In a recent interview with GQ’s Zach Baron — Cruise’s first of this kind in over a decade — the Mission: Impossible star managed to elude any and all questions of substance like a prime Ali in the corner by pulling out his oh so reliable, post-near-career-ending mid-’00s PR disaster tour trump card: the “Mr. Movies” persona.
The persona — which was created following Cruise’s public-facing, pro-Scientology run in the mid-2000s that not only cost him his marriage to Katie Holmes, but almost his career, too — has served the star well in the way of helping him regain his place atop the movie star mountaintop. For what followed Cruise’s outburst — which included the infamous Oprah couch incident, and his criticism of Brooke Shields’ use of prescription antidepressants following the birth of her first daughter on the Today show — was a series of critical and financial flops: Lions for Lambs, Valkyrie, Knight and Day — a far cry from his late ’90s to mid-’00s run that saw collaborations with such great auteurs as Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), Steven Spielberg (Minority Report, War of the Worlds), and Michael Mann (Collateral).
It wouldn’t be until 2011’s MI 4 (the one where he scales the Burj Khalifa) that the public perception of Cruise would begin to shift back into the green, and the first building blocks for the “Mr. Movies” character — perhaps Cruise’s most frequently returned to role — would be put in place. The Mission stunts got bigger, and, give or take a few Mummy revival attempts and Reacher sequels, oh and whatever the hell that Rock of Ages stuff was all about, the movies got better, too. Cruise was back where he belonged, and with Top Gun: Maverick being our first true signifier that the movies were back post-Covid, Cruise assumed the role of face of the medium — “Mr. Movies”.
This persona, though, is not all sunshine and rainbows. It has reduced Cruise to — to be frank — a boring, uneventful, and fake-seeming indivdual — the personification of a plank of wood. He routinely dodges anything and anyone that attempts to place any sort of pressure on his life outside of a movie set. We know nothing of Cruise at all really, and not just the way he sees the world or what he likes to do on his days off or anything else of a personal sentiment, but even just how he sees himself as a leading man in his old age or what he’s excited about and what he’s worried about for the future of movies. For somebody who speaks so much of the medium, he very rarely actually has anything to say about it at all.
See for yourself. Here’s one of my favourite moments of Cruise’s articulate bullshit from the conversation. Just read and marvel at how he dodges absolutely everything asked of him:
I mean, literally what is this guy talking about? I’m both fascinated and in awe of his total commitment to the bit. I almost hope he wins the Oscar just to see how long his acceptance speech would go on.
Furthermore…
Truly one of a kind, Tom Cruise. A true politician. And his politicking, he hopes, I’m sure, will help deliver his first competitive Oscar for his starring role as Digger Rockwell in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger, Cruise’s first non-IP movie since 2017’s American Made, which releases later this year.
But, such are the times, the scope of Oscar Campaigning has expanded in the time since Cruise’s last expedition, and it means he’s gonna need to gear up to partake in some more of these interviews, get down with some TikTok trends, and maybe even get in the hot seat for a few podcast appearances — Cruise The Master Rewatchables when? — if he’s to take home the golden man.
But if this GQ interview is anything to go by, we’re in for a very, very long few months this awards season, full of Cruise’s “The Movies” schtick which might well get tiresome very quickly, if it hasn’t already. And though it’s understandable why somebody with as *complicated* a world view as Tom Cruise seemingly has would want to hide that side of himself from the world — just look at how it went before — I feel there has, perhaps, been an overcorrection on his behalf. No one’s asking to hear his thoughts on the world’s great troubles, but to hear what “Mr. Movies” thought about David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street, say, or maybe some actors he’s excited about, might be nice.