Impervious: How Tom Cruise Won Back the Public’s Love by Becoming Un-Human

The newest Mission: Impossible movie, Final Reckoning, is said to be the franchise’s conclusion. Tom Cruise has claimed that he’s ready to retire Ethan Hunt and bring to an end the series that he started 30 years ago. Nobody ever foresaw a future where a remake of a 1960s TV show would grow to become one of the most commercially and critically successful film series of all time. This star vehicle for the biggest movie star of 1995 is now the star vehicle for the biggest movie star, arguably, of a generation. It has grown into an increasingly high-concept stage for Cruise to perform bewilderingly large stunts and to show off the kind of clout that only Tom Cruise possesses.

And audiences love him for it. So do critics. At the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, an honour in and of itself, Cruise was heralded not only as an icon but as a crucial cheerleader for cinemas in the post-lockdown and strikes era. He’s the king of the movies, a titan of the form who just wants everyone to enjoy the theatrical experience as much as he does. It’s charming. People like Tom Cruise for obvious reasons. It’s a far cry from the days when people thought he’d become too weird to be our favourite actor.

I’ve written before about how Cruise evolved from the Scientology fanboy who South Park mercilessly mocked to the ‘invincible’ leading man of a high-stakes franchise bolstered by his unique brand of star power. You can read that if you want the full argument but the brief version is this: After his antics with his religion and his romancing of Katie Holmes made him seem too odd and off-putting to be our loveable leading man, Cruise doubled down on Mission: Impossible and other such projects that allowed him to recreate himself as a stuntman A-Lister who could use his money and fame to create cinematic offerings utterly unique even in the franchise age. He let himself be moulded into something beyond relatable or charming, becoming a real-life Superman who could jump from skyscrapers and live to share the tale on late-night talk shows. Why bother with bad greenscreen and stunt performers six inches taller than you when you’re Tom effing Cruise?

And it is extremely effective. Even if you’ve read every Scientology exposé out there, thoughts of SeaOrg and Operation Snow White are overwhelmed by the sight of Cruise doing those stomach-churning stunts that push the boundaries of health and safety restrictions to new heights. One could argue that it’s just the bigger budget version of someone jangling their keys in front of a baby, but you can’t deny the sheer spectacle of what he does. It is impressive to watch him scale the world’s tallest building, to cling to planes as they take off, and to run with the speedy determination of a man on a mission. How can we not be dazzled by someone doing something that no other celebrity could or would do? When we talk about wanting our celebrities to be unreal, to be beyond the realms of aspiration and into total fantasy, we’re talking about Tom Cruise.

His weird period, some have argued, was overblown. Personally, I don’t think the press went hard enough on Cruise for his public and combative preachings of Scientology. Remember when he attacked Brooke Shields after she talked about her struggles with postpartum depression? That was staggeringly cruel, a moment so petty and undeniably sexist, and it came from Tom Cruise of all people! All of the plausible deniability of Cruise’s Scientology entanglements were suddenly null and void. Religion being a private matter doesn’t hold up to snuff when you’re preaching it to Matt Lauer and losing. It’s not as though journalists really pushed back against him on these issues. Can you imagine if, say, Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour had really gone for it? But in the end, it was Cruise who gave himself just enough rope to hang himself with. And now he was Weird.

As an actor, Cruise was never known for playing homey relatable types. Long before Xenu got his clutches into the actor, he was defined by roles of intensity and above-the-fray charisma. Films like Top Gun, Magnolia, even Interview With the Vampire required him to be one (or more) step removed from the riff-raff. While they may have familiar problems with family, romance, or emotional pain, they remain single-minded and driven in ways that feel separate from our everyday mundanities.

While he was in his Weird period, he was promoting perhaps his most human role, as a harried father trying to keep his family alive during an alien invasion in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. He’s not a grand hero with a plan or a well-armed soldier taking on the UFOs himself. He’s terrified and lost and surrounded by screaming kids with whom he already had a strained relationship. It’s one of the few Cruise roles with universality for audiences.

Cruise has range, and he took on some challenging roles that pushed against that image he’d carefully moulded for himself. Consider one of his greatest performances in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, a film where he spends many hours being c*ckblocked as he tries to uncover a possible conspiracy. It’s a film that required him to be oddly charmless, an anti-Cruise figure who is trying to control the seething jealousy he feels over his wife’s sexual fantasies and his own inability to get laid. He’s the clown of the story, the one who doesn’t realise he’s the jester to the court.

I think it’s this version of Cruise that became helpful when he needed to win back audiences post-Weird era. Yes, Mission: Impossible relies on him being a wild stunt man who does astonishing feats, but remember, Ethan Hunt is also kind of goofy. So is his character in Edge of Tomorrow, a man forced to relive the same day over and over and repeat a cycle of indignities that usually leave him dead. Tom Cruise may never fall from his perch entirely, but these invincible heroes are still willing to put on a silly show. There’s a reason his run— propulsive, single-minded, goofy— has become a trademark.

It’s not especially hard for celebrities to distract an eager and willing public away from their dark sides. Just look at every mediocre loser accused of domestic violence or sexual harassment who is suddenly elevated to the level of godhood by their sycophants. Tom Cruise, the biggest movie star on the planet and one of the most famous people alive, being able to win back the people who thought he was a bit weird and woo-woo is hardly the shock of the century by comparison. And yet it’s easy to forget that people were ready to ditch him after his couch jumping and “glib” comments and that undeniable sense that he had well and truly lost it.

There was no guarantee he’d regain his crown. Now, I’d argue he’s more powerful than ever, standing tall as The Last Movie Star in an era when we’re wondering if that concept is on the verge of extinction. He helped launch Top Gun: Maverick to huge profits and a slew of Oscar nominations. Actors, producers, and directors are fiercely loyal to him. He’s returned to talk shows and glossy magazine profiles with zeal. It helps that nobody has the nerve— or desire to disturb a good industry relationship— to ask about Scientology. As more and more high-profile celebrities leave the organization, Cruise is one of the few loyalists, even if he has kept his mouth shut on issues of antidepressants and psychiatry for a while now.

I do wonder if a day will come where Scientology, still heavily monied but losing cultural clout and a long-running publicity battle, will truly crumble. It could lose its tax-exempt status or become caught up in a scandal so major that no smear campaign can smudge it away. In that timeline, is Cruise protected by his organization or his workplace? At what point will audiences and the industry be unable to use their usual excuses, or will it just not matter? There will always be a bigger building for Cruise to jump off of, just in case. The rules of humanity don’t apply to those who are that famous.