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‘the last of us’ season 2 first look photos: joel and ellie return.

The first images from HBO's Emmy-winning drama series show Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

By James Hibberd

James Hibberd

Writer-at-Large

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Joel and Ellie are back in the first photos for the eagerly anticipated second season of HBO’s The Last of Us .

The photos featuring stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were first revealed during the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront presentation in New York City on Wednesday.

The debut season set a record as HBO’s most-watched first season for any series on the service, plus garnered eight Emmy awards.

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Previously announced new cast includes Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Isabela Merced as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, Ariela Barer as Mel, Tati Gabrielle as Nora, Spencer Lord as Owen, and Danny Ramirez as Manny. Catherine O’Hara also guest stars.

The Last of Us is written and executive produced by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann and is based on the critically acclaimed video game developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation consoles.

Previously, Mazin said online theories about season two based on hints in the first season and the video game are mostly incorrect: “I’ve been monitoring things on the internet a little bit, people are very clever, they like to see where we’re shooting and then they have all these brilliant theories about what it means,” Mazin said on his Scriptnotes podcast. “I wish I could put my arm around each one of them and say, ‘No.’ Most of the theories are incorrect, some of them are halfway correct, some of the conjecture is like 28% correct.”

The story “takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.”

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The Last of Us: 7 things you should know before you watch

Confused by all the hype for HBO's The Last of Us? We got you covered

The Last of Us is the big new HBO series that will be appointment TV on Sunday nights for many, and not just gamers. A front runner for best show of 2023, the series stars Pedro Pascal as Joel, a survivor of the cordyceps fungal pandemic that's ravaged the world. 

Joel's been given an important mission: to bring a child named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the country, and while survival is important — it's far from guaranteed. The show's success, though, is practically assured. Right now, I'd bank on it being more than just one of the best HBO Max shows , but being one of the biggest TV shows of 2023. And it's just what HBO Max needs to continue to be the best streaming service .

Based on the first edition of a series of beloved games of the same name, The Last of Us arrives with a ton of hype and expectation. That said, this isn't an entirely simple situation.

Having seen the first four episodes for my The Last of Us review , I thought I'd break all the important details down in a spoiler-free manner, giving you everything you should know before you watch The Last of Us online , without anything you should not.

The Last of Us is about grief, zombie-like infecteds and tribalism

The Last of Us centers on Joel, a man with a past that will likely haunt him forever. We see that past early on in the series, and it's an emotionally affecting set of moments. His life is first ruined by how mankind reacts to a fungal pandemic that quickly unravels society.

Once The Last of Us flash-forwards to 2023 (hey, that year sounds familiar), we see that the world is littered with dangers. Those threats are not limited to the various kinds of zombie-esque infected people who attack without warning.

The Last of Us, similar to other zombie properties such as The Walking Dead, focuses on the inter-human troubles that have resulted in the chaos that followed. There are three factions to be aware of. FEDRA are the feds, the Fireflies are a resistance movement and then there's an unnamed group based out of Kansas city that runs on ruthless tactics.

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Joel isn't exactly a part of any of these groups, and The Last of Us explores what it's like to live in the gray area during tough times.

You shouldn't play The Last of Us game first

Gamers who played The Last of Us Part I have been excited for the series adaptation for a while, but don't let that make you think you should play it immediately. To be honest, I believe The Last of Us show will be better if you go in without that experience, which is why I'm writing this explainer in a spoiler-free manner. 

Sometimes, people want to read the book a movie or show is based on before they watch the series. And with The Last of Us, I am going to be frank: the game takes too long to finish for you to start now before you watch the series.

Also, the ending of the game — which is something they will definitely not change, from what I'm hearing from sources familiar with the series — is the kind of thing that you'll want to experience sans spoilers. 

The Last of Us' cast is superb

As noted above, Pedro Pascal leads up The Last of Us' cast as Joel, a man who is primarily trying to find his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), a former soldier who's missing in the pandemic-ravaged wasteland. Pascal delivers in this role, perfectly assuming the voice (though not the beard) of the character originally voiced by Troy Baker in the game. Pascal, finally without his Mandalorian helmet on, is able to deliver a whole lot of emotion in his expressions.

Bella Ramsey plays Ellie, a 14-year-old orphan whose life and maturity has forever been warped by growing up in this post-apocalyptic version of our reality. Constantly veering into anger, Ellie is processing a lot. She's the important cargo that Joel has to transport, though, because of how she may be important to saving humanity.

Anna Torv (Fringe) is unrecognizable as Tess, a survivor who is in a relationship with Joel. She brings a grizzled humor and honesty to the series. Then, you've got Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) and Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus) as survivalists living in isolation, and for as much as I want to praise their work, their story should go unspoiled.

Joining them are Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) and Storm Reid (Euphoria), whose resumes suggest they'll be perfect additions to the series.

The Last of Us is different from the game 

I'm a nerd, so I say the following out of kindness and respect. To all my fellow nerds who loved The Last of Us game, get ready for something that's different. We, the people who know about lore and backstories, have a bad reputation for thinking adaptations shouldn't differ from the source material.

The Last of Us the show doesn't take place in the same year, it doesn't use spores to infect humans and it changes a whole character arc that was woefully under-written in the game. The changes, often upgrades, come early with a brand-new scene and what I'd call an extended introduction. Both are for the better. 

HBO's made a show out of The Last of Us that is better for its wider appeal. The storytelling is stronger, and I thank the show's co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for it.

The Last of Us is a great show — not just a good video game show

The best thing I can say about HBO's The Last of Us is that it's so good I don't even think about it as a "video game show." That category or definition is a red flag that's almost existed to tell audiences to lower their expectations. 

Remember films such as Uncharted? That Resident Evil series that got a mixed reception before Netflix canceled it after one season? The Sonic movies that are basically good enough?

I'm positive that audiences unfamiliar with The Last of Us will seen as a great series by those who are completely new to it. The series frames itself in a wider-scale than the series, and feels like a great HBO series.

Non-gamers won't watch The Last of Us and feel like they're missing references or watching some lower form of art. They'll simply be entertained. Especially by the traditional horror elements in episode 1.

The Last of Us comes from the creator of one of the best HBO shows in years

Want proof that The Last of Us is good TV? Well, the last show from The Last of Us (the show)'s co-creator and co-executive producer Craig Mazin is the creator and showrunner of one of the best HBO shows ever: Chernobyl.

I wrote about Chernobyl as the one show to watch before The Last of Us because it shows how Mazin knows how to tell personal stories of grief during a larger conflict. In that series, we meet the (mostly real) people whose lives were tragically affected by the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Chernobyl is a series that may have gone under your radar, but once HBO announced Mazin was co-running The Last of Us, many knew the show was safe based on Chernobyl.

The Last of Us season 1 is just the beginning

Get ready for The Last of Us to be HBO's new big thing. For those unfamiliar with the games, there are currently two titles in the series. And it looks like each season of the show may mirror one game of the series.

Mazin explained how season 1 matches The Last of Us Part 1 when he told Collider "I write to endings. Endings are everything to me. I don’t know how to write, if I don’t know how it ends. And also, if the show doesn’t have an ending, it means nothing ultimately is truly purposeful. All the stakes become empty because, if the network renews you, everything’s fine, and I don’t know how to do that. I don’t mind watching those shows. I like watching those shows. I just can’t write them. So, I have the benefit of the first game, which we have encompassed with this season, which has a real beginning and middle and end."

Druckmann added "Yeah, I remember, early on, I asked Craig and HBO, 'How many episodes does this season need to be' And the answer was, 'As many as the story requires, and no more.' And likewise, that would be our approach for future seasons to say, 'Okay, this will be as many seasons as required to reach that ending, and no more.'"

