Cold Open · Essay · aug 31, 2023

Will Tom Cruise Save Cinema?

With Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning in cinemas, the question is serious: is Tom Cruise singlehandedly keeping alive a form of visceral, physical, risk-it-all cinema that the rest of Hollywood has abandoned? This episode places Cruise in a lineage of genuine movie stars — from Buster Keaton's physical bravado to the offscreen mythology that once made studios possible — and asks whether his commitment to the stunt, to the tangible, to the real, is an act of preservation or a beautiful last gesture before the format disappears entirely.

By Elliot Bloom

Film Journalist · Celebrating Cinema

With the latest installment of the Mission Impossible franchise in cinemas now, we pose the question if Tom Cruise, the enigmatic star of classics like Top Gun (1986), Magnolia (1999), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and so many others, is singlehandedly trying to save a dying breed of visceral (action) cinema. Is Cruise the last of the genuine movie stars? How do his on and offscreen antics relate to his persona? Does he fit into a long-standing tradition of mavericks like Buster Keaton and other risk-it-all icons of the silver screen? And is he, as he recently claims, really doing it ‘for us’, the audience? In this episode, we dive deep into his illustrious body of work as well as his infamous image to see what really lies behind the mask of the Cruise.

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