” Cruise trained for months in order to ride a motorcycle off a cliff before parachuting down. According to stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, Cruise practiced motorcycle jumps 13,000 times and pulled the rip cord 500 times to perfect the skydive. And that’s just one stunt. In 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” Cruise practiced his HALO jump from a C-17 transport plane 106 times, from 25,000 feet. I respect that work ethic. I, too, want to be challenged, even if that means being able to bend over without groaning. And who doesn’t want to be a hero to a family member? Or a friend? Who doesn’t want to be able to do the right things even if it’s hard to do? So I bought a ticket to “The Final Reckoning.” I will see it, like I saw the last one, “Dead Reckoning,” and the one before that, with one of my best bros. We both like movies that go kaboom. I will enjoy it on a big screen in a fancy theater with a giant bucket of popcorn drenched in butter-flavored oil and a small barrel of diet whatever, the way Tom Cruise wants me to, because Tom loves the movies. And I love Tom.
John DeVore
John DeVore is a culture writer and author of "Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway." His writing has been published in Esquire, Vanity Fair, Marvel Comics, and many other publications. 
