The American actor embodies agent Ethan Hunt for the seventh time in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning part 1”, which is released at the cinema on Wednesday. The sixty-year-old star does stunts and demonstrates his art of running, which has become his signature on-screen.
He runs, he runs, the Tom Cruise. At 61, the American actor is still preparing to sting many sprints in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning part 1, the seventh part of the saga of the adventures of Ethan Hunt, which will be released on Wednesday July 12 in French cinemas. If he will still have to fight against terrorists wanting to annihilate the world, Tom Cruise will do it by running.
It has become the trademark of the star, a gimmick which returns film after film. Paramount Pictures, the distributor, is well aware of this and had fun compiling the moments when Tom Cruise runs in the different parts of the franchise. Impossible mission. Result: 10 minutes of actor sprints. In a suit, in a tuxedo, in jeans and a T-shirt, hair in the wind or cropped…
As his friend Ben Stiller once told the American site Edge Media Network, “the way Tom [Cruise] short has a huge influence on the world. Let’s face it. Culturally, everyone wants to run like Tom Cruise”. Today it has become “the actor-runner in the public eye”, summarizes Pierre-Jean Vazel, athletics coach at the Metz Métropole Athletics club, joined by franceinfo. The public who moves in the room “expects it”confirms to franceinfo Maureen Lepers, doctor in cinema and audiovisual and teacher at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University.
A technique worthy of the heroes of Antiquity
Tom Cruise “running in movies since 1981”, as stated with humor in his short biography on his Instagram account. But his way of running has evolved over time. His palms were closed for a long time, before opening up in the early 2000s. “Carl Lewis would change the position of his palms depending on the stroke, but the fact that Tom Cruise opens them prolongs the movements, it gives more expressiveness to the body and reinforces the impression of speed”, explains Pierre-Jean Vazel. The change comes at the time of the filming of Collateralby Michael Mann, released in France in 2004, based on Caryl Smith Gilbert, track and field coach in the United States, quoted by ESPN: “His technique improved and I thought, ‘He needs to be really coached.’ I think he also has to do it in his free time, he tries to improve.”
Arms well apart, palms open, knees rising high, chest straight, slightly back… His running technique is spectacular. “She isst archetypal. We find the same angulations as during the Greek archaic period”, continues Pierre-Jean Vazel. But, by dint of running after a certain aestheticism on the screen, “he lost of his naturalness, his gesture has become more learned, he almost watches himself runbelieves the French coach. He runs like he wants to teach us”.
Even if his small size – he measures 1.70 meters – can also accentuate the impression of speed, because of the frequency of gestures, Tom Cruise would not have had to be ashamed of his performance in the 100 meters. A user of the computer forum Quora had fun calculating his time by taking as a reference a race in Mission: Impossible III. According to his calculations, the actor would have covered the queen distance in about 15 seconds. As a reminder, the world record, held by Usain Bolt, is 9″58.
A way to build your own myth
The public is accustomed to the acrobatics of the actor. Yet, early in his career, his propensity for pulling crazier and crazier stunts wasn’t so pronounced in his filmography. “He alternated auteur cinema, with Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson, and action films, but the ‘auteur’ part has almost disappeared”, observes Maureen Lepers. From now on, we find at the helm of the films in which he is showing Christopher McQuarrie, director of the last episodes of Impossible mission or Doug Liman (Barry Seal, Edge of Tomorrow). Filmmakers specializing in action at the service of the star, “almost ceremonial painters” for the actor, according to the teacher.
Her body, however, has always been her main working tool. “In the famous dance scene of Risky Businessit is his legs that we see”recalls the academic, citing one of the first films to have revealed Tom Cruise, in 1983. Rather follower of a precise method, “to the economy”, according to her, her acting also goes through this physical movement. In pursuit of something, as in Impossible mission, or fleeing, as in Minority Report, “he sprint”argues Pierre-Jean Vazel, and “this gives it its dramatic dimension”.
Sprint to save Hollywood cinema
Parachuting, motorcycling, climbing, clinging to a plane in flight, fighter pilot, soon to be in space… His body hasn’t stopped moving, despite the passage of time. “It requires a very thorough rigor, it’s impressivenotes Pierre-Jean Vazel. He has retained his explosiveness whereas normally, at this age, you lose power because the muscles respond less well.”
A body by which he intends to prove that time has no hold on him, like the hero he embodies, Ethan Hunt, dashing as on the first day, after seven films in almost three decades. “Tom Cruise understood very well that one way to make his career last is to capitalize on this ‘man-machine’ side that will never dienotes Maureen Lepers. He is nothing but a body in perpetual motion that resists immobility.”
Running is also a way for him to become a little more of a Hollywood legend. “Racing is a gis very associated with the actor, a rather strong gesture of cinema, because metaphorically, all Hollywood action films are races, where you have to go from point A to point B”analyzes Maureen Lepers. “Hollywood cinema has created ‘women-objects’, men are filmed in motion, they are only able to save the world and be sexy while doing so”recalls the university.
“At Tom Cruise, his whole image as an actor is built on the fact that he cannot die, that he is irreplaceable.”
Maureen Lepers, teacher at Sorbonne Nouvelle Universityat franceinfo
A hero in fiction, but also in reality? “It’s part of a myth born after the pandemic that poses Tom Cruise as the savior of Hollywood cinema”develops the specialist. Steven Spielberg called it that at a gala dinner in February, after the box office hit of Top Gun: Maverick, which brought the public back to the dark rooms after the Covid-19 crisis. A status that tends to trap him in an impossible mission. “I’m not sure he can let himself grow old”, underlines the expert, who is based on the recent films of the actor. In Top Gun: Maverick (2022), sequel to the cult film, thirty-seven years later, if the next generation is there, it is still him who saves the world. And in Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), he faces Henry Cavill, the actor who played Superman on the big screen. Who wins ? We’ll let you guess.