Congratulations are clearly in order. After decades of being overlooked, underestimated and sometimes just flat-out ignored, a Hollywood mainstay is finally getting some richly deserved recognition. Bravo!
No, not to Tom Cruise for that honorary Oscar — to the Academy for making sure the world’s last remaining movie star will turn up for their next broadcast.
Let’s face it, at this point the Oscars need Cruise more than Cruise needs an Oscar, particularly an honorary one, which frequently go to stars of more mature vintage (Mel Brooks got one last year, at 97). In recent times, the show’s numbers — to say nothing of its cultural relevance — have been on the same spiraling trajectory as that biplane Cruise dangled from in the latest Mission: Impossible movie. Viewership has fallen some 66 percent since its peak in 1998 (Titanic year), with only about 20 million tuning in these days, about the same audience that turns out for a run-of-the-mill midseason NFL game.
Meanwhile, Cruise, at 62, continues to draw arena-sized crowds to his tentpoles. The most recent Mission: Impossible, The Final Reckoning, grossed $500 million worldwide last month, while Dead Reckoning Part 1 grossed $550 million in 2023. And then there’s 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, the film that proved the pandemic hadn’t entirely crushed the theatrical business. It grossed a stratospheric $1.5 billion, Cruise’s personal best.
The dramatic flip here is almost as jaw-dropping as one of Ethan Hunt’s mask-pulling reveals. For decades, the Academy seemed to keep Cruise at a vaguely disdainful distance, dismissing him as more of an action figure than a serious ack-TOOR. Sure, they’d occasionally toss him a polite nomination — in 1989 for Born on the Fourth of July, in 1996 for Jerry Maguire and in 1999 for Magnolia — but they never invited him up to the podium to collect a statuette. He’d always remain stuck in the audience with the other losers, gamely flashing that famous 500-watt smile for the reaction shot.
Honestly, the honorary Oscar announced this week feels like too little, too late. Because over the years, when he wasn’t climbing Burj Khalifa or jumping motorcycles off cliffs, Cruise has turned in some truly nuanced, brave and definitely Oscar-worthy performances. And we’re not just talking about the roles the Academy deigned to nominate — at least one of which, by the way, probably should have won (how Michael Caine’s largely unremarkable performance in Cider House Rules beat Cruise’s unforgettable turn as the toxically masculine “respect the cock” motivational speaker in Paul Thomas Anderson’s underrated 1998 drama Magnolia is a mystery for the ages).
There were also Cruise’s unnominated but award-worthy performances in Rain Man (opposite Dustin Hoffman), in Interview With a Vampire (opposite Brad Pitt) and in the late Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut (opposite some actress named Nicole Kidman). A reasonable argument could even be made that Cruise’s fat-suited, Diet Coke-swilling, profanity-spouting studio exec in Tropic Thunder — the scene-stealing Les Grossman — was a performance worthy of some sort of award (at least the Golden Globes gave it a nom).
As for why it’s taken the Oscars so long to pay Cruise his due, one can only speculate. Perhaps it’s all that gleaming charisma — he’s always been too smooth, too slick, too commercial for the Academy’s insular voters. Maybe it was Cruise’s unabashed embrace of movie stardom over methody self-flagellation. Or maybe the Academy just couldn’t bring itself to hand a gold statue to someone who once made a movie called Cocktail. Whatever the reason, the Oscars can no longer afford the luxury of snobbery.
Because at this point, Cruise doesn’t need an Oscar to cement his legacy. But the Oscars might just need him to save theirs.
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