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Top Gun: Maverick

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Watch Top Gun: Maverick with a subscription on Prime Video, Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Apple TV.

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Top Gun: Maverick pulls off a feat even trickier than a 4G inverted dive, delivering a long-belated sequel that surpasses its predecessor in wildly entertaining style.

If you loved the original -- or enjoy some good old-school action -- you need to speed your way to a screening of Top Gun: Maverick .

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Joseph Kosinski

Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell

Miles Teller

Lt. Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw

Jennifer Connelly

Penny Benjamin

Adm. Beau "Cyclone" Simpson

Glen Powell

Lt. Jake "Hangman" Seresin

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'Top Gun: Maverick': Release Date, Trailer, Cast, & Everything We Know So Far About the Tom Cruise Sequel Movie

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Over three decades ago, the action drama film Top Gun swooped into theaters, creating a cult classic franchise. And now, after years of development and numerous delays, the 1986 movie's sequel, Top Gun: Maverick , is finally set to land in theaters.

Featuring the return of Tom Cruise as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Top Gun: Maverick is a highly anticipated film with a lot of hopes riding on it. So far, we've seen some brilliant visuals and heard a lot about how the movie serves as both a competition film like its predecessor and a tribute to aviation. What we haven't seen yet is the movie itself but hey, we waited this long so what's a little longer?

Top Gun: Maverick has been directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger , Eric Warren Singer , and Christopher McQuarrie and a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks . Besides Cruise, the movie also features Val Kilmer , who is reprising his role as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky from the first film. Top Gun: Maverick also boasts a host of exciting new faces including Miles Teller as Lt. Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, the son of Maverick's best friend Goose ( Anthony Edwards ), who died in the 1986 movie.

Based on everything that we know about the movie, it looks like this is one long-delayed sequel that's going to really be worth the wait. So we've pulled together all the details about Top Gun: Maverick that have been revealed so far, including release dates, trailers, cast, and plot information, into this handy guide. So tell me, do you feel the need?

Related: The Best Movies to Watch on the 4th of July

Watch the Top Gun: Maverick Trailer

The first official trailer for Top Gun: Maverick was released on July 19, 2019. The video gives a quick summary of Maverick's career in the years since the first movie and features some gorgeous aerial stunts. In December of the same year, a behind-the-scenes featurette was released that reveals how the movie's stunts were done with real planes and live stunts.

The same month, the movie's second trailer was released, introducing the new batch of trainees whom Maverick is going to be taking under his wing. The video also teases that one of the trainees is going to die during an exercise and shows a fight breaking out between Maverick and Rooster. A teaser for the movie was also released during Super Bowl 2020, which briefly reveals that Maverick is going to be running into some trouble with the top brass during the course of the film. The latest trailer for the movie was released on March 29, 2022 and you can watch it right here:

When Is Top Gun: Maverick's Release Date?

Top Gun: Maverick is currently scheduled to be released in theaters in the United States and Canada on May 27, 2022. While there were some reports that the movie would be made available to stream on Paramount+ 45 days after its theatrical debut, this doesn't seem to be happening now. Tom Cruise has been quite vehement that this is a movie that should be seen on the big screen so you're going to have to head to your local theater and see why that is.

The current premiere date is nearly three years later than when the movie was initially supposed to come out. Top Gun: Maverick was originally scheduled to release on July 12, 2019, but was postponed, first to June 26, 2020, and then, after a whole lot more delays, to the current date. Ahead of the theatrical release, the movie was screened at CinemaCon 2022 .

Who Is in the Top Gun: Maverick Cast?

Top Gun: Maverick boasts a stellar cast of stars, led by Tom Cruise. Cast members appearing in the movie, besides Cruise, include Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly , Jon Hamm , Glen Powell , Lewis Pullman , Ed Harris , Val Kilmer , Monica Barbaro , Charles Parnell , Danny Ramirez , Manny Jacinto , Bashir Salahuddin , Jay Ellis , Jake Picking , Raymond Lee , Lyliana Wray , Jean Louisa Kelly , Greg Davis , and Bob Stephenson .

