Top Gun: Top Gun: Maverick and the new Mission: Impossible share the same message: that Tom Cruise, and Tom Cruise alone, is the last line of defence against the AI invasion. At a time like this, when a sudden panic over the profitability of digitised entertainment has seen streaming services slash and burn their own content while Hollywood’s writers remain on strike, Cruise has cunningly positioned himself as the idealistic (and no doubt patriotic) alternative. He is all that is human in the face of a cold and robotic future. Pure muscle and sweat.
In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is the only man on Earth capable of defeating a seemingly sentient, AI-powered virus that possesses the ability to infiltrate any top-secret infrastructure it sets its sights on, like, say, the CIA or the World Bank. Finally, the super spy’s greatest asset – the limitless pool of technology that has, over the course of six earlier films, allowed him to wear other people’s faces as masks and scale the Burj Khalifa – has turned against him. Dead Reckoning can, admittedly, feel a little too immaculate and calculated when held up against the more lofty, idea-driven blockbusters of our age (say, a Dune or an Across the Spider-Verse). But any simplicity here is outweighed by the sheer force of Cruise’s brand.
