This man is less a movie star than a walking role model for the rest of the world. Its existence is a single, teeth-baring, fist-clenching reminder of a fact that unfortunately cannot be denied: If we always gave 250 percent, we could all pursue our goals with laser-sharp focus and finally work through the to-do list completely, come on, already richer, already more famous than we are.
Tom Cruise turns sixty this weekend, and as if to mock the Tom Cruise principle once again, he is flanking this anniversary with a message from the box office. His current project “Top Gun: Maverick” is not just another of his immensely successful films, and not just another confirmation of the old Hollywood rule written especially for him: No one can always be at the top except for Tom Cruise.
no The worldwide box office receipts of “Top Gun: Maverick” have currently exceeded the billion mark – for him a new, very personal record. At an age when the eternally young, eternally victorious virility might be a good thing, Tom Cruise’s current project tops everything else he’s done before.
The man has steadily gone from success to success and now he’s surpassing himself again. And we can’t seem to get enough of him, feeling not at all humiliated and mocked by the fact of his existence, but somehow oddly…reassured.
Anyone who has sat across from Tom Cruise, looked into his eyes and been sucked into the energy field of his determination understands two things. The seriousness and honesty of his singular focus of working every second of his life for the best possible next film is absolutely real. And it’s pretty tiresome in detail, too.
Every question and every problem is immediately broken down to a core and answered with a personal success mantra. The point of these mantras is that they can be repeated indefinitely. Because they are always true and because – see above – they achieve the desired results with often almost infallible certainty.
One of those mantras is that even a Tom Cruise is nothing without good stories to tell and good, if not great, filmmakers to tell them with him. He is absolutely able to identify such stories within the space in which a Tom Cruise character can move and, if necessary, to enforce them against all odds, such as in his Stauffenberg film “Operation Walküre”, to the At first no one in Hollywood wanted to believe it.
Then, from the start, he sought to be close to the masters, played a tiny role early on, for example with Francis Ford Coppola, and the list of great names in directors that he later served and for which he repeatedly modified his star persona , has gotten longer and longer over the decades: Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, Brian De Palma, Cameron Crowe, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann.
If it is acknowledged that he chose good Tom Cruise roles with a high hit rate, he quickly and decisively rejects this misunderstanding: “No, I only ever chose great films. Then I took the roles and according to my possibilities made the best of it.” A subtle, but ultimately all-important difference.
So Tom Cruise cleans himself. And does the dishes. Very often. If not always.
At the start of “Top Gun: Maverick”, a number of companions and comrades-in-arms were asked what his secret was. No one had ever seen him otherwise than in top form, in a good mood, enthusiastic and willing to work. Everyone raved about his team spirit and friendliness, well above the minimum required. Tiny details, however, were surprising. Director Doug Liman, who did “Edge of Tomorrow” with him and plans to shoot with him in space soon, reported how he once lived with Tom Cruise at the time of filming.
“For security reasons, we didn’t have domestic help,” Liman said. “We had to clean ourselves.” Uh, wait a minute: isn’t the main reason you become a Tom Cruise so you don’t have to do the cleaning yourself at some point? That’s actually the deal. Or not? Perhaps it makes sense if information from the most private sphere would eventually become more valuable than gold and would overwhelm the honesty of even the most morally stable household help. Maybe it’s just paranoia.
But anyway, we believe it immediately: So Tom Cruise cleans himself. And does the dishes. Very often. If not always. And Liman reports that when doing the dishes, for example, he shows the same energy, the same unconditional will to work and perfectionism as when making films: “He was constantly pulling out pots that I had already washed and put away and said: ‘That’s not clean .'”
First of all, if you put this in perspective, it’s perfectly clear why this man has to keep surpassing himself, why he doesn’t willingly give an inch of his body to age and why he probably won’t rest until he drops dead. And secondly, why people kept fleeing from living with him. The most prominent of these escapees were his wives Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes.
The last escape in particular was so dramatic that it’s not clear whether Tom Cruise still sees his daughter Suri, now sixteen years old – but the total lack of information about it is a good sign. If he were to pursue the goals of his private life as unconditionally and obsessively as he does his work, it would inevitably have to happen in court and before the eyes of the whole world and end up as bad and painful as, for example, with colleague Johnny Depp.
Other Scientologists are, after all, only human. But Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise
The question, which has been discussed passionately for a long time, especially in Germany, as to what all these personality traits and obsessions and marital problems could possibly have to do with Tom Cruise’s membership in Scientology and whether the man is not even dangerous because of that, seems to have lost some of its urgency in recent years.
On the one hand, certainly because there were hardly any new events in this regard, but on the other hand because the singularity of the Tom Cruise principle is becoming more and more evident. Other Scientologists are, after all, only human. They get fat and mess up, just look at John Travolta. But Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.
Just recently, Francis Ford Coppola recounted how he experienced the very young Tom Cruise in the film “The Outsiders” – as someone who even then wanted to know 100 percent, who did everything to make his role better . He gets involved in a final mass brawl and found it more authentic to knock one of his brilliant white front teeth out of his winner’s smile: “As a total supporting actor, for a few seconds of film. Maybe there’s a reason for everything,” says Coppola.
Perhaps that is exactly what is soothing about the Tom Cruise principle: the man proves that sacrifices are not in vain in the end. That tireless effort leads to something. After all, that’s the whole point behind the highly dangerous stunts that Cruise always does himself, for example for his “Mission: Impossible” films – gymnastics around half a kilometer above the glass skyscraper Burj Khalifa, hanging on the outer shell of a military transport aircraft. Because the viewers feel the real sacrifice – and honor it.
Here, Cruise as Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible – Phantom Protocol” (2011) climbs up the facade of a skyscraper, of course without a stuntman himself.
(Photo: Imago)
The man sets an example by fulfilling a rule that, at least in his own example, can always be absolutely relied on – and that’s why people reliably flock to his films. And yet the legendary status that the old “Top Gun” film still has and the nostalgic sensational success that the new one has now achieved shows an interesting paradox: As much as we value the Tom Cruise principle as a rule, by who knows no exception, that’s how much we like it when his characters are rule breakers, Mavericks. Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is not called that for nothing: There is no military order that he would not disregard in case of doubt.
He’s like Tom Cruise in one quality – he’s the best at what he does. But because he is and remains a maverick, he will never be Tom Cruise himself, will never be at the top of a system. If there is one birthday wish for what will no doubt be a tremendously successful Tom Cruise decade, it would be that Tom Cruise finds new roles that further deepen this interesting contradiction.