If ever there was a time to canonise some sort of living Patron Saint of Hollywood, Tom Cruise probably deserves a shot at the running.
The movie business hasn't exactly had an easy few years. As we were stuck at home, cinemas shuttered, budgets got slashed, water cooler moments all but disappeared and VOD became the movie-watching experience de rigueur. The town was in a tizzy. ‘How will we ever get bums back in seats?’ Of course, there were some outliers. Marvel, for instance, never stopped making money, especially thanks to Spider-man: No Way Home. But then, swooping in on the wing of a plane, Tom Cruise appeared and solidified the blockbuster's place in the 2020s with Top Gun: Maverick.
This may sound hyperbolic, but at least Steven Spielberg agrees with us.
The pair were caught on camera at the annual Oscars luncheon, where they're both nominated for Best Picture (Spielberg nabbing it for his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans). In a video captured at the event, Spielberg is seen gushing to a blushing Cruise “You saved Hollywood’s ass and you might have saved theatrical distribution. Seriously, Top Gun: Maverick might have saved the entire theatrical industry.” It's a pretty glorious moment, especially when you consider the pair's history working together on films like Minority Report and War of the Worlds, two titans of the box office at their release.
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Steven Spielberg knows a thing or two about boosting theatrical releases. Jaws, of course, is still one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, and you can throw in the Jurassic Park and the Indiana Jones franchises in for good measure too. And when it comes to Cruise, he's not wrong.
Grossing over a billion dollars at the global box office and railing against the short window between cinema release and on-demand viewing, with Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise ensured a place on the big screen for films that aren't tethered to 30 other films packed with lore before it. Sure, Top Gun: Maverick isn't an original film, it's drenched in nostalgia for its 1986 predecessor which told the story of young fighter pilots. The movie more or less cuts and pastes that concept into a new mould, with Cruise leading a gaggle of young bucks, including the son (Miles Teller) of his late best friend Goose. But its existence as a sequel at this point is kind of overshadowed by the sheer feat it pulled that could rival any F/A-18.
It's hard to call anything a bonafide, decades-spanning A-list celebrity does a ‘Cinderella Story’, but Top Gun: Maverick bucked not only a post-pandemic movie-going trend but reopened a window to a former golden age of blockbuster experiences. Considering, ahead of its release, many were sure Cruise's resistance to sending it to streaming right away was some kind of folly of ego, its continuing box office success is something like a fairytale.
So there you have it, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Steven Spielberg, we now pronounce Tom Cruise the saviour of the film industry.
