Tom Cruise: Hollywood’s last lead­ing man

After eight years of devel­op­ment, two years in pro­duc­tion and three release date post­pone­ments, Tom Cruise returned to the big screen at the end of May, repris­ing his icon­ic role as Pete ​“Mav­er­ick” Mitchell in the long-antic­i­pat­ed Top Gun: Mav­er­ick. The film has been over­whelm­ing­ly well-received by both audi­ences and crit­ics alike, mak­ing $740 mil­lion world­wide as of writ­ing, and is on track to sur­pass Marvel’s Doc­tor Strange in the Mul­ti­verse of Mad­ness as the year’s high­est-gross­ing film. 

In the lead-up to the film’s release, much was made of Tom Cruise’s unre­lent­ing com­mit­ment to his per­for­mance, the high stan­dards he set for his co-stars, and ensur­ing movie­go­ers had the finest view­ing expe­ri­ence pos­si­ble. As a licensed pilot, he was deter­mined that the film be as authen­tic and immer­sive as cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble, and the film was ini­tial­ly delayed to enable this. Aside from the usu­al gru­elling work­outs and semi-extreme diets actors often endure in prepa­ra­tion for roles of this ilk; Cruise designed an inten­sive Navy flight train­ing cur­ricu­lum for the actors. The fin­ished prod­uct is stun­ning. Top Gun: Mav­er­ick fea­tures incred­i­ble flight chore­og­ra­phy, a lot of heart, and Cruise is as charis­mat­ic as ever.

Cruise hails from a long line of Hol­ly­wood lead­ing men, from Robert Red­ford and Clint East­wood in the 70s to Den­zel Wash­ing­ton and Brad Pitt through­out the 90s. To be con­sid­ered a ​‘lead­ing man’ in Tin­sel­town, an actor is usu­al­ly an all-rounder – one who man­ages to be hero­ic, fun­ny, and sen­si­tive, like­ly lead­ing with his good looks and brava­do, who over­comes unfath­omable chal­lenges through sto­icism, intel­li­gence and impres­sive fight sequences. Clear­ly Top Gun’s Pete ​‘Mav­er­ick’ Mitchell fits the bill, but across his 40-plus year act­ing career Tom Cruise has seem­ing­ly cho­sen to root his per­son­al mythol­o­gy around the con­cept of the all-Amer­i­can lead­ing man.

Like many of Cruise’s roles, Mav­er­ick is devoid of a moral grey, instead defined by his unwa­ver­ing integri­ty. He strikes that del­i­cate bal­ance of being relat­able enough that you see your­self in him, whilst also under­tak­ing seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble feats of phys­i­cal prowess, unachiev­able to the com­mon man. in wider pop cul­ture, these lead­ing men have unques­tion­ably con­tributed to mould­ing how a gen­er­a­tion per­ceives mas­culin­i­ty, for bet­ter or worse. 

The exploits of icon­ic lead­ing men – from Mel Gibson’s William Wal­lace in Brave­heart to Har­ri­son Ford’s Indi­ana Jones – have giv­en us a rigid def­i­n­i­tion of what it means to be a ​“real” man: being strong and coura­geous; self-reliant; sup­press­ing all emo­tions except for right­eous anger; being divorced from emo­tion­al inti­ma­cy; hav­ing a high tol­er­ance for pain; the list goes on. We can’t deny the real-world impact these char­ac­ters have, with view­ers sub­con­scious­ly emu­lat­ing these very pat­terns and char­ac­ter­is­tics in pur­suit of social accep­tance and iden­ti­ty. US Navy enrol­ment did increase after the first Top Gun movie, demon­strat­ing the allur­ing effect a well-exe­cut­ed lead­ing man can have on an audience. 

Bank­able stars such as Cruise were once cru­cial to the Hol­ly­wood machine, but the world has changed after the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, and film­mak­ing has changed along with it. Today, almost all of Tom Cruise’s con­tem­po­raries can be found work­ing on projects for stream­ing ser­vices or tele­vi­sion. The piv­ot doesn’t appear to be under duress – actors are seem­ing­ly rel­ish­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge them­selves and broad­en their pro­fes­sion­al hori­zons by exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent medi­ums and gen­res, work­ing with more diverse crews, insert­ing their own cre­ative con­trol over the process, and explor­ing the non-tra­di­tion­al routes into filmmaking. 