So, with two The Last of Us games out, and a third likely (but not confirmed), we'd expect The Last of Us to be a three-season series.

Next: Also read about how 'The Last of Us' is the best video game adaptation ever .

Henry is a managing editor at Tom’s Guide covering streaming media, laptops and all things Apple, reviewing devices and services for the past seven years. Prior to joining Tom's Guide, he reviewed software and hardware for TechRadar Pro, and interviewed artists for Patek Philippe International Magazine. He's also covered the wild world of professional wrestling for Cageside Seats, interviewing athletes and other industry veterans.

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HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ Is an Astounding Survival Story — and a Major Moment in TV

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Whether you’re sifting through advance reviews or reading this only after all nine episodes have aired, by now, dear reader, you’ve surely heard a number of superlatives tied to HBO ‘s “ The Last of Us .” Someone is bound to have labeled it the “best video game adaptation ever made,” especially after the aptly snooty New Yorker story that preceded the program’s release. Another critic or influencer or what not has likely ranked it among the “best zombie shows,” or at least a timely successor to “The Walking Dead,” which just ended a few months ago. Still a different writer taking a broader view on “The Last of Us” may have called it the “best distillation of pandemic-era living,” if they hadn’t already bestowed the honorific on “Station Eleven.”

To be clear, I wouldn’t dispute any of these claims at face value. The new drama is better than every video game adaptation that comes to mind (sorry “Resident Evil”), and it is a top-tier, often terrifying zombie adventure (sorry again “Resident Evil”). It’s also attuned to the present, outlining and exploring fears related to life with COVID-19 in ways unmistakable to anyone who’s been conscious the last few years. But to relegate “The Last of Us” to any predetermined genre, any preset box, or any fixed period of time is to do a disservice to the weighty and widely applicable themes wrestled with throughout. Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin ‘s series, faithfully adapted from the former’s acclaimed video game, is about survival, humanity, and life’s meaning in the fullest possible terms. That it can hone its sweeping statements into riveting personal stories only makes its impact more palpable and the viewing experience more poignant.

…and challenging. “The Last of Us” is bound to put off a sizable portion of viewers, simply because the questions it poses are difficult and the answers given are honest. Seeing its reception will tell us a lot about where audiences stand in 2023, since entertainment of this gravity isn’t often embraced by as many people as the scale of this production demands. (The first season reportedly cost around $100 million.) But it also deserves to be heard, seen, and held onto, just as it deserves any laurels coming its way. “The Last of Us” isn’t about how to survive, but why we survive — each of us and all of us — and how it evolves that conversation makes any accompanying anguish worth enduring.

It’s also, quite simply, about Joel and Ellie. Our protagonists take a bit of time to come together in the 81-minute premiere, and both of their backstories are best appreciated how and when Mazin and Druckmann decide to share them. But what can be said about Joel is simple: The former contractor (played by “Mandalorian” star Pedro Pascal ) has become a lethal, hardened version of his old self. Life after the outbreak — when a mutating fungus spread rapidly across the world’s population, taking control of its host and turning people into braindead predators — has numbed Joel into a self-centered loner. His graying hair, curt communication, and scar on his head hint at what he went through in the 20 years since civilization as we know it ended. So does the casual manner with which he wields a gun. Joel takes on various jobs to protect himself or those closest to him, but spends his nights with a bottle of whatever will knock him out ’til morning.

Then his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) goes missing. After making their way to a quarantine zone in Boston, Tommy soon signs up with a rebel group called the Fireflies and leaves town. Joel doesn’t approve — what’s the point of a rebellion when the whole world is doomed to die? — and he makes sure his “joiner” sibling can send messages back to Boston, proving he’s still alive. One day, those messages stop coming. Days become weeks, so Joel hatches a plan to save his brother, who most assume is already dead.

Enter Ellie. By fate or coincidence, whatever you may believe, Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are paired up out of sheer necessity. He needs help escaping, and she needs to get out of town. Why? Ellie has been bitten, only unlike everyone else on the planet, her exposure to the monsters hasn’t turned her into one. If she can make it to a proper team of scientists, the Fireflies believe they can study her DNA and develop a cure to the fungal infections. Joel doesn’t buy it (again, he’s not exactly the hopeful type), but if transporting Ellie means he can find his brother, so be it. With his partner-in-crime, Tess (Anna Torv, of “Mindhunter” fame), Joel and Ellie try to make their way forward, together: Joel, for his brother, and Ellie, for the rest of us.

Crafted with meticulous attention to detail (and closely following the games’ story), “The Last of Us” subtly distinguishes itself from whatever presumptions viewers may bring to it. The first scene is a flashback to the ’60s, where two scientists on a talk show speculate about the gravest threat to mankind. One guest, picked up mid-statement as the episode fades in, describes an airborne pandemic similar to the one we’re still living with, but the other dismisses that scenario as something manageable. What he’s afraid of is what happens: a fungus previously unable to exist in humans finds a way to do so, and there’s no way for us to fight back — no safe space, no vaccine. Aside from setting the show’s stakes, the opener also discourages the audience from seeing “The Last of Us” as purely a pandemic allegory. It’s more than that. It’s looking beyond how we responded to COVID-19 and asking how we’d respond to a true, all-but-definitive end.

Mazin and Druckmann’s series takes a similarly defiant approach to its characters. “Joel and I are not good people,” Tess tells Ellie early on, and the validity of that statement hangs over them throughout. Sometimes our heroes fit TV’s traditional mold, making it easy to tag along as they pursue the greater good. In other moments, they fall short of those standards, into darker, morally dubious territory. (Thankfully, though, the show never shifts into full-on antihero mode). Episode 3 is an all-time great: a semi-standalone entry constructed specifically to buck expectations, but still direct, sincere, and critical to informing Joel and Ellie’s journey. Episode 5 may be even better: rich, complex, thrilling — it’s the whole package. More pseudo-one-off characters emerge as the season unfolds, and each leaves their mark not only with how they affect our leads, but with how their lives refuse to fit into neat little norms.

Much like the games challenged players to embrace difficult perspectives or unwanted tasks, “The Last of Us” challenges how we watch horror, if not action/adventure stories in general — and it does so with particular brutality. A TV show’s risk:reward ratio hasn’t been this steep since “The Leftovers,” another spin on the post-apocalyptic drama that imposes plenty of emotional turmoil before paying off with an incomparable blend of creativity and catharsis. “The Last of Us” isn’t as wild; there’s no sudden departure to The Purgatory Hotel. But it is comparably moving, ambitious, and exacting. Pascal and Ramsey are outstanding, as are Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett in supporting roles. While screeners were largely unfinished — visual effects, sound mixing, and more were yet to be completed for a majority of the nine episodes — the pace, scope, and compositions are all impressive already. In case it’s not clear from the previous 1200 words, there is a lot to be said about and for “The Last of Us,” most of which is best discussed after everyone has had a chance to watch. So let me just leave you with this, dear reader: If you’re up for the challenge, “The Last of Us” is, too.

In time, it may not be the “best [insert qualifier here].” It may just be the best.

“The Last of Us” premieres Sunday, January 15 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. New episodes of the nine-part first season will be released weekly.

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SEASON 1 AVAILABLE NOW | RENEWED FOR SEASON 2 | 2023 EMMY NOMINEE

The last of us, 1 season | 9 episodes | tv-ma.

After a global pandemic destroys civilization, a hardened survivor takes charge of a 14-year-old girl who may be humanity’s last hope.

Pedro Pascal ( The Mandalorian, Wonder Woman 1984 ) and Bella Ramsey (HBO’s  His Dark Materials   and  Game of Thrones ) star as Joel and Ellie. Gabriel Luna ( True Detective )  as Joel’s younger brother and former soldier, Tommy; Merle Dandridge ( The Last of Us  video games,  The Flight Attendant ) as resistance leader Marlene; and Anna Torv ( Fringe)  as Tess, a smuggler and fellow hardened survivor.

