Over the span of his 40-year career, Tom Cruise has been many things: Hollywood heartthrob, celebrated Short King (he's 5-foot-7), Scientology spokesperson, reticent actor and now . . . the savior of cinema. Earlier this year, Steven Spielberg made the decree at the annual Oscars luncheon, telling the actor he "saved the entire theatrical industry," as "Top Gun: Maverick," Cruise's highest grossing movie ever ($1.49 billion globally), achieved the rare and coveted task of bringing moviegoers back to the theaters. The claim has regained traction now that the star has joined negotiations with SAG-AFTRA in order to protect actors from being replaced by artificial intelligence — nevermind the fact that he has declined to join the picket line for the unions' ongoing strike.
It's no mere coincidence then that the villain in Cruise's latest movie, "Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One," is, of all things, AI. In the seventh installment, notoriously rogue spy Ethan Hunt is tasked with finding the key that controls the sentient AI called "The Entity" that can manipulate digital reality. Good guy that he is, Ethan doesn't stop at obtaining the key, he sets out to destroy The Entity for the sake of mankind.
