In “Mission: Impossible III”, the third instalment of the greatest action-film franchise of all time, Tom Cruise tells his fictional wife that she needs to kill him before he dies. It’s a classic Cruise conundrum: a villain has implanted an explosive charge in his head, and, to deactivate it, his wife must use a makeshift defibrillator that will disable the bomb but also stop his heart. Fortunately, the wife, played by Michelle Monaghan, is a nurse. (Earlier scenes of her being smiley with hospital personnel weren’t in vain.) She gamely electrocutes her husband to death, takes a quick break to shoot the bad guys in the room, and then performs CPR on Cruise. He bursts back to life and instinctively grabs his gun, ready to rejoin the fight.
As we’ve seen over the years, Tom Cruise can do almost anything—fly helicopters, free-climb cliffs, and even sing and play the guitar. Only rarely does he flop. But “Mission: Impossible III,” which came out in 2006, made less than four hundred million dollars globally not much in the eyes of its distributor, Paramount. Sumner Redstone, then the chairman of Viacom, which owned Paramount, blamed these disappointing box-office numbers on Cruise. In the run-up to the film’s première, the actor had become extremely vocal about his involvement with the Church of Scientology and had given some unnerving talk-show interviews, jumping on Oprah’s couch and ranting about psychiatry in an exchange with Matt Lauer on the “Today” show. (“Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug?” Cruise asked Lauer, speaking with an urgency that amphetamine users could only envy.) Redstone estimated that Cruise’s antics had cost “Mission: Impossible III” up to a hundred and fifty million dollars in lost ticket sales, and Paramount announced later that year that it was ending its long-standing relationship with the star. “We don’t think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot,” Redstone told the Wall Street Journal.
Until then, Cruise had been considered box-office gold. In 1996, he became the first person to star in five consecutive films that grossed at least a hundred million dollars in the United States. He was also thought to be one of the finest dramatic actors of his generation, having worked with directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, and Paul Thomas Anderson. Cameron Crowe, the director of the romantic comedy “Jerry Maguire”, has noted the actor’s unique ability to deliver sincere dialogue that might sound silly coming from someone else.
Other actors, including those who have dabbled in stunt work, have expressed awe at Cruise’s level of dedication. “What Tom Cruise does is extraordinary and special,” Keanu Reeves once said. Reeves described himself as “on the ground playing in the mud”, whereas Cruise is “flying and jumping outside of buildings and helicopters”. Will Smith has said that when he started filming “Bad Boys for Life”, he was intent on performing his own stunts. “I was, like, ‘Man, I’m better than Tom Cruise,'” he said. But after Smith did two stunts, “I was, like, I’m not better than Tom Cruise.” Smith, unlike Cruise, has an Oscar. But Cruise has found a different way to set himself apart by becoming the Daniel Day-Lewis of stunt work.
Cruise’s risk-taking is driven by his perfectionism. This is the through line of his movies; even smaller stunts are done with incredible precision. In “Mission: Impossible 2″, the villain, played by Dougray Scott, tries to stab Cruise in the eye with a knife. Cruise insisted that a real knife be used. The crew attached the blade to a steel cable, which was rigged to stop a quarter of an inch away from his pupil. A technological malfunction or an inopportune sneeze could have killed him. If we’re searching for an analogue, I wouldn’t propose other action stars like Glen Powell or Dwayne Johnson. One must reach back a century, to the silent-film actor Buster Keaton, who regularly risked his life jumping across rooftops, plunging over waterfalls, and standing underneath a collapsing building for the sole purpose of entertaining audiences. Keaton, of course, was a comedian; arguably, so is Cruise. His commitment to authenticity is so extreme that the resultant footage is, often, ludicrous.
Tags: Tom Cruise, Stunt, Movie, Action Movie, Adventure