The series guest stars Nico Parker ( The Third Day ) as Sarah, Joel’s 14-year old daughter; Murray Bartlett ( The White Lotus )  and Nick Offerman ( Parks and Recreation)  as Frank and Bill, two post-pandemic survivalists living alone in their own isolated town; Storm Reid ( Euphoria ) as Riley, an orphan in Boston; and Jeffrey Pierce ( The Last of Us  video games) as Perry, a rebel in a quarantine zone. Lamar Johnson guest stars as Henry and Keivonn Woodard as Sam, brothers in Kansas City hiding from a revolutionary movement seeking vengeance. Graham Greene guest stars as Marlon and Elaine Miles as Florence, a married couple surviving alone in the wilderness of post-apocalyptic Wyoming. 

Written and executive produced by Craig Mazin (HBO’s  Chernobyl ) and Neil Druckmann, of  The Last of Us  and  Uncharted  video game franchises.

Carolyn Strauss (HBO’s  Chernobyl   and  Game of Thrones ) serves as executive producer, along with Evan Wells from the original game’s developer, Naughty Dog, and PlayStation Productions’ Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan.

Official Playlist

Save who you can save. Listen to music from and inspired by The Last of Us.

Watch the First Episode for Free

Start from the beginning of the series and watch the first episode of The Last of Us for free.

Featured Characters

Inside the Episode

It's All Here

1 . When You're Lost in the Darkness

Twenty years after a fungal outbreak ravages the planet, survivors Joel and Tess are tasked with a mission that could change everything.

2 . Infected

After escaping the QZ, Joel and Tess clash over Ellie’s fate while navigating the ruins of a long-abandoned Boston.

3 . Long, Long Time

When a stranger approaches his compound, survivalist Bill forges an unlikely connection. Later, Joel and Ellie seek Bill's guidance.

4 . Please Hold to My Hand

After abandoning their truck in Kansas City, Joel and Ellie attempt to escape without drawing the attention of a vindictive rebel leader.

5 . Endure and Survive

While attempting to evade the rebels, Joel and Ellie cross paths with the most wanted man in Kansas City. Kathleen continues her hunt.

After ignoring the advice of locals, Joel and Ellie descend deeper into dangerous territory in search of the Fireflies -- and Tommy.

7 . Left Behind

As Joel fights to survive, Ellie looks back on the night that changed everything.

8 . When We Are in Need

Ellie crosses paths with a vengeful group of survivors -- and draws the attention of its leader. A weakened Joel faces a new threat.

9 . Look for the Light

A pregnant Anna places her trust in a lifelong friend. Later, Joel and Ellie near the end of their journey.

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The Last of Us

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Neil Druckmann

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Pedro Pascal

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Tom Cruise’s Historical War Epic Remains Controversial — and Underrated

The Last Samurai may be a product of its time, but it was also a step forward for representation.

Discussions of The Last Samurai often focus on the obvious incongruity of a movie where Tom Cruise dons samurai armor to become the steward of traditional Japanese culture. The picture of Cruise’s bearded, American-Jesus-like face, writ large on a movie poster under the word “samurai,” was more a symbol of Hollywood tradition when the film appeared in theaters on December 5, 2003. Yes, this is a white-savior narrative — Cruise’s cosplaying can’t disguise it — but the first face onscreen is Ken Watanabe, who received an Oscar nomination for his role as Katsumoto, the samurai leader. What the actors represent offscreen, culturally, is the reciprocal of their characters and the film’s central conflict between tradition and modernization.

The Last Samurai follows Cruise’s character, Captain Nathan Algren, a guilt-ridden, mercenary veteran of the American Indian Wars who enters Japan to train the Emperor’s army so they can quell a samurai revolt. Set early in the Meiji era, when Japan opened to the West after 200-plus years of isolationism, the film pits Katsumoto and the country’s old, sword-wielding, feudal ways against new American technologies like the Winchester rifle and the dreaded howitzer. That these are weapons is almost incidental to the plot; the old and new are vying for dominion.

In the opening scene, Katsumoto realizes something’s amiss when his idyllic mountain meditation is interrupted by a vision of a white tiger. This is a premonition of Algren, who inhabits a more industrial milieu when we meet him at a San Francisco trade show. There, “railroads, cannons, and Western clothing,” as Emperor Meiji (Shichinosuke Nakamura) later puts it, are ready to be exported to Japan. Trotted onstage with brass fanfare as a sham war hero, Algren raises his rifle in a drunken stupor and tells the audience, “My thanks on behalf of those who died in the name of better mechanical amusements and commercial opportunities.”

These words, a eulogy for the innocent Cheyenne village he helped massacre, could apply equally to Katsumoto’s samurai generation as it rides in through the mists of time, clashing with contemporary, mechanized forces on the battlefield in Japan. Even before that, Timothy Spall’s British narrator notes how “the ancient and the modern are at war” for the country’s soul.

In telling the story of Japan’s Westernization (really, its Americanization, transposed from post-World War II in a turn-of-the-millennium historical epic), director Edward Zwick relies on cinematic convention. He even repeats a scene from his own Civil War movie, Glory , where the commanding officer in dark blue deliberately rattles the non-white soldier-in-training to prove he’s not ready to hit a target under pressure. At the same time, the Japanese actors who surround Cruise in prominent roles show they’re more than capable of holding their own against the international movie star.

Cruise may be the headliner, but Watanabe is the movie’s soul.

Hiroyuki Sanada plays Katusmoto’s second-in-command, Ujio, and like Watanabe, he’s another actor who’s remained in the limelight (though perhaps not enough so ) 20 years after The Last Samurai . By introducing global audiences to such talents, the film arguably did more to move the needle, representation-wise, than other 2003 releases like Lost in Translation and Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (both set in Japan, but with fewer top-billed Japanese names).

In this way, The Last Samurai managed to plant one foot in the future despite being stuck in the Eurocentric past, with Zwick and co-screenwriters John Logan and Marshall Herskovitz framing the narrative. Even Algren’s love interest, Taka (the mononymous Koyuki, fresh off Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse ), isn’t thrilled about playing house with the unwashed foreigner who killed her husband.

In the third act, Cruise predictably wears his plot armor as the movie goes full Braveheart (with the same cinematographer, John Toll). These internal tensions somewhat reflect the story’s underlying concern with the double-edged sword of progress. If nothing else, The Last Samurai was, as Watanabe alluded in The Guardian last year, a crossroads away from the kind of offensive yellowface caricatures seen in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

“Before The Last Samurai ,” Watanabe said, “there was this stereotype of Asian people with glasses, bucked teeth and a camera. It was stupid, but after [ The Last Samurai ] came out, Hollywood tried to be more authentic when it came to Asian stories.”

While not above reproach, The Last Samurai was a landmark in more authentic Hollywood representation.

The film is loosely based on real Japanese history, with Katsumoto standing in for Saigo Takamori (1828–1877), who led the Satsuma Rebellion and has been called the “last true samurai.” Starting the action in 1876 aligns it with America’s centennial as it reconfigures around Algren, who’s only out for capitalist gain until he sees the beauty of the cultural paradigm he’s worked to obliterate. That’s what The Last Samurai is really about, but it’s easy to lose sight of its broader theme when the movie is so very specific about the story it’s telling (and who’s telling it).

Katsumoto mourns the loss of traditions, something Cruise and other real-life proponents of the theatrical experience might find relatable now more than ever. These days, The Last Samurai’s widescreen visuals are relegated to your typical streaming service, Paramount+. Before it landed there, the film’s supporting cast helped prime the Academy Awards for homegrown Asian films like Parasite and Japan’s own Drive My Car . Nothing can stop progress.