Related: New ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Images Reveal the New Pilots; Tom Cruise Designed Their Training Course

Who Are the Confirmed Characters in Top Gun: Maverick?

Top Gun: Maverick features a mix of new and old characters. Let's take a look at the ones who have been confirmed so far:

• Tom Cruise stars as Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. A test pilot and flight instructor, Maverick is known for his daring acts in the air but has been avoiding promotions so he can keep flying.
• Val Kilmer also returns as Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky. Once a rival of Maverick's, Iceman is now a fellow instructor and friend. Unlike Maverick, Iceman has been promoted a few times since the first movie and is now a four-star admiral, currently serving as Chief of Naval Operations.
• Miles Teller plays one of the most important new characters, appearing in the movie as Lt. Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, the son of Maverick's late RIO and best friend, Nick "Goose" Bradshaw. Rooster is a pilot trainee and fans can probably expect some friction between him and Maverick.
• Jean Louisa Kelly plays Carole Bradshaw, Goose's widow and Rooster's mom. Meg Ryan played Carole in the first film.
• Jennifer Connelly plays Penny Benjamin, a single mother, bar owner, and the daughter of a former admiral who will be Maverick's new love interest. Lyliana Wray appears as Penny's daughter Amelia Benjamin. Amelia was initially set to be played by Thomasin McKenzie until she chose to exit the project .
• Jon Hamm plays Vice Admiral Cyclone.
• Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, and Monica Barbaro play pilot trainees "Hangman", Bob, and Natasha "Phoenix" Trace respectively.
• Jay Ellis plays Payback, a TOPGUN graduate, and Danny Ramirez plays "Fanboy", Payback's WSO. Greg Davis plays another TOPGUN graduate, Coyote.

Other characters appearing in the movie include Ed Harris as Maverick's superior, Charles Parnell as Rear Admiral Warlock, Manny Jacinto as Fritz, Bashir Salahuddin as Coleman, and Bob Stephenson as United States Air Force General Edward Clayton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When (and Where) Was Top Gun: Maverick Filmed?

Preliminary production on Top Gun: Maverick officially kicked off on May 30, 2018, in San Diego, California. Flight deck operations were filmed in late August of the same year by a 15-person film crew from Paramount and Bruckheimer Films who were aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln . In February 2019, Cruise and the production crew were spotted on the USS Theodore Roosevelt at NAS North Island. The movie was also filmed at NAS Whidbey Island in Oak Harbor, Washington until March 2019.

Miles Teller confirmed in an interview on June 19, 2019, that he had finished filming his scenes two days earlier. Principal photography was scheduled to continue until April 15, 2019, in a number of locations including San Diego, Seattle, and Lake Tahoe.

As is pretty much standard practice nowadays for Tom Cruise, the actor did quite a few of his stunts himself. In fact, Cruise, who is a certified pilot, was reportedly hoping to fly the Boeing F-18 fighter jet. That request was ultimately denied by the Navy but he did fly some helicopters and a P-51 propeller-driven fighter plane for the movie.

Bonus information, Top Gun: Maverick was filmed in IMAX format using IMAX-Certified Sony Venice 6K Full Frame cameras and a set of cameras were also placed in the cockpits to record the pilots' real reactions to the g-forces they experienced.

Related: Exclusive: Jon Hamm on 'Top Gun: Maverick' and the Film's "Never-Before-Seen" Technology

When Is Top Gun: Maverick Set?

Top Gun: Maverick is set over 30 years after the events of the first movie. The characters have all aged in real-time, with some moving on to bigger and better things. Maverick is pretty much unchanged though but his past still seems to be something of a sore spot. It's possible that there may be some flashbacks in the story but for the most part, the narrative of Top Gun: Maverick is expected to proceed in a linear fashion.

What Is the Top Gun: Maverick Plot?

Picking up decades after the events of Top Gun , Top Gun: Maverick looks at our hero's life in the present day. Maverick is now an instructor, training the next generation of Navy aviators. He has a new love interest and has more or less remained the same person he always was, pushing limits and loving it.

But things get more complicated for Maverick when he is tasked with training a group of graduates for a special high-risk mission. The trainees include Rooster, the son of Maverick's late friend Goose. As the ghosts of the past come back to haunt him, Maverick must make some tough decisions, all leading him to a deadly mission that might just claim lives.

