HomeENGLISHTom Cruise and the Cinematic Pact

Tom Cruise and the Cinematic Pact

Publicado el

by Sarah Díaz-Segan

I went to see Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. I had a good time. I was amazed, I was scared, I wondered why they ruined so many scenes with so many explanations no one asked for. I missed Ilsa Faust. I got emotional. I was amazed again. I ate popcorn. I felt grateful that cinematic art still exists. I concluded that for $31.18, there is nothing bigger and more tactile than a Mission: Impossible in an IMAX theater. And yes, I also left thinking about Tom Cruise.

There’s something embarrassing about defending Tom Cruise. You know this already. You hear the name, and your brain does the three-step: Scientology, couch, center tooth. If you’re generous, you add: stunts. If you’re cruel, you go straight to “short.” But none of that quite accounts for the fact that when he runs (that ridiculous, high-kneed sprint), we root for him. Not ironically, not nostalgically. Actually. Emotionally. Against better judgment.

And the question isn’t just why. The question is why still.

Tom Cruise doesn’t just love movies. He loves making movies, which is different. It’s about labor, repetition, gravity. His career has the narrative arc of someone who misunderstood method acting and never stopped. He wants you to feel the drop, the turn, the pressure of wind on your face as a consequence of budget and obsession. He’s not acting the fall; he’s falling. For real. And because he’s doing it for you, you forgive that he’s also doing it for himself.

Cruise is the last romantic of the industrial era. Not romantic in the emotional sense—he can’t do sex anymore—but in the 19th-century sense: conquest, transcendence, man vs. limit. This is not a metaphor. He is, quite literally, always climbing something. Buildings, planes, cliffs, the abstraction of death. It’s gauche, yes. But also—deeply—an artistic impulse.

Más en New York Diario:  Art in New York

We love Cruise because he refuses the future. Not just algorithm, not just AI. Refusal is his genre. He’s allergic to digital fatigue, suspicious of irony, contemptuous of screens that do the work for you. It’s an analog ethics disguised as blockbuster spectacle. Risk, realness, ruin. He believes in them. Uncritically. Like a dog chasing a ball through traffic.

And that’s why we forgive the madness. Because in a world where “content” is used to describe both TikToks and ten-part documentaries, he still believes in movies. Not just stories. Not just arcs. Movies. Light, motion, effort. Cinema as covenant. You watch him dangle from a helicopter and remember, just briefly, that art was once a verb.

Cruise isn’t cinema’s future. He’s the ghost of its body. And like all ghosts, he insists on being seen.

Últimos artículos

Los canales de Marte

por Dan Falk Hay algo en Marte que cautiva la imaginación. Más que la deslumbrante...

Dormir sin pastillas

por Julia Sorensen En el teatro tenue de la vida moderna, iluminado por el resplandor...

Sleeping without pills

by Julia Sorensen   In the dim theater of modern life, where the stage is...

15 consejos para visitar Nueva York en otoño

por Mara Taylor El otoño en Nueva York no es el susurro de Sinatra, tampoco...

15 Tips for Visiting New York in Autumn

by Mara Taylor Autumn in New York is not Sinatra’s croon, nor is it a...

¿Es la Generación X la mejor de todas?

por Julia Sorensen La Generación X es la única generación que parece escapar del desprecio....

Is Generation X the Greatest Generation After All?

by Julia Sorensen Generation X is the only generation that seems to escape contempt. Millennials...

¿A dónde van los automóviles autónomos de Nueva York?

por José Martínez y Samantha Maldonado Hace años, antes de que el alcalde Eric Adams...

Arte en Nueva York

por Camille Searle El arte en Nueva York nunca es solo arte. Es infraestructura, bienes...

Art in New York

by Camille Searle Art in New York is never just art. It is infrastructure, real...

Amar la costa es amar algo ya medio perdido

por Maggie Tarlo La marea baja y deja atrás un mundo secreto. En Pawleys Island la...

Loving a Shore Half Gone

by Maggie Tarlo The tide goes out and leaves behind a secret world. At Pawleys Island...

Un espacio valiente

por Augusta Warton El mismo día que Kristi Noem, jefa de Seguridad Nacional de Trump,...

Tres lecciones de Katrina

por Eric Kevin Stern El huracán Katrina ocupa un lugar importante en la historia de...

¿Por qué no podemos ser Noruega?

por Rod McCullom En enero, la Federación de Carreteras de Noruega publicó una estadística que...

Sigue leyendo

Los canales de Marte

por Dan Falk Hay algo en Marte que cautiva la imaginación. Más que la deslumbrante...

Dormir sin pastillas

por Julia Sorensen En el teatro tenue de la vida moderna, iluminado por el resplandor...

Sleeping without pills

by Julia Sorensen   In the dim theater of modern life, where the stage is...