TOM CRUISE is a global cultural icon who has made an immeasurable impact on cinema by creating some of the most memorable characters of all time. Having achieved extraordinary success as an actor, producer and philanthropist in a career spanning over three decades, Cruise is a three-time Oscar® nominee and three-time Golden Globe Award® winner whose films have earned over $10 billion in worldwide box office—an incomparable accomplishment. Eighteen of Cruise’s films have grossed over $100 million domestically, and a record 23 have made more than $200 million globally. His latest film, Mission: Impossible – Fallout has made over $775 million worldwide becoming Cruise’s most successful film to date.

Cruise has starred in numerous legendary films such as Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, Risky Business, Minority Report, Interview with the Vampire, A Few Good Men, The Firm, Rain Man, Collateral, The Last Samurai, Edge of Tomorrow, The Color of Money and the Mission: Impossible series, among many others. Combined, the Mission: Impossible franchise has brought in over $3.5 billion since Cruise conceived the idea for a film adaptation of the classic television series and produced the first in 1996. He is currently in production on the long-awaited sequel to Top Gun.

A consummate filmmaker involved in all aspects of production, Cruise has proven his versatility with the films and roles he chooses. He has made 43 films, contributing in a producing role on many of them, and collaborated with a remarkable list of celebrated film directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, Neil Jordan, Brian De Palma, Cameron Crowe, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ed Zwick, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, J.J. Abrams, Robert Redford, Brad Bird, Doug Liman and Christopher McQuarrie.

Cruise received Academy Award® nominations for Best Actor for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire. He was a Best Supporting Actor nominee for Magnolia and won Golden Globes (Best Actor) for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire, in addition to a Best Supporting Actor prize for Magnolia. He also received Golden Globe nominations for his roles in Risky Business, A Few Good Men and The Last Samurai. Cruise has earned acting nominations and awards from BAFTA, the Screen Actors Guild, the Chicago Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review.

Cruise’s previous few films include the critically acclaimed American Made, The Mummy, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Oblivion and the suspense thriller Jack Reacher, which earned $218 million worldwide. Prior to that, he made a memorable appearance in Ben Stiller’s comedy smash Tropic Thunder, as the foul-mouthed Hollywood movie mogul Les Grossman. This performance, based on a character Cruise created, earned him praise from critics and audiences as well as his seventh Golden Globe nomination.

Cruise has been honored with tributes ranging from Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year Award to the John Huston Award from the Artists Rights Foundation and the American Cinematheque Award for Distinguished Achievement in Film. In addition to his artistic contributions, Cruise has used his professional success as a vehicle for positive change, becoming an international advocate, activist and philanthropist in the fields of health, education and human rights. He has been honored by the Mentor LA organization for his work on behalf of the children of Los Angeles and around the world. In 2011 Cruise received the Simon Wiesenthal Humanitarian Award and the following year he received the Entertainment Icon Award from the Friars Club for his outstanding accomplishments in the entertainment industry and in the humanities. He is the fourth person to receive this honor after Douglas Fairbanks, Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Empire magazine awarded Cruise its Legend of Our Lifetime Award in 2014. Most recently, Cruise was the first actor to receive The Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation’s Pioneer of the Year Award in 2018.

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• Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
• Oblivion (2013)
• Jack Reacher (2012)
• Rock of Ages (2012)
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
• Knight and Day (2010)
• Valkyrie (2008)
• Tropic Thunder (2008)
• Lions for Lambs (2007)
• Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)
• War of the Worlds (2005)
• Collateral (2004)
• The Last Samurai (2003)
• Minority Report (2002)
• Vanilla Sky (2002)
• Mission: Impossible 2 (2001)
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
• Magnolia (1999)
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• Mission: Impossible (1996)
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Was The Last Samurai Tom Cruise’s last great movie?

Twenty years ago, the ‘mission: impossible’ frontman did a lot more than just shoot people and jump off tall buildings. today, ‘the last samurai’ marks one of the actor’s final truly ambitious starring roles. as the film celebrates its 20th birthday, chris edwards speaks to director edward zwick about its place in cruise’s legacy and the stunt that nearly killed his leading man, article bookmarked.

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A sk Steven Spielberg who his favourite superhero is and he’ll probably say Tom Cruise . Last year, the filmmaker credited the actor for “saving Hollywood’s ass” with Top Gun: Maverick , thanks to its sky-high box office numbers on the back of the pandemic . That Cruise should be the literal saviour of cinema seems fitting, given that he’s now the undisputed king of action blockbusters . And yet, for all his recent efforts and cinema-saving success, he doesn’t have a major personal award to show for it. In fact, it’s been years since the actor gave a genuinely Oscar-worthy performance. Twenty of them, to be exact.

December 2003 saw the release of director Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai , a sweeping epic charting the end of Meiji-era Japan and the extinction of a noble band of warriors. Teeming with peaceful temples, opulent courtrooms and pensive shots of luscious nature (although it was mostly filmed in New Zealand, not Japan), the film didn’t exactly feel like your typical Cruise blockbuster from the offset. But it ended up becoming the perfect vehicle to showcase both his acting ability and superhuman work ethic.

“Tom’s energy was daunting and inspiring,” Zwick says today, speaking from his home in California. “We shot for 120 days on three continents. He was in practically every scene and never did I see even the slightest flagging of enthusiasm or a lowering of the high bar he sets for himself. That kind of attitude from the number one on the call sheet is incalculable. It animates everyone, cast and crew alike, and creates an on-set culture that carries the film through some very long, tough days and nights.”

In the film, Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a former US Army captain who is hired by the Emperor of Japan to train the country’s first army in the ways of westernised combat (aka guns), to quash an uprising from the last remaining samurai. However, after being captured in battle by the samurai and forced to live in their peaceful mountain village, Algren becomes accustomed to their way of life. He then decides to join their rebellion, after realising that the imperialists are the real enemy after all.

The Last Samurai was nominated for four Oscars at the February 2004 ceremony – Best Supporting Actor (Ken Watanabe), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound Mixing – but went home empty-handed. Cruise, who also produced, didn’t even get a sniff, which is perhaps unsurprising given he was playing a fairly generic hero role. But it was still a thoughtful and nuanced performance, the sort not typically required for blockbusters like Mission: Impossible, Edge of Tomorrow , or any and all aviation-based films featuring sweaty, shirtless ball-tossing.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to make an epic,” Cruise said during the film’s press tour back in 2003, after being asked why he decided to take on the project. He also cited his pre-existing fascination with the samurai and their culture. “That’s how I aspire to live my life, with integrity, compassion, honour, loyalty. Those are things I think about and that mean something to me. But in making the picture, I got to really get inside a different culture, one I’m absolutely fascinated by.”

It was essentially a passion project for Cruise, who hasn’t made a film like it since. He did deliver a surprising turn as an assassin in Michael Mann’s sinister 2004 thriller Collateral – arguably his last vaguely interesting role – but it certainly wasn’t the kind of part that could define a career like The Last Samurai looked set to do.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s just hard for an actor to give a dimensional, complex performance when he’s playing a comic book hero

Though decidedly in blockbuster mode, Cruise’s performance in the film perfectly captures the conflict in Algren, a man who previously fought against the Native Americans and subsequently drinks to erase the memory of his atrocities. As he begins to fall in love with the samurai way of life – as well as the widow of a man he honourably killed with a stick in combat – he gains an even deeper understanding of the suffering his own people have inflicted. By the time he’s had some thoroughly enjoyable conversations with chief warrior Katsumoto (Watanabe), and suits up in objectively cool samurai armour, you don’t just understand why he wants to switch sides, you want to join him.