Cruise is an out­lier who stands firm about the the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence. There were alleged­ly many stream­ing ser­vices eager to sink their teeth into Top Gun: Mav­er­ick but he has been vocal about how he would nev­er allow the film to go straight to stream­ing. His resis­tance might be seen as a refusal to let go of the action genre and sub­con­scious­ly, the ​‘lead­ing man’ arche­type he has shaped. Ear­ly in Top Gun: Mav­er­ick, Ed Harris’s stern Rear Admi­ral Chester ​‘Ham­mer’ Cain point­ed­ly tells Mav­er­ick ​“the future is com­ing, and you’re not in it” – Cruise’s char­ac­ter responds with a con­fi­dent ​“Maybe so, but not today.” A big part of what makes Top Gun: Mav­er­ick so enjoy­able is how nos­tal­gic it makes us feel for char­ac­ters we no longer see as often on-screen. 

An actor like Chris Pratt is pos­si­bly the clos­est exam­ple of a mod­ern-day lead­ing man we have. Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful sit­com career, play­ing Star-Lord in the action-super­hero film Guardians of the Galaxy was the begin­ning of a string of lead­ing roles in block­busters such as Juras­sic World, The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, and The LEGO Movie. Yet Chris Pratt’s own career tra­jec­to­ry as a movie star high­lights how audi­ences’ expec­ta­tions of actors have shift­ed. Per the lead­ing man for­mu­la that has worked for many of his pre­de­ces­sors, Pratt did the entire talk show, mag­a­zine and inter­view cir­cuit, lead­ing with his charm, humour and good looks. For a while it worked, but Chris Pratt has more weath­ered crit­i­cism over his sus­pect­ed reli­gious and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, to the point that fans are peti­tion­ing to have him removed from upcom­ing projects. 

Tom Cruise’s per­son­al life has not been with­out its con­tro­ver­sy, but per­haps audi­ences accept Cruise as he is in part because of his famil­iar­i­ty and tal­ent, and in part because of his deter­mi­na­tion to pre­serve the bar­ri­er between him­self and fol­low­ers, nev­er engag­ing with media or fans speculation. 

It’s pos­si­ble that upcom­ing lead actors who fol­low in his foot­steps do not have the same lux­u­ry. In the past, maybe it was enough for an actor to nail an arche­type of a char­ac­ter and earn respect and ado­ra­tion – but in the age of glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty and increased socio-polit­i­cal aware­ness, many of us (con­scious­ly or sub­con­scious­ly) watch films through a soci­o­log­i­cal lens, and demand a bit more from actors on and off-screen. We respond well to char­ac­ters – and actors, who show nuance – vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and a degree of authen­tic­i­ty that res­onates with our lived experiences. 

Actors such as Tom Hol­land and Tim­o­th­ee Cha­la­met occu­py a sim­i­lar space in today’s Hol­ly­wood to Tom Cruise in the 1980s, but as audi­ences’ tastes and social con­scious­ness have evolved, so has the func­tion of the lead­ing man. Whether an actor is look­ing for char­ac­ters that reject the typ­i­cal lead­ing man (such as Cha­la­met play­ing a drug addict in Beau­ti­ful Boy) or is lean­ing into it (as Tom Hol­land has with Spi­der-Man and Unchar­tered) Hol­ly­wood is increas­ing­ly pre­pared to con­front the ideals that it tra­di­tion­al­ly propagated. 

There is space for nos­tal­gia and sim­ply get­ting lost in the high-octane thrills of Top Gun: Mav­er­ick, but in sun­set­ting the tra­di­tion­al lead­ing man, we make room for a broad­er on-screen rep­re­sen­ta­tion of mas­culin­i­ty that is far more inclu­sive of its audi­ence. Stars such as Steven Yeun, Daniel Kalu­uya and even Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch are chang­ing our per­spec­tive of what a lead­ing man should be, chal­leng­ing ideas of the All-Amer­i­can hero. In recog­nis­ing the pow­er of film to shape our per­cep­tions of our­selves and the world around us, we should strive to cre­ate char­ac­ters who help audi­ences accept them­selves and the com­plex­i­ties of being human, instead of pro­mot­ing this unat­tain­able archetype.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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