Will Tom Cruise win the Oscar for “saving the industry’s ass” with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’?

Any recording that is disseminated from Tom Cruise, be jumping off a ravine to shoot a scene or yelling at his workers after a monumental anger on the set of ‘Mission Impossible 7’ due to the pandemic, he will always go around the world in a matter of minutes. After all, it is the most vivid representation of what we all understand by a great movie star. And if we include the most famous director on the planet in the equation, we have a viral video of the magnitude of the video in which Steven Spielberg thanks Tom Cruise for “saving Hollywood’s ass” thanks to ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, as it happened a few days ago.

The informal conversation took place within the framework of the dinner for the nominees for the 95th edition of the Oscars, whose gala will be held on the night of March 12, and where both the sequel to ‘Top Gun’ and Spielberg’s latest work, ‘The Fabelmans’, are up for the Best Picture award. He blockbusters starring Cruise does not lead the bets, although no one would say so judging by the euphoria with which the actor and producer was received upon arrival at that meal by the press and other nominees. “The only people who generate those kinds of reactions are Santa Claus and you,” Jimmy Kimmel later joked, the one who will be the presenter of the gala, in an interview with the star, after showing several photos of the event in which Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis or Guillermo del Toro could be seen genuinely excited by the fact of coinciding with him at the time and in space.

If the meeting of nominees or the interview with Kimmel showed anything, it is that the co-star of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999) is taking the campaign seriously. In principle, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ has scratched little in the awards that are usually considered a thermometer before the ceremony at the Dolby Theater (the respective unions of directors, actors and producers have reaffirmed why ‘Everything at once everywhere’ may be the big winner of the Oscars 2023). However, Having an authority like Spielberg on video saying out loud what the film starring Cruise and directed by Joseph Kosinski has meant for the post-Covid industry is a not inconsiderable asset.

Above all, knowing the power of the director of ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993) when influencing and setting positions: for history remained his intervention in the 2019 campaign, when, according to various industry sources, Spielberg pulled the phone book and managed to win ‘Green Book’ by surprise over the great favourite, ‘Roma’, warning of the threat to theaters represented by Netflix, the producer of Alfonso Cuarón’s drama. However, with Spielberg competing in this edition with his own film, it seems crazy to expect the director to now make such enthusiastic propaganda against himself.

fly in style

Why Steven Spielberg thinks ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ has “saved the industry’s ass”? Released at the end of last May, the film was the highest grossing of the year in the United States, even above ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’, and the fifth highest grossing of all time (if we ignore inflation). At the international level, it has reached the 12th historical position, surpassed with a difference of just 30 million by ‘The Avengers’ (2012) and ‘Fast & Furious 7’ (2015). It has also been the second film after the outbreak of the coronavirus to cross the 1 billion mark worldwide of dollars, something that only ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ (2021) had achieved. And it is the biggest financial success of Tom Cruise’s career.

Columnist Sonny Bunch, at The Washington Post, further noted that the triumph of the film had helped to change the commercial paradigm of dependence on China: the sequel to ‘Top Gun’ has not needed to be released in the People’s Republic nor, therefore, has it had to follow in the footsteps of so many blockbusters of recent years (particularly from Marvel) conceived to please the censors of the Asian giant. Apart from that, Tom Cruise’s military epic embodies a model of cinematographic spectacle that is different from the one that seemed hegemonic in these times, both in the visual codes and in the use of artisanal effects. As the actor himself has stated for months, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is a movie entirely created to be seen in theaters, antagonistic to the generic notion of content on a platform streaming, with an immersive visual and sound design and prominent production values.

In fact, the screenings of the film were preceded by a message from Cruise in which, in addition to thanking the viewers for having gone to the cinema, he underlined the authenticity of the fighters and aircraft used in addition to the real speed in their flight sequences (the 60-year-old actor, who has a pilot’s license, designed personally a training program for his co-stars).

