The Evolution of Tom Cruise: A Cinematic Journey

For the past few months, I have been working on a project to watch all of Tom Cruise's movies. It has been quite an undertaking considering he has been in over 40 films. Now that I finished I wanted to make a 3 part series going through the career of Tom Cruise. Part 1 will be an overview of Tom's career. I will go through the different eras of his career and talk about his role in each of his films. Part 2 will be a ranking of Tom Cruise's films. Finally, part 3 will be the establishment of the Tom Cruise Hall of Fame. 

Tom Cruise has had a very versatile career. He started in 1980s comedies, made his way through several prestige/Oscar films, and finally settled on the action genre that he is in today. After watching all of his films, I have found that they are divided into three different eras. First, we have the Early Cruise era which consists of films from 1981 to 1988. This was where he just started acting and was mostly in comedies and other side roles. Next is the Prestige Cruise era which consists of films from 1988 to 1999. This contained more serious films and was the time in Tom Cruise's life when he really showed his skills as an actor. Finally, we have the Action Cruise era which consists of films since 2000. This is his longest era and I think the point where he really found his place as an actor. Now that we have established the eras of his career, I wanted to go through each era and share each of his films. 

Early Cruise

Tom Cruise's first acting role was a very small role in 1981's Endless Love. Here he plays a friend of the main character with less than a minute of screen time. His first more substantial role was in the 1981 movie Taps. Here he plays David Shawn, a friend of the main character who helps take over the military school. His next role was in Losin' It, a teen sex comedy from 1982. Here he essentially shares the lead of the film with the other two main characters. He takes another small supporting role in 1983 where he plays Steve Randle in The Outsiders. Cruise's breakout performance was in 1983 with Risky Business. Most everyone knows of this movie because of its famous dance scene. This is the movie that put Tom Cruise on the map and changed the trajectory of his career. He followed up Risky Business with two less-than-stellar movies in 1983's All The Right Moves, which saw Tom in a generic sports relationship movie, and 1985's Legend, which gave Cruise the opportunity to work with director Ridley Scott. 1986 was another iconic year for Tom Cruise as this was the year of Top Gun. Top Gun is another major movie in his career and is obviously one of the main movies he is not for. In the same year, Tom Cruise also played a supporting role in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money where he plays a protégée to the Paul Newman character. This film was the unofficial beginning of his prestige career as he began to dive into more serious films. The final film of this era was 1988's Cocktail. This is the last pure comedy that Tom Cruise does before taking his career in a more serious direction. Finally, also in 1988, Tom Cruise had a brief cameo as "Henchman Shot off the Roof" in Young Guns. 

Prestige Cruise

Starting off his more serious career, Tom Cruise stars in the 1988 film Rain Man. In Rain Man, he gives a great performance opposite Dustin Hoffman and really begins to show his chops as an actor. This movie also won Best Picture that year. In 1989, Tom Cruise took his acting to the next level with Born on the Fourth of July where he stars as a post-war Vietnam Veteran. This is probably one of his best acting performances and earned him his first Oscar nomination and was also nominated for Best Picture His next film was 1990's Days of Thunder where Tom Cruise plays a stock car driver who is given his chance in the big leagues. He follows this with 1992's Far and Away where Tom Cruise stars with Nicole Kidman with questionable Irish accents as they start a new life in America. 1992 also is the year of the great Tom Cruise movie A Few Good Men. This is also one of his better performances which he surprisingly didn't get an Oscar nomination for. However, the film did get nominated for Best Picture After this hit, Tom Cruise was in two more films, 1993's The Firm, a John Grisham where he plays a lawyer who is in over his head, and 1994's Interview with The Vampire where he is in a supporting role to Brad Pitt and plays the very sinister Vampire Lestat. In 1996, we got Mission: Impossible, another career-defining movie for Tom Cruise. This is the film that began the launch of the action franchise portion of his career. The final three films in this era are probably some of his best performances. First is 1996's Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise stars as a Sports Agent and earns his second Oscar nomination as well as a Best Picture nomination. Next is Stanley Kubrick's Eye's Wide Shut which starts Tom Cruise opposite Nicole Kidman and sees him on a very disturbing journey. Finally, there is Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia which earned Tom Cruise his third and final acting nomination as he plays the very out-of-type character, Frank T.J Mackey. This marks the end of his prestige career. There are a few that sneak into the next era but those are few and far between. 

Action Cruise

After his prestige career came to a close, his action star career began in 2000. This career is largely defined through the Mission Impossible franchise and is where Tom Cruise became known as the guy who does all of his own insane stunts. This era opened with Mission: Impossible II in 2000. In it, Tom Cruise works with the great director John Woo and takes the Mission: Impossible franchise in a more action-based direction. Next up is 2001's Vanilla Sky which is a very strange and intense thriller. Tom Cruise then gets to work with Steven Spielberg in 2002's Minority Report which stars him as a cop that stops crimes before they happen. He also has a brief cameo this year in Austin Powers in Goldmember. Tom Cruise then goes in a more historical direction with 2003's The Last Samurai where he takes up Samurai fighting. Next are two more action thrillers, 2004's Collateral where Tom Cruise gives one of his better performances as a very chilling hitman, and 2005's War of the World, Tom Cruise's second collaboration with Spielberg. In 2006 he put out Mission: Impossible III which has Tom Cruise going against the great Phillip Seymore Hoffman. He followed that with one of his last more serious roles in Lions for Lambs where he plays a senator. He then took a small role in 2008's Tropic Thunder where he plays the weird studio head, Les Grossman. In the same year, we get his final serious non-action role in Valkyrie where he plays a German official looking to stop the Nazi reign. 2010 sees Tom Cruise fully embrace the spy genre with the films Knight and Day where he stars opposite Cameron Diaz. 2011 sees the 4th addition to the Mission: Impossible franchise with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. This is where Tom fully embraces the insane stunt work as we see him climb up the side of the tallest building in the world. In 2012, we saw Tom Cruise in the most unique film of his career Rock of Ages, a rock musical where he plays the rock star Stacee Jaxx. The next 3 years saw Tom Cruise dive deep into the action genre with 2012's Jack Reacher, an action film with Tom Cruise as the titular character, 2013's Oblivion, a Sci-Fi post-apocalyptic action movie and 2014's Edge of Tomorrow, a sci version of Groundhog Day with Tom Cruise stuck in the time loop. 2015 sees Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation which sees Tom Cruise hang on the side of a plane while 2016 has the sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. In 2017, Tom Cruise tried to get on board with The Mummy which was so bad, it killed Universal's plans for a cinematic monster universe before it even started. In the same year, he also starred in American Made where he plays a pilot that gets involved in the drug trade. In 2018 we got Mission: Impossible - Fallout which sees Tom Cruise and skydiving on screen. We then get the largest gap between his films, mostly due to the pandemic, with his next movie not releasing until 2022. In 2022, we got the long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick which became a best picture nominee and grossed over a billion dollars. His final film was Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning in 2023 and sawTom Cruise drives off a mountain into a skydive. Moving forward, Tom Cruise has plans for an 8th Mission: Impossible and a potential project where he gets to go in space which is apparently the next step in his stunt career.