If you’re of a certain age — an age whose childhood, and even early adulthood, didn’t involve cell phones or wireless internet — chances are you remember what it was like to watch Tom Cruise and realize, in whatever simple and clear manner, that you were observing greatness. For me, Cruise belonged in a pantheon with Michael Jackson, whom I referred to — completely without irony — as “the king of pop.”
It was Cruise’s face that stared back at me from the video-store cover of Cocktail, whose soundtrack served as the background music to my entire 1988. Cruise was who we’d act like when we sang “Danger Zone” and drove our bikes in frantic, dizzying circles around the cul-de-sac. He was constantly looking handsome in snippets on Entertainment Tonight, especially after he fell in love with his gorgeous and exotic-looking co-star Nicole Kidman, whose perm, to my 10-year-old eyes, was perfection.
Cruise was a solid actor, but he was a truly masterful movie star. Part of it was the smile, and the specific sort of charisma, manifest onscreen throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, that accompanied the classic Hollywood filmic structure of confidence, slight dent in confidence, restored and ratified confidence. (Not that I really knew anything about that: I wasn’t allowed to watch a Cruise film — the vast majority of which were rated R — until The Firm.)
That the magnitude of his stardom was legible, even to a child, even without seeing his movies, is a testament to the simplicity and strength of Cruise’s image. It was composed of a somewhat complicated tangle of post-industrial Cold War-era Americanness, but the final product somehow just seemed to signify the best. There was no doubt in my mind: Tom Cruise was the Biggest Star in the World.
Today, the vestiges of that greatness remain, especially in the dark room of the movie theater, where, when I watched Mission Impossible last weekend, it felt like that old Cruise, dangling from the wing of an airplane, making a stealthy argument for his own superlativeness. It’s appropriate that that image forms the center of the film’s advertising campaign, as if to signify just how resolutely — and, given the monster projections for the film’s opening, effectively— Cruise has clung to his global stardom.
Paramount
But this poster is also one of the only ways that Cruise is promoting the film. Once a master of the publicity game, he’s almost entirely absented himself: He’s walked various red carpets and did a softball interview with Jon Stewart, but there have been no GQ covers, Entertainment Weekly interviews, or Annie Leibowitz photo shoots. Rumors of a relationship with his 22-year-old assistant — who just so happens to look like his most recent wife, Katie Holmes — were quicklyandunequivocally shut down.
Co-stars Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, and Rebecca Ferguson have taken up the bulk of the campaign trail, deflecting interviewers’ questions about working with Tom Cruise. Exhibit A, Renner: “Cruise demands greatness from everybody.” Exhibit B, Pegg: “We did some crazy stuff. We went down a set of stairs in Rabat — like, in a car.” Exhibit C, Ferguson: “I was in love with him, [and] I was 11, 12? He was probably my one crush.”
You could argue that Cruise, especially Cruise in Mission Impossible, doesn’t need promotion: that product sells itself. But the strategy also highlights just how scarce Cruise has to make himself, and his personal opinions in particular, in the post-couch-jumping world. Any onscreen relationship, any medical theory, any comment, rea