Also raised as a tribute to the late Tony Scott, director of the first installment, and to actor Val Kilmer, former rival of the protagonist without a voice as a result of throat cancer, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ has completely surpassed the original 1986 film in the eyes of critics, for which it never had anything resembling prestigious status. In the sequel, Maverick (Cruise), once a young and impulsive apprentice at Top Gun’s elite pilot school, becomes the teacher of a new generation of students who must carry out a dangerous raid into enemy territory and destroy a uranium enrichment facility. The identity of the country in question is never revealed.

Cruise has stated that with his elaborate action sequences he intended to pay tribute to the late filmmaker, although The 2022 film avoids many other of the key aspects that made its predecessor, despite who it weighs, a classic, such as the enormous sexual charge that underlay the images and history of that one; from which Quentin Tarantino, in his famous monologue in ‘Four Rooms’ (1995), extracted a homoerotic reading. Although for the omission of Kelly McGillis, Cruise’s romantic interest in the previous installment, whom the producers did not even contact. “I’m too old, I’m fat, I look the age I am and that’s not what the film is looking for,” the 65-year-old actress told Entertainment Tonight. Jennifer Connelly, 52, was chosen instead. Despite everything, it is known what Tarantino thinks about ‘Top Gun: Maverick’: “I thought it was fantastic.”

A star for all times

In the first gala after the 9/11 attacks, held in March 2002, the figure chosen by the Academy to address the audience in the opening monologue was Tom Cruise. Through an emotional speech written by the director and screenwriter Cameron Crowe, the interpreter reviewed the importance that cinema had had for him at different stages of his life, until finally extrapolating it to the situation of trauma, pain and anguish from which the United States he was just recovering. “Is what we do important? Is it important to have a night like this? Should we celebrate the joy and magic that movies bring us? Allow me to say yes, more than ever, ”she proclaimed with a stern gesture. to, immediately afterwards, receive a standing ovation.

After the coronavirus crisis, Cruise has thrown the blanket over his head again to return the public to the theaters. In 2020, when ‘Tenet’ seemed called to be the film that would give the expected oxygen ball to theaters, Christopher Nolan’s commitment to the risky premiere had the unconditional support of the actor, that He recorded a spot going to see the movie with a mask and encouraging people to imitate him. Now, throughout a year of honorary distinctions, the star has not stopped endorsing his deep degree of commitment to the industry. When Cannes awarded the honorary Palme d’Or to Tom Cruise last May, he said: “I will never premiere on platforms. Movies have to be seen in theaters.” “I will continue to do everything I can to help and contribute to this industry and this art form that I love,” said, in turn, last Saturday, February 25, when collecting the David O. Selznick award from the Producers Union, in addition to declaring, in a display of charisma and credibility available to very few, his support for all the people who make films.

With headlines like these or news like the extreme stunts in his shoots, there is no doubt that Tom Cruise’s public image is in much better shape than when he was engaged in publicly praise the goodness of the Church of Scientology, the dangerous sect of which he is a proud member and most notorious apologist.

On the other hand, it is obvious that The Oscars have spent years looking for a remedy for the drop in the number of viewers. After the attempt to implant an award for Best Popular Film and the ridiculousness of the prizes awarded by Twitter users last year, which consisted of a pitched battle between fanboys of Zack Snyder, the military of Camila Cabello and the defenders of the innocence of Johnny Depp, the 2023 nominations are an obvious box office approach; in addition to ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’, also ‘Elvis’ or ‘Everything at once everywhere’ have been clear commercial successes. The nomination of the sequel to ‘Top Gun’ is, on the other hand, the first to receive a whole pope of mass cinema as Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of ‘Super Detective in Hollywood’ (1984), ‘Con Air’ (1997), ‘Armageddon’ (1998) or ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ (2003).

The cases of the winners ‘CODA: The sounds of silence’ (2021), ‘Green Book’ (2018) or ‘Argo’ (2012) have already definitively banished the myth that a film that does not have a Best Director nomination , as is the case with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, is not a candidate to consider. Besides, The filmic celebration of US military superiority could be dated if depressing current events did not place it in a context of renewed tension between West and East. That Hollywood, in this situation, looks at Tom Cruise to reissue his past glories sounds, definitely, dToo coherent to consider it entirely improbable.