Zwick was impressed by Cruise’s acting skills, but he mentions one particular moment during filming that left a lasting impression. “There’s an important scene toward the end of the film on the eve of the samurai’s final battle,” the director tells me . “He was to say goodbye to Higen, the son of the man he killed, whom he befriended over the course of his stay in the village. I felt that shooting at magic hour would lend a sombre tone. That meant having only one take of a very emotional moment – with multiple cameras – in Japanese! It’s one of his finest moments in the movie. I’m sure had I asked him to do it while standing on his head, he would have done that, too.”

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Over the course of the film, Cruise learned to speak Japanese, mastered their style of swordsmanship (kenjutsu), and, of course, performed all of his own stunts. As ever, his commitment to the role and project as a whole was immense.

As for the actor’s creative input, Zwick adds: “He understands a director’s issues as well as his own and knows how to articulate those aspects of his character that might be worthy of examination. What made it easy was that his thoughts were always in the context of the movie as a whole, rather than the kind of tunnel vision some actors indulge in.”

Cruise even put his neck on the line for the film. Literally. While shooting a battle scene, in which he and co-star Hiroyuki Sanada were meant to ride towards each other on animatronic horses, a malfunction caused them to almost collide and Sanada came within an inch of decapitating the lead star with his sword. “Tom’s neck was right in front of me and I tried to stop swinging my sword, but it was hard to control with one hand,” Sanada told reporters through a translator while promoting the film in Taipei, Taiwan. “The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom’s head would fly off.”

It’s widely acknowledged that the Academy Awards like actors to suffer in order to win an Oscar – crawling into the carcass of a frozen horse for The Revenant finally did the trick for Leonardo DiCaprio, after all – and what could typify that more than almost losing your head?

Aside from an apparent bias against blockbusters, there’s another likely reason why Cruise didn’t receive an Oscar nod for The Last Samurai : when the film was first released, it immediately prompted questions about its depiction of Japanese culture. It was accused of historical inaccuracies and the story was deemed by some to be a prime example of white saviourism.

But the criticism wasn’t completely justified. Cruise’s character is actually based on a real person: a French soldier named Jules Brunet, who arrived in Japan in 1867 to train the Tokugawa shogunate in modern weapons and tactics. Even Watanabe’s chief warrior is steeped in a real piece of history, with the character largely inspired by Saigo Takamori, the leader of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion.

In any case, The Last Samurai does not purport to be a biopic, and is clearly meant to be watched as a piece of fiction. In 2004, Zwick told The Independent that he intended to romanticise the samurai, who were nowhere near as friendly in real life. “It was an aristocratic culture that existed on the backs of the peasants,” the director said. “It was sometimes quite brutal and there were real licenses that I took, fully aware of what I was giving in exchange for what I was getting.”

In truth, Zwick ensured that the samurai were the real stars of the film, which is a genuine rarity for a blockbuster fronted by someone basically as famous as God. Instead of fixating on star power, action or special effects, The Last Samurai focused on character development, allowing Cruise to tap back into the Oscar-worthy skillset that previously earned him acting nominations for Rain Man , Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia .

And it turned out to be a master stroke. Critically, the film received mostly positive reviews, with Roger Ebert writing that it is “beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, [and] an uncommonly thoughtful epic”. The Hollywood Reporter , meanwhile, heavily praised Cruise for “underplaying his role, letting his character’s deeds speak for him and permitting intimacies not usually associated with epic moviemaking.” Financially, however, the film actually performed better in Japan than it did in the US, which could perhaps be a reason why we haven’t seen a similar Cruise epic since.

Understandably, Zwick bemoans the box office demands of modern blockbusters and how, as a result, it’s become harder for actors to deliver the sort of thoughtful performances that can really elevate a story. “I know there are lots of reasons, mostly economic, that the major studios are reluctant to take chances on the kind of adult, dramatic films – at scale – that I’ve been lucky enough to make,” he says. ”It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s just hard for an actor to give a dimensional, complex performance when he’s playing a comic book hero. [In those films] the star of the movie is the special effects.”

Mercifully, Cruise is yet to delve into a superhero universe, but it’s possible that the demands of major studios and audiences may well prevent him from dropping another acting masterclass in a mainstream blockbuster – unless he ends up surprising us when he finally leaves Earth’s orbit for that untitled SpaceX film. Yes, Cruise may be the saviour of cinema (and Spielberg’s hero), but to become it, he’s had to take a 20-year break from true protagonist perfection.

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Critic’s Notebook

What Becomes a Star Most? For Tom Cruise, It’s Control.

Sheer force of will is now part of his potent mix of athleticism and charisma. That combination goes a long way to explain why “Top Gun: Maverick” is a hit.

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By Calum Marsh

“In order to do my job,” Ben Stiller, as Tom Cruise’s stunt double Tom Crooze, muses in a video made for the 2000 MTV Movie Awards, “I have to ask myself: Who is Tom Cruise? What is Tom Cruise? Why is Tom … Cruise?”

This is a tricky line of questioning.

Onscreen, Cruise is unmistakably our biggest movie star, as the New York Times reporter Nicole Sperling recently explained — the last true exponent of a century-old studio system that has been steadily eroded by the rising forces of franchise filmmaking and streaming. His powerful charisma and daredevil stunt work have combined, yet again, in his latest hit, “Top Gun: Maverick,” bringing it past the $1 billion mark.

Offscreen, Cruise is elusive. He is the frequent public mouthpiece for a cryptic, controversial religion that seems harder to understand the more he talks about it . He is intensely secretive about the details of his private life. Even when he makes the occasional effort to seem like an ordinary, relatable guy, he winds up sounding like an A.I. approximation of one. Asked by Moviebill magazine to describe his most memorable filmgoing experience, Cruise couldn’t name one . (“I love movies,” he said, very normally.) When asked which team he was rooting for at a Giants-Dodgers game he attended last fall , he replied, “I’m a fan of baseball.”

It can be hard to reconcile these disparate sides. So it is worth considering the question: Who is Tom Cruise?

Much of his early success as an actor, through the ’80s and ’90s, was predicated on a certain down-to-earth charm. The sexed-up, troublemaking young Cruise of “Risky Business”; the guileless, endearingly naïve Cruise of “Cocktail”; and the tenacious, morally principled Cruise of “Jerry Maguire” each relied on his ability to convincingly embody the American Everyman, the sympathetic heartthrob the audience could desire or root for. Around the turn of the century, he complicated that image by appearing in more challenging, less accessible films, like “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia.” Auteurs like Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson helped showcase Cruise as a serious actor, capable of delivering subtle, nuanced performances.

He has moved away from romance, drama and the independent art house. Over the last decade-plus, he has become more firmly entrenched in the action-adventure genre, perfecting the summer tentpole blockbuster. His performances tend to emphasize his easy charisma and powerful athleticism, but Cruise still brings to these roles a touch of the same delicate charm and actorly nuance of his dramatic fare. You see it in the breezy, naturalistic chemistry he shares with Jennifer Connelly in “Maverick,” and in the jaded, world-weary intensity he has carried through the last couple of “Mission: Impossible” sequels. My favorite recent Cruise performance was from the underrated “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014), in which he plays a cowardly, sniveling politician forced to relive the same deadly battle over and over again — a playful sci-fi take on “Groundhog Day” that found the actor playing against type to delightful effect.

But that’s just part of the story. One of the defining features of the last decade of his career is a level of quality control for which he himself is chiefly responsible. It’s not that he is incapable of making a bad movie: “The Mummy” (2017), Universal’s failed attempt to kick off an entire “Dark Universe” of big-budget creature features, made that clear. But recent Cruise films have in common a degree of ambition and enthusiasm that is rare in today’s blockbuster landscape, and when everything works, that effort pays off enormously. You will not see Cruise phoning in a performance. You get the sense that he treats every movie he does these days as if it were the most important one he has ever done.

