After three decades, Tom Cruise is done with Mission: Impossible – so what’s next?

Is Tom Cruise finally free? That’s what I asked myself, watching Hollywood’s last movie star cling to the undercarriage of a biplane like a sloth in the climactic scene of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Even by the standards of the long-running action franchise, this stunt – which sees Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt shimmy into the cockpit of one moving plane before wing-walking on to another, mid-flight – seems particularly masochistic: the crew were worried that he had passed out during its filming. What’s more, Cruise doesn’t even look particularly cool performing it: at one point the wind resistance plasters his hair into a Dumb and Dumber bowl-cut, jowls flapping about like a basset hound. You would have never caught Paul Newman committing such clownery. Surely Tom Cruise doesn’t have to do this sort of thing any more?

Cruise, who turns 63 in July, has been making Mission: Impossible films since Bill Clinton’s first presidential term. But The Final Reckoning, which arrives in UK cinemas on Wednesday, does seem to signal the end of something. Director Christopher McQuarrie has been at pains to frame it as the closing of an 18-hour, eight-movie chapter, a point bludgeoned home by the film itself via a plot that inelegantly tries to retrofit storylines from past instalments into some grand, planet-enveloping culmination. And while McQuarrie has been talking up the future of the franchise as a whole, and Cruise has been making optimistic noises about being AI ported, Harrison Ford-style, into future instalments, you have to assume that it won’t continue in its current form. It’s surely too big an operation, too taxing on its star, for business to continue as usual. Which is great news for anyone who would like to see Tom Cruise do something other than motorcycle off a cliff again and again; to see him, you know, act.

Cruise’s filmography tells quite the story. In its first half, after a couple of early faltering roles, he enjoyed an astonishing hot streak, spanning from Risky Business in 1983 to Jerry Maguire in 1996 – largely dramatic, middlebrow films that make lucrative use of his intensity, gigawatt smile and slight hint of sleaziness. The first Mission: Impossible arrived right before the end of this dynamite run, but it didn’t mark a dramatic sea change towards action movies. In fact, when Mission: Impossible 2 arrived in 2000, he was in the middle of period that might be described as “Cruise: the arthouse years”, where he took on challenging, messy roles in ambitious (if bloated) auteur-driven films: in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, the latter a career-best performance he really should have won the best supporting actor Oscar for.

Plenty have speculated, in fact, that not winning that Oscar, and later not even being nominated for his brilliant villainous turn in Michael Mann’s Collateral, might have prompted Cruise to give up on awards-chasing, and instead hone himself into the gravity-defying, last action hero of his later career. It’s probably more complicated than that – it’s hard to ignore the effect that the Oprah couch incident and the negative press around Cruise’s association with Scientology might have had on his role selection. Maybe he was avoiding complex parts that might have made him seem even weirder in the public eye and focusing on all-American heroes instead. Or perhaps he simply saw the way the wind was blowing in cinema, as mid-budget films died out and the studio focus became about making bigger and bigger blockbusters.

Whatever the reason, the shift was undeniable: in the 2010s and 2020s he has almost exclusively made whacking great action blockbusters. Some of those blockbusters have been very good (Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Edge of Tomorrow, Top Gun: Maverick), and Cruise’s commitment to throwing his body into them, sometimes quite literally, has been remarkable. But such Evel Knieveling has come at the expense of those dramatic roles that for so long felt central to his appeal as an actor. The characterisation in these action films has at times felt underwritten, bordering on Ken doll: with a gun to the temple, could you tell the difference between the character he plays in Top Gun: Maverick and the one he plays in those later Mission films? His hair might be different, but that’s it really.

Which is why I’m so excited by Cruise’s next film. Rumoured to be titled Judy, it is directed by Alejandro Iñárritu and follows “the most powerful man in the world, who embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s saviour before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.” Not only is it a complex role of the sort Cruise seemed to have left behind long ago, but it’s one that turns his messianic action hero figure trademark upside down. Iñárritu’s recent record has been patchy, but he is the sort of big-swinging auteur that Cruise worked with at the turned of the millennium – and is keen to work with again (though perhaps a Paul Thomas Anderson reunion is a bit of a stretch, given Cruise’s reported reaction to The Master). Are we about to see a late-era flowering, with Cruise taking on fascinating roles?

Perhaps – but he might not be ale to resist the lure of contorting his body into uncomfortable shapes in the name of Hollywood. It seems a slightly cruel irony that the Oscars have announced the introduction of a best stunts category right after the closing of this Mission: Impossible “chapter”, depriving Cruise of an honour for his wing-walking, ravine-jumping Ethan Hunt performances. Still, another prospective role on his IMDb page seems a shoo-in, if the film ever gets made: a collaboration with Nasa and Elon Musk’s Space X that will see Cruise become the first man to act in space. Tom Cruise’s last action hero era may not be over just yet.

Each week we run down the five essential pieces of pop-culture we’re watching, reading and listening to

Last week we asked you to suggest songs to kickstart the summer. Here are some of your sunshine staples:

“Has to be School’s Out by Alice Cooper. I was 16 when this was released in the UK; fabulous riff and a superbly snarly OTT delivery.” – Gary Booth

“Thievery Corporation’s Air Batucada, because it goes with everything: sunshine/rain, breakfast/dinner, working/chilling … you can take it to the beach AND to the gym, sleep to it AND dance to it … Is it fast or slow, happy or sad? No idea, but I rediscover it every summer, and it’s like running into a good old friend.” – Hannah Geismar

“Soon Come by Shy FX is the ultimate summer in the city soundtrack. It makes the sweatiest dash for a rush-hour tube train feel like a lazy loose-limbed lope.” – Jamie Renton

“Two very different tracks from a decade apart do it for me. The achingly sweet opening of The First Picture Of You by a very young Peter Coyle and the Lotus Eaters resonates still and reminds me of a summer with my first serious love. A decade later, I was much more interested in partying and Flowered Up’s hedonistic anthem Weekender still reminds me of those glorious summers.” – Kevin McManus