The release of “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” marks the latest in a recent string of Tom Cruise success stories. Sure, his personal life has been a bit of a mess and under attack by the tabloid media for years, but, unlike others who have experienced career highs and lows, Cruise has been able to maintain his high A-list movie star status.
Cruise received a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe nomination in 2009 for appearing in five minutes of the Ben Stiller action comedy “Tropic Thunder”. His 2010 film “Knight and Day” with Cameron Diaz wasn’t a box office smash, but it was one of his best comedic turns (and one of the most fun films of the year).
For 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” (directed by “The Incredibles”‘ Brad Bird), Cruise, himself, climbed the World’s Tallest Building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Paramount used the stunt as their main marketing tool for the movie, and it worked as “M:I4” made nearly $700 million worldwide.
The big screen adaptation of the Broadway musical “Rock of Ages” was a flat-out bomb in 2012 and panned by most critics. But Cruise’s wild, fearless performance as rocker Stacee Jaxx was the best thing in the movie, and his image wasn’t harmed one bit by being associated with a disaster. And last year’s “Edge of Tomorrow”, in which Cruise co-starred with Emily Blunt, earned him a Critics Choice Best Actor in an Action Movie nod, a spot on my Top 10 Films of 2014 list, and was #1 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the “Critically Underrated Gems of 2014”.
Now, with “M:I5”, Cruise has taken things up a notch yet again. A recently released video shows that Cruise actually performed the film’s showcase airplane scene (again, Paramount’s key marketing tool). In fact he did the scene 8 TIMES! With positive reviews already pouring in, along with some strong buzz, “Rogue Nation” is a lock to be one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters, which will keep Tom’s career cruising right along.