The results of this commitment have a way of feeling almost miraculous. How could anyone have expected “Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel to a 35-year-old action movie with a rather cool critical reputation, to be not only far superior to the original film, but also one of the finest action films in many years? But then you read about Cruise’s dogged insistence on keeping everything as real as possible — demanding a minimum of computer-generated effects, forcing himself through arduous flight training, encouraging his co-stars to bear G-force speeds until they literally threw up. Some of Cruise’s co-stars over the years have characterized his obsessiveness as extreme to the point of what sounds like cinematic despotism, and it’s true that it would probably be easier, and cheaper, to do much of this in front of a green screen. But that’s not Cruise. When it comes to this stuff, he cares too much.

“Mission: Impossible” was a slick espionage film, directed by Brian De Palma, based on a TV series from the 1960s. How is it possible that it yielded five sequels, and how is it conceivable that the sequels keep getting better, culminating in “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (2018), which is pretty much an unqualified masterpiece? (The final two installments, “Dead Reckoning Part One” and “Dead Reckoning Part Two,” are due in 2023 and 2024.) Again, the credit should go mainly to Cruise, who, for the sake of our entertainment, will happily climb the world’s tallest building , hold his breath for six and a half minutes , or jump out of an airplane with the cameraman .

But Cruise’s devotion to the movies runs deeper, if that’s possible. It’s a devotion to the Movies with a capital M. As A-list talent flocks to deep-pocketed streamers with blockbuster ambitions, Cruise has remained adamant that he will not make a movie for the likes of Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, refusing to negotiate on the possibility of a V.O.D. premiere for “Maverick” earlier in the pandemic. (“I make movies for the big screen,” he explained.) His interest in preserving that traditional cinematic experience shines through in the colossal scale of the productions themselves, so that when Cruise is looming over you in immense, Imax dimensions, he feels every bit as big as the image. It’s a reminder that so much of what we watch is tailored to the streaming era — a mass of “content” designed to play as well on a phone as on the big screen. For those of us who still care deeply about the cinema and fear for its future, Cruise’s efforts feel invaluable.

It’s also a reminder of why we go to the theater to see Tom Cruise movies — to see Tom Cruise himself. We can still be tempted to the cinema by the names on the marquee, but as franchises have become the dominant force in the business, the persuasive power of those names has declined. The supremacy of proven, bankable intellectual property today over the traditional star system has meant that we are more likely to seek out Spider-Man, Thor and Captain America than Tom Holland, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans; the actor in the cape is more interchangeable than ever. With Cruise movies, that relationship is inverted. Does anyone particularly care about the adventures of Ethan Hunt? (That’s the name of his character in “Mission: Impossible,” in case you forgot.) Hunt is just another name for the man we really care about: Cruise, plain and simple.

Cruise has all of the qualities you want in a movie star and none of the qualities you expect of a human being. As a screen presence, he is singular; as a person, he is inscrutable. But it’s his inscrutability that has allowed him to achieve a sort of clarified, immaculate superstardom, one that exists almost entirely in the movies, uncontaminated by mundane concerns. Cruise the star burns as bright as any of his contemporaries, and far brighter than any who have come up since, in part because he continues to throw more and more of himself into his work and give up less and less of himself everywhere else. Who is he? You have to look to the movies to find out.

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“this is how he wins”: tom cruise’s subtle acting elevates last samurai fight scene, expert reveals.

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Is The Last Samurai Real At All? True Story Explained

Gxk quietly confirms there's a titan in the monsterverse that makes even godzilla look small, bad boys 4 is strangely missing a character the franchise introduced 4 years ago.

• Tom Cruise's physical performance in The Last Samurai is perfectly captured in a battle scene with the master swordsman Ujio.
• Cruise's character in the film, Captain Nathan Algren, goes through a significant moral transformation, grappling with issues of identity, loyalty, and honor.
• The Last Samurai represented a departure from Cruise's typical action-packed roles, requiring him to delve more into the emotional and psychological aspects of his character.

A stuntman explains how one scene in The Last Samurai perfectly captures Tom Cruise's performance. Directed by Edward Zwick, the film follows Cruise as an American soldier who is sent to Japan during the late 19th century to eliminate the last samurai, Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), but after being captured in battle, he begins to embrace the samurai culture and eventually joins them in their fight. The Last Samurai was a big box office success, became the sixth highest-grossing film of 2003, and was nominated for four Academy Awards.

In the latest episode of Corridor Crew 's "Stuntmen React" series, stuntman Gui DaSilva-Greene appeared to react to one scene in The Last Samurai , which perfectly captures Cruise's physical performance.

DaSilva-Greene, who called The Last Samurai one of his favorite movies, reacted to the scene in which Cruise's character battles the master swordsman Ujio (Hiroyuki Sanada). The stuntman went on to explain how the scene perfectly captures Cruise's performance. Read a portion of his commentary below:

He's supposed to be a soldier, so he shows that he's in pain, but then he has to show that he is going to overcome it, so you show the, "Oh that hurt," and then the "I can't show you that hurt though." So it's the same with feeling of anger or emotion and not being allowed to show it. Most people when they cry they, don't want you to see them cry, like they immediately wipe it away. They don't just let the one tear drop like we see in all the movies. It's like, "I'm vunerable," so immediately I'm going show it for a moment, but then I have to get back into my strength, not show that. You hint at it, you don't go full Jackie though. You have to go like quarter Jackie and then pull it away from everybody. Ways that you do it without showing like the facial expression is through body language which we see when he goes for the ribs for the first time, you see that aspect. That's where he pulls our heartstrings here. This is how he wins over everybody, including the audience as this man who is fighting these demons along with having to be a captive and earn the respect of the people around them, and that's like one of the biggest things that I care about when it comes to seeing a fight scene is how does it push us forward in the story or make us care about the character.

The Last Samurai chronicles a real-life Japanese rebellion but fictionalizes several historical events and people. Here's what you need to know.

The Last Samurai Was A Different Type Of Performance For Tom Cruise

The Last Samurai was a departure from typical Tom Cruise movies up until that point. At the time, the actor was (and still is) best known for his association with action-packed franchises like Mission: Impossible and sci-fi films like Minority Report and Vanilla Sky . However, The Last Samurai represented a slight detour in Cruise's career as he took on a more dramatic role in an epic historical drama . While his previous roles focused more on action and stunts, The Last Samurai required Cruise to delve more into the emotional and psychological aspects of his character.

Cruise's character, Captain Nathan Algren, is a disillusioned American soldier grappling with issues involving identity, loyalty, and honor who undergoes a significant moral transformation. Even though The Last Samurai required a slightly different type of performance from Cruise, he approached it with the same level of physical and technical training he applies to his other roles. To play a soldier-turned-samurai, Cruise underwent extensive physical and technical training in sword fighting and the martial arts . Cruise's usual dedication to authenticity, combined with the more dramatic demands of the role, is perfectly captured by Algren's battle with Ujio in The Last Samurai.

Source: Corridor Crew

The Last Samurai

• The Last Samurai (2003)

Tom Cruise Movies List

1. Endless Love

3. The Outsiders

4. Losin' It

5. All the Right Moves

6. Risky Business

9. The Color of Money

10. Cocktail

11. Rain Man

12. Born on the Fourth of July

13. Days of Thunder

14. A Few Good Men

15. The Firm

16. Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

17. Mission: Impossible

18. Jerry Maguire

19. Eyes Wide Shut

20. Magnolia

21. Mission: Impossible II

22. Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures

23. Vanilla Sky

24. Space Station 3D

25. Minority Report

26. Austin Powers in Goldmember

27. The Last Samurai

28. Collateral

29. War of the Worlds

30. Mission: Impossible III

31. Lions for Lambs

32. Valkyrie

33. Tropic Thunder

34. Knight and Day

36. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

More to explore, recently viewed.

