Top Gun: Maverick confirms it – Tom Cruise is the last great movie star

After the Cannes premiere of Top Gun: Maverick, cruise was awarded a surprise Palme d'Or. About time - there's no-one in Hollywood quite like him, says Christina Newland

Thirty-six years after Tony Scott’s Top Gun became a cornerstone of the glossy 80s Hollywood blockbuster, its sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, premiered at the 75th Festival de Cannes. No expense was spared for the occasion: a series of fighter jets streaked over the red carpet in formation, trailing red white and blue smoke; extravagant fireworks marked the conclusion of the movie.

And Tom Cruise, at the centre of it all, presided with that familiar, winning toothpaste grin. By the end of the evening, President of the Festival Thierry Fremaux awarded Cruise a surprise Palme d’Or for a life’s work in cinema. No matter what you make of all this jubilant grandstanding, the award is undeniably well-earned: Tom Cruise is one of the last great movie stars.

A movie star, after all, is more than just an actor – although the rare and the best of them exist in the Venn diagram of both. A quality of overpowering charisma, the ability to traverse the landscape of mainstream cinema with unique personality intact, and the reaction when you say their name – as though invoking a talisman – all help an actor transcend.

The depth and variety of Cruise’s performances since his first in 1981 – his ability to zig when expected to zag, his screen qualities both light and dark, hero or heel, action star or arthouse darling, is astounding. Unlike other film stars, he does his own stunts – even at 59 years old. He races his motorbikes and flies his own aeroplanes: like his childhood loves Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, he has always had a physical dexterity and a panache for choreographed danger.

Much has been made of Cruise’s box office reliability – he remains one of the few leading men in Hollywood who can estimably increase the financial success of a movie, according to Hollywood economists. There is no one else working today who combines his action chops with his variety of genre choices.

The Cannes supercut of his screen moments was a reminder of his range and evidence of his cultural impact, from “I feel the need for speed” to “You complete me”. He admits a desire to make “every kind of movie”, to understand every genre inside out, and he’s had a decent crack at it.

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Tom Cruise portraying Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in a scene from "Top Gun: Maverick." (Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures via AP)
Tom Cruise portraying Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick (Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures via AP)

Cleverly-conceived science fiction films like Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and 90s throwback action flicks like the Jack Reacher series have continually kept him in the public consciousness (he has never faded into obscurity or hung onto the laurels of past roles like so many of his co-stars and contemporaries), and the enthusiastically positive reviews of Top Gun: Maverick aren’t hurting. Even his poorer films (a remake of The Mummy, for example, or the interminable Rock of Ages) can’t seem to dim his wattage – his performances remain solid.

It’s easy to forget that in addition to his string of modern classics across the road movie (Rain Man), romantic drama (Jerry Maguire), and action (all six and an upcoming seventh Mission Impossible, directed by likes of Brian De Palma and John Woo), Cruise has always challenged himself to go off-piste.

He has thrown himself headlong into parts not exactly considered de rigueur in the Hollywood leading man playbook. He is a silkily villainous hitman in Collateral (2004), Michael Mann’s slick taxi-cab neo-noir; a ponytailed “motivational” speaker to fellow male chauvinists in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) – even an unhinged, dancing studio exec in comedy Tropic Thunder (2008). From the beginning, his willingness to be disliked onscreen, emanating a kind of superficial smugness – distinguished him.

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Cruise was born to a working-class, frequently itinerant family whose parents divorced when he was young. He started out in the industry at 18, hungry and curious, winning a small part after his second ever audition. He claims to have gained his knowledge of film simply by annoying everybody around him onset, asking them how they did their jobs, be they costume designer or sales agent.

Given that he began with a tiny role on Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, followed not long after by Taps opposite George C. Scott and The Outsiders with Francis Ford Coppola, he had plenty of wisdom to mine. Top Gun (1986) would prove the most pivotal in his early career, though, with an enormous box office gross – over $300m – that put it at the top of the pile in the year of its release. Even more powerful was its influence on pop culture – Top Gun would become ingrained in American life and its soundtrack remains one of the best-selling of all time.

It has to be said: Cruise’s personal life is as odd as his career is towering. In the early 2000s, Cruise’s reputation began to suffer due to his association with the Church of Scientology and his increasingly outspoken views about it. Christian Bale, preparing to play serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000), rather unkindly said he was inspired by watching a Tom Cruise interview on David Letterman.

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 19: Tom Cruise attends the "Top Gun: Maverick" Royal Film Performance at Leicester Square on May 19, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by Neil Mockford/FilmMagic,)
Cruise at the Top Gun: Maverick Royal Film Performance at Leicester Square (Photo: Neil Mockford/FilmMagic)

Endless column inches have been dedicated to the many controversies, and soundbites involving his divorces, lawsuits, beliefs, and his infamous Oprah sofa-hopping. From his acrimonious split with Nicole Kidman and whispers of his hiring surveillance to keep track of ex-wife Katie Holmes, the rumours were rife. After a stint of being outspoken about his more outlandish views (including an episode in 2005 when he attacked psychiatry and the use of antidepressants), his PR seems to have gone into overdrive to protect him from the fallout.

It worked (or he calmed down): today, he is measured and on-message, and it seems to have gone some way in rehabilitating him in the eyes of the public. At Cannes, I watched hundreds of fans wait for hours just to catch a glimpse of him on the red carpet, and even the most hardened film critics couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer star power on display (not to mention the fighter jets).

There is something innate to Cruise’s screen power, from the springy, near-hyperactive physicality of his early roles – a cocky, baby-faced pool hall hustler in The Color of Money (1986) or the hyper-caffeinated, irresistible sports agent of Jerry Maguire – to the slower gravitas he holds now.

He’s both a power player and a living legend. That face – with its ever-so-slight knock on the bridge of the nose, the squinting blue eyes, the boyish profile, the shades of dark and light interplaying across it – has been with cinemagoers through pleasures and heartaches for decades. Cruise combines self-awareness, obsessive on-set perfectionism, and a taste for escapist, old-school Hollywood fare of vanishingly rare quality. That face is what Movie Stardom(™) is made of.

‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is in cinemas on Friday

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