Mission: impossible? The rehabilitation of Tom Cruise

Ruth O’Donnell

Independent Scholar, Glasgow, UK

Received 23 September 2015; Accepted 24 May 2016

The 2015 summer release of Mission: Impossible C Rogue Nation (2015), to favourable

reviews and strong box-office, seemed to coincide with a sea change in the popular

press’s opinion of its star. Headlines that included ‘It’s Time to Start Liking Tom Cruise

Again’ (Ebiri 2015a) and in particular ‘Tom Cruise: The Good Kind of Crazy’ (Crouch 2015)

in The New Yorker signalled a renegotiation of Cruise’s public image. Rather than

distancing Cruise from media flashpoints such as his now infamous appearances on

The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986C2011) and The Today Show (1952Cpresent) in 2005, the

article in The New Yorker attempted a reframing of persona traits considered problematic.

Thus, while his intensity might be considered a liability when showcased in a

discussion about psychiatric medication (The Today Show), it is presented as a necessary

asset in relation to the performance of his own stunts.

Why does this matter? Crouch assumes the necessary conflation of Cruise’s on-screen

and off-screen persona for the audience’s satisfaction and the threatened erosion of the

star’s cultural currency if extra-filmic iterations are not properly managed. This captures

the established discourse within traditional star studies regarding the duality of the image,

the necessary dichotomy between the film texts and all extra-textual representations of

the star in wider celebrity culture. If, as Yvonne Tasker states, stars are ‘complex personas

made up of far more than the texts in which they appear’ (1993, p. 74), at what point do

the transgressions of the off-screen persona destabilise the screen persona? Whilst the site

of the star may be inherently unstable C Judith Mayne argues that ‘inconsistency, change

and fluctuation are characteristic of star images’ (1993, p. 128) C the case of Cruise

indicates the danger of straying too far from the established persona.

Tom Cruise’s screen image, like those of other successful Hollywood actors, features a

unique alignment of characteristics, such as boyish vulnerability juxtaposed with exhibitionist

masculinity. In many ways he is the ideal movie star, as his image, possibly more

than any other in Hollywood today, trades on authenticity and sincerity, the ‘two

qualities greatly prized in stars because they guarantee, respectively, that the star

means what he or she says, and that the star really is what she or he appears to be’

(Dyer 1987, p. 11). Crouch (2015) writes that Cruise ‘exudes an almost oppressive

sincerity, which is at once alluring and repelling, the cause of both adoration and

scorn’. The critical recuperation of Cruise that followed the release of Rogue Nation,

based on a negotiation of this discourse across celebrity culture, indicates quite how

important it was to his star capital.

Much of the rhetoric surrounding Rogue Nation’s promotion focused on Cruise’s setpiece

stunt, in which he was strapped against the fuselage of a 400M military cargo

plane as it took off (and landed C a total of eight times). The narrative reiterated existing

accounts of Cruise: that he participates in all of his own stunts and that he really is the

dare-devil he portrays onscreen. It is supported by writing on popular news sites such as

‘Tom Cruise’s 10 Greatest Movie Stunts, Reviewed by a Stuntman’ (Ebiri 2015b), reposted

in July 2015 prior to the release of Rogue Nation (in the UK, The Metro devoted a full

article to a review of Mission: Impossible stunts) (Looch 2015). In this piece, veteran

stuntman Randy Butcher declared Cruise to have ‘balls of steel’ and ‘a quick study as far

as physical technique was concerned’ (Ebiri 2015b). Another article interviewed Wade

Eastwood, the stunt coordinator on Rogue Nation, who talked about Cruise’s ‘obsession

with authenticity’ and that if he had not become an actor, he would have made a

talented stuntman (Guerrasio 2015).

Often when Cruise has fallen foul of the media, it is in instances where he has failed

to exhibit the traits of sincerity and authenticity that define his established star sign.

Cruise’s act of ‘jumping the couch’ was deemed suspect as much for its deviation from

the star’s previous reticence regarding personal matters as its implied loss of control:

excessive in its affect, it came over as stage-managed. This assertion is supported by

media discourse regarding the authenticity of Cruise and Katie Holmes’ relationship,

scrutinised across celebrity media and found lacking: rumours in the popular press later

circulated around the actor’s ‘wife auditions’ in which various starlets were screen-tested

for the position, before he settled upon Holmes as a bride (Vanity Fair 2012). Conducted

in public, their liaison challenged expectations as to how a relationship between two

celebrities should be performed. As Sean Redmond notes, ‘Because the Cruise/Holmes

relationship lacks the appropriate marks of authenticity C the majority of photos of the

couple together have been made during prearranged photo opportunities … the public

refuses to believe it is anything but a crass promotional device’ (Redmond 2006, p. 32).

The public had been robbed of the ‘private’ moments in which stars are caught by

relentless paparazzi. Such candid photographs represent the desire to look behind the

persona propagated by his films and publicity machine, and scrutinise the ostensibly

‘real’ person.

Indeed, the missteps of the actor’s public appearances during the time in which his

sister Lee-Ann De Vette was his publicist (following the departure of Pat Kingsley, one of

the most influential publicists in Hollywood) were misjudgements about the publicity

machine rather than moments of exposure, of a star caught off-guard. Cruise’s appearance

on Oprah in May 2005 felt contrived: the performance of sincerity that audiences

had come to associate with the star off-screen was highlighted as a performance. The

actor’s appearance on The Today Show the following month, in which Cruise attacked

the psychiatric profession, declaring to host Matt Lauer ‘You don’t know the history of

psychiatry, I do!’, was problematic for different reasons. Conducted in a sphere that the

star was expected to negotiate with skill C and, with Kingsley’s help, had until then

navigated smoothly C this media appearance was too genuine, too disinhibited, exposing

the star in a manner typically caught only by paparazzi intrusion.

This was a hitherto unseen side of Cruise, one which destabilised the performance of

sincerity with which he had come to be associated. Extended media coverage of a public

spat with Brooke Shields over the use of medication in post-partum depression, shored

up by the ‘domineering, overbearing and controlling images of [his] fatherhood circulated

in the media around Suri’s birth’ (Hamad 2010, p. 162) following the arrival of

Cruise’s daughter in April 2006, proved to be irreconcilable with his existing persona.

Disappointing box office takings for Mission: Impossible iii (2006), relative to Mission:

Impossible ii (2000) ($134 million in domestic grosses versus $215 million) pointed

towards the damage Cruise’s transgressions in the larger sphere of celebrity culture

had wrought on his cinematic star capital.

Yet if the damage to Cruise’s popularity was the result of a rupture between the

recognised extra-cinematic presentation of self and an unfamiliar affective revelatory

performance, the subsequent recuperation of his image has been negotiated via an

attempt to integrate traits hitherto deemed unpalatable. As Donna Peberdy states, the

deviation from an established persona ‘can undermine star power to the point that the

actor no longer has the option or ability to return to his earlier normative position.

Instead, the normative identity must be reworked’ (Peberdy 2011, p. 120). Thus, Cruise

comes to embody ‘the good kind of crazy’ (Crouch 2015). What the star is, per se,

remains less important than an appearance of authenticity and his ability to deliver a

convincing performance of sincerity.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19392397.2016.1202661