Den of Geek

Tom Cruise: The Last Movie Star Who Gets Better with Age

Tom Cruise returns to the skies for Top Gun: Maverick, but his movie star persona has never touched the ground since 1986. In fact, it’s flying higher than ever.

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It’s not exactly subtle. Appearing in even the first teaser of Top Gun: Maverick —released an astonishing three years ago!— Tom Cruise ’s fighter pilot is getting an epic dressing down from the boss. His superior, Radam. Chester “the Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris), is sick and tired of Maverick’s hot shot ways and insubordination. And he’s here to put the younger man in his place. It’s a scene we’ve witnessed many times, including to iconic effect in the original Top Gun from 1986, and yet the Hammer’s critique of his fiftysomething naval officer is sharper here. More pointed. He is getting at something existential about the trajectory of a man’s life.

“You can’t get a promotion,” Harris’ rear admiral sneers, “you won’t retire, and despite your best efforts, you refuse to die. You should be at least a two-star admiral by now… or a senator. Yet here you are, captain . Why is that?” We then cut to Cruise’s slightly more weathered yet remarkably still boyish face, and he simply teases the outline of a familiar smirk.

The sequence, which comes early in the finished Top Gun: Maverick , is obviously meant to clue us into what its title character has been up to for the past 36 years. But it also works as an admission that Maverick and Cruise’s biographies are entwined. Despite the actor once being weary of doing a Top Gun sequel, and dismissing the idea out of hand in a 1990 Playboy interview, Cruise is back in one of his most beloved roles and doing what he’s always done best: fly really fast planes, drive really fast motorcycles, and look quite cool while doing both.

In many respects, this makes Maverick a rarity: a character study on the life of a movie star who for four decades has operated at the very height of American pop culture and entertainment, and who instead of choosing the path that so many other gifted stars of yesteryear—graduating to the rank of esteemed character actor and a cinematic statesman, becoming a Paul Newman or Robert Redford, who were no strangers to playing senators—he remained the guy in the cockpit, doing it better than anyone his junior. In fact, he’s doing it better than when he was in his junior years.

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In this way, it’s interesting that his superiors in Maverick include Harris. The older actor is only 12 years Cruise’s senior and once played globally renowned fighter pilot John Glenn in The Right Stuff (1983). As the years passed, Glenn became a real-life senator, and Harris is now playing an admiral. Similarly, in Cruise’s signature action movie franchise, Mission: Impossible , the star is often reprimanded by IMF Director Alan Hunley, a character played by Alec Baldwin. Also like Cruise, Baldwin came up in the 1980s and starred in his own classic spy thriller, The Hunt for Red October (1990).

Harris and Baldwin both were “promoted” to the role of the proverbial senator. But Cruise? He’s the last and perhaps only living proof that movie star charisma can endure. It can even get better with age.

Once a Different Type of Movie Star

Before Top Gun was released in 1986, the idea of Tom Cruise as the grinning action star did not exist. After Top Gun , Cruise still at least somewhat resisted being placed only in that box. To be sure, he’d already achieved a certain level celebrity before then by appearing in 1983’s surprise hit Risky Business . But while largely remembered today for the innocuous image of Cruise playing a teenager eager to dance to Bob Seger in his underwear, that picture actually remains a moody and surreal thriller about a young kid who is out of his depth when he’s seduced by a call girl into turning the family home into a brothel.

It brought Cruise attention, but it didn’t make him a household name, nor did the similar romantic teen dramas (and one bizarre Ridley Scott fantasy) he made immediately afterward. Top Gun was the inflection point; the picture where Cruise starred in the highest concept Jerry Bruckeheimer and Don Simpson’s hard-partying offices ever came up with in the ‘80s. This blend of fighter jets, postcard sunsets, and well-tanned male bodies went on to become the biggest movie of 1986 too, not to mention the greatest recruitment video the Navy ever had.

As a result, Cruise was a brand, and one as reliable as Coca-Cola. When it came to the biggest hits of his early career— Top Gun , Cocktail (1988), Days of Thunder (1990)—they all followed a pretty familiar formula as outlined by standup comic Rich Hall . Whether he was a fighter pilot or a yuppie mixologist, he was still the same hotshot who needed to be slightly humbled (but never defeated) by the love of a good woman.

Cruise and his agents obviously agreed to all these lucrative box office hits, but even in those heady Reagan years, there was an initial apprehension by Cruise and his team to let the biggest movie star in the world become only that. As a young man, he made a point to star in those guaranteed moneymakers, as well as passion projects by auteurs. He was Paul Newman’s protégé in the Martin Scorsese-directed The Color of Money (1986), and after Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War reverie, Platoon (1986), won Best Picture, Cruise fought to star in Stone’s next film about that nightmare, Born on the Fourth of July (1989). His unexpected casting as Vietnam vet Ron Kovic, who returned from Southeast Asia paralyzed and as an anti-war activist, still remains the best performance in Cruise’s career.

As Cruise’s star status reached its zenith in the 1990s, he continued to try to be both the brand—hence the first Mission: Impossible movie in 1996—and the leading actor who chased auteurs. Stanley Kubrick; Rob Reiner; Neil Jordan; Paul Thomas Anderson; Michael Mann; Cameron Crowe; Steven Spielberg. He worked with all of them in the most prolific period of his career, sometimes in movies that were intended to be blockbusters, such as the sci-fi one-two punch of Minority Report (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005) with Spielberg, or the seminal military courtroom drama A Few Good Men (1992) with Reiner. But, generally speaking, he allowed his star status to get weirdly ambitious projects greenlit and marketed like blockbusters due to his participation.

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And, frankly, even the interesting failures in that category—like Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Kubrick’s arguably unfinished final film that was released after his sudden death and which starred Cruise and Nicole Kidman at the end of their marriage—are more captivating than a lot of the well-oiled star vehicles he was doing concurrently, such as the only bad Mission: Impossible movie, M:I-2 from 2000.

Yet all careers ebb and flow, and the natural order of thing for stars, no matter how bright, is to fade—infamously so in Cruise’s case after his personal life came under heavy scrutiny due to his outspoken (and presumptuous) views about psychotropic medication, his very public courtship of his third wife Katie Holmes (who was 16 years younger), and his general participation in the Church of Scientology.

One year after Cruise gained national derision for jumping on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, Mission: Impossible III (2006) underperformed at the box office, and Paramount made no bones about blaming the actor’s off-screen perception. For a time, the studio even seemed ready to terminate Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character.

This was the point an aging movie star would be expected to recline from that status, accept things will never be as they once were, and take on more character roles like Lions for Lambs (2007), the Robert Redford movie in which Cruise played a senator in a supporting role.

The maverick actor, however, would go on to choose a different path.

A Star Is Reborn

There was a time when Paramount Pictures was entirely done with Cruise as the lead of the Mission: Impossible franchise. After the J.J. Abrams-directed M:I-3 earned substantially less than its predecessor from six years earlier, then-Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone told The Wall Street Journal (via Screen Crush ), “We don’t think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot.” Redstone had Paramount terminate their production deal with Cruise and shutter his office behind the studio’s famous gate. They quite literally pushed the biggest star in the world, who led numerous summer blockbusters for the studio, off the lot.

Typically an event such as this marks the tombstone in a Hollywood lead’s status. It’s the moment where they (and their agent) realize celebrity has waned and it is time for reinvention. But Cruise’s idea of reinvention was not to do a lot more movies like Lions for Lambs ; it ultimately became to do what he had done before… but far better than anyone ever imagined was possible.

Admittedly, the moment of grace and public rehabilitation came from a smaller supporting role, in-keeping with that time he might’ve played a narcissistic motivational speaker in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), except in Tropic Thunder (2008), Cruise’s ability to completely over-commit to a seedy character role was dialed up to 11 in a mainstream comedy where he personified what has long been speculated to be a parody of then-Hollywood power player Scott Rudin (whom Cruise worked with on 1993’s The Firm ). Under pounds of prosthetics and makeup, Cruise looked unrecognizable as Les Grossman, a fictional late 2000s-studio mogul as repugnant as his pun-y name might suggest… and just as entertaining.

The public enthusiasm over Cruise’s Grossman dancing to hip-hop during Tropic Thunder ’s end credits may have been the last of two footholds Cruise had to salvage his stardust. The other was a continued friendship with Abrams, who despite helming the only Mission: Impossible movie to take a bath at the box office came out of the experience smelling like roses to the studio. He even became a golden boy when he reinvented Paramount’s Star Trek franchise in 2009 with the movie that turned it seemingly into a long-running action saga in the Star Wars mold.

It was the success of Tropic Thunder , and Abrams’ wingman-ing, that caused the studio to agree to let Cruise return for M:I-4 … if Cruise also agreed they could cast a new leading man who would be set up to take over the franchise in the following film(s).

If you go back and study the marketing material for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), it’s now amusing how hard Paramount pushed Jeremy Renner as franchise newcomer William Brandt. On the poster, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is intentionally made to look older and weathered for the first time, adorning a hoodie to hide Cruise’s famous black mane of hair. Meanwhile, over his shoulder, stands a crisp and bespoke Renner: a fresh face at the literal right hand. Similarly, almost every trailer concluded with the moment Cruise’s Ethan Hunt pulls a gun on Brandt, and Renner’s new protagonist is able to disarm him and hold Cruise at gunpoint instead. A supposed heir apparent has emerged, or so went the implication. And this one is an Avenger .

Yet something that Paramount’s top brass perhaps did not expect was also emerging in the fourth Mission: Impossible : a middle-aged and chastened Cruise deciding that, with his star status diminished, he’d re-commit to the type of big screen spectacle that made him a household name in the first place. He’d obviously been that guy ever since audiences first got a glimpse of Maverick zooming across a military runway on a motorcycle at sunset in Top Gun . But back then, the motorcycle might’ve been real, and the naval jets definitely were, but Cruise was (almost never) flying in them.

Yet alongside Incredibles director Brad Bird, the middle-aged star now engineered some of the most spectacular stunts ever put to screen in Ghost Protocol , and he did them all. When you see Ethan Hunt pull a proverbial Spider-Man and wallcrawl—and run, and skip—alongside the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, that’s really him doing it. Tobey Maguire used CGI, but Cruise is hanging from a rope as he dangles around a manmade colossus.

Similarly, as an actor previously publicized for doing his own stunts, Cruise used this pivot point in his career to better highlight that fact in long, wide, and dazzling shots that bucked the modern trend of relying on rapid editing. Bird let audiences savor that Cruise is the guy up there. And by the time the actor found his collaborative soulmates in stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood and director Christopher McQuarrie on Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), the whole marketing likewise shifted toward that aspect. Entire posters for M:I-5 were nothing more than photographic evidence that Cruise was the one actor seemingly crazy enough to hang from the side of a plane that’s taking off. Meanwhile Renner’s Brandt was reduced to a true supporting role in that one before not appearing at all in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout .

Top Gun: Maverick Review – Tom Cruise Sticks Landing

The First Mission: Impossible Still Has One of the Greatest Action Set Pieces

The last american movie star.

So, yes, Cruise was able to wrestle control back over the Mission: Impossible movies and genuinely make them better than ever, with each of the last three installments surpassing what came before. But more than that, when given the choice of “retirement” or “promotion,” Cruise like Maverick defied the odds and stayed in the cockpit, achieving feats never before seen in his field despite his advancing age.

The context of this in the larger industry is striking. With the infamous exception of 2017’s The Mummy reboot , the 2010s saw an older Cruise retain a commitment to what is obviously traditional blockbuster storytelling. But it is also incredibly well-crafted, intelligent storytelling executed at the peak of Hollywood resources.

Ever since reclaiming Mission: Impossible and his status, the actor has eschewed the auteur projects he coveted in his youth, but the blockbusters he’s doubled down on have improved: Jack Reacher (2012), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), American Made (2017), the three aforementioned M:I movies, and now Top Gun: Maverick are all exceedingly well-made spectacles in which filmmaking craft is at the highest bleeding edge. The emphasis on sharp writing, much of it done by Oscar-winner McQuarrie, is arguably even higher too, which is why McQuarrie became the first director to helm more than one Mission: Impossible movie, and seems poised to draw a curtain on the franchise with the upcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning two-parter that continues his novel innovation of actually developing Ethan Hunt into a character instead of an archetype.

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In a vacuum, this is impressive. But in contrast with the rest of the industry that is chasing interconnected shared universes in the Marvel Studios vein, and a style that values spectacle generated in a computer (and storytelling that appears to be going in an endless circle), it feels like a life raft. Sometimes the old ways are the best. And while it’s nice that movie stardom is more prolific than ever before with a greater diversity of voices and faces in front of the screen, the entire next generation of “stars” seem obligated to make a Faustian bargain where their success hangs on their likenesses being encased in the plastic uniform of a comic book character.

Conversely, and against all odds, Cruise has maintained his own name as the true brand. Mission: Impossible is technically based on an intellectual property, but you’d be crazier than Hunt if you think its fandom comes from adulation of a 1960s TV show. It’s Cruise’s insistence on maintaining the quality of the writing, the acting, and the stunts which has kept people coming back. Consider that despite the fact he’s pushing 60, Cruise is beloved more than any Hollywood leading man since the days of Douglas Fairbanks for his daredevil antics. It was even while mimicking one of Fairbanks’ between-rooftops leaps in Fallout that Cruise broke an ankle. Nonetheless, they kept filming (the take with his injury is in the finished film) and ultimately incorporated his limp into the movie’s finale.

That style of movie stardom feels like a revenant from the past in the 21st century. That style of stardom felt like a revenant in the late 20th century when Cruise was in his heyday and not actually flying any planes in Top Gun . And yet, as Jennifer Connelly recently attested to us, that’s really him piloting her in a single engine plane in Top Gun: Maverick .

In 2020, Cruise’s intensity came under scrutiny again during the filming of the first forthcoming Dead Reckoning movie. Shooting during the early days of the pandemic—and at a period before there was a vaccine—he apparently was enraged when he saw crew members not practicing social distancing or properly wearing their masks.

“We want the gold standard,” Cruise bellowed. “They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us! Because they believe in us and what we’re doing! I’m on the phone with every fucking studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us [as the example for how] to make their movies.”

Overly harsh? Maybe. Indicative of an inflated hero complex? Most probably. But proof of an ironclad dedication to the art and commerce of moviemaking in the old school Hollywood sense? Absolutely.

Once, in a different era, Cruise starred opposite another movie star who was at a transition point in his career, Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men . In that movie’s classic finale, which was penned by a young Aaron Sorkin, Cruise’s Lt. Daniel Kaffee attempts to get Nicholson’s Col. Nathan R. Jessep to confess culpability in a crime. It’s most famous now for Cruise finally shouting, “I want the truth,” and Nicolson screaming in response, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Yet there’s another gem of a line in this sequence where Nicholson, justifying his hardline tactics, explains, “We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded… you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.”

For about 40 years, Cruise has stood on a wall of his own, and he may very well be the last man up there in 2022. One day, as Harris’ rear admiral suggests in Top Gun 2 , he will have to retire and come on down. Moviegoers will be the poorer for it. But not today. Today, the wall looks taller than ever.

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…