Here's the official synopsis for the movie:

"After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”. Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it."

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Tom Cruise has made an enemy in the newest “ Top Gun : Maverick” trailer, which premiered during the 54th annual Super Bowl on Sunday.

“My Dad believed in you, I’m not going to make the same mistake,” says Miles Teller who is playing Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, son of Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, deceased wingman to Cruise’s character. Will the clearly upset “Rooster” finally trust Maverick?

Directed by Joseph Kosinski, the sequel to the 1986 classic follows the top Navy aviator Pete Mitchell (Cruise) who, after more than 30 years of service, is finally where he belongs — pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. Mitchell returns to the flight school to train the new set of pilots, but instead of a young and inexperienced group as in the original film, this batch of students are all previous graduates of the Top Gun school.

The 1986 version of “Top Gun” was a massive success, raking in $356 million worldwide from a $15 million budget.

Val Kilmer will also reprise his role as Mitchell’s rival “Iceman.” Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris and Jay Ellis join Cruise in the cast.

Originally scheduled to premiere last July, Paramount Pictures pushed the release date to 2020 in order to adjust some of the film’s flight sequences with new technology and planes.

Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the producers of the first movie along with the late Don Simpson, will produce with Cruise and Skydance CEO David Ellison. Tommy Harper, Chad Oman and Mike Stenson serve as executive producers.

“ Top Gun: Maverick ” is expected to touch down in theaters June 26.

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Tom cruise and ‘top gun: maverick’ touch down in cannes with fighter jets, surprise palme d’or.

The superstar was treated to a hero's welcome complete with eight fighter jets (and smoke dyed to match the colors of the French flag) and a surprise Palme d'Or.

By Alex Ritman , Patrick Brzeski May 18, 2022 10:40am

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The Cannes Film Festival literally kicked into overdrive (overflight?) on Wednesday as Tom Cruise and his Top Gun: Maverick team touched down on the Palais for a high-octane premiere that included eight fighter jets zooming above the event, expelling smoke in red and blue to match the colors of the French flag.

The actor was already destined to be the biggest draw of Cannes 2022 long before he hit the Croisette, where Top Gun: Maverick is getting splashy promotion by Paramount ahead of its global rollout on May 25. But even by the festival’s own standards, Cruise received the sort of rapturous reception that could only befit one of Hollywood’s most successful and globally renowned stars. And after the final frame hit the screen close to 10 p.m., the audience responded with a six-minute standing ovation that brought Cruise to tears, closing out an epic day.

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Having taken part in a career retrospective earlier in the day — a “MasterClass Conversation” with French journalist Didier Allouch in the 1,000-seat Debussy Theatre — Cruise was gifted with another tribute before the screening, led by Canned festival director Thierry Fremaux, in honor of his long-running career at the center of international pop culture. Fremaux delivered remarks (in French) and introduced a 13-minute clip reel that showcased every entry on his filmography.

Cruise hugged Fremaux (who encouraged the audience to put down their phones and put their hands together) before taking the microphone to share remarks, inviting all the filmmakers in attendance to stand and be recognized and shouting out his close collaborators at Paramount. “They all worked so hard to bring this to the big screen, and it’s a dream to be here,” Cruise said. “I’m never going to forget this evening.”

Elle Fanning may not either. The actress, a L’Oreal ambassador and frequent Cannes attendee, was seated in the Palais and received a special shout-out from Cruise. He recalled meeting her while working with her sister, Dakota, on the 2005 blockbuster War of the Worlds .

He then turned his attention back to the festival and his love for cinema. “Thank you for this time,” he said. “I make these movies for all of you.” Fremaux then offered a special surprise, announcing that the festival was presenting Cruise with a Palme d’Or. Cruise, looking speechless, accepted with a “Wow,” as the audience stood up for another standing ovation, one of the only times in recent memory that an actor has received multiple standing ovations prior to the first frame of a film hitting the screen.

But before all that took place, Cruise arrived at the Cannes red carpet just before 7 p.m. and spent a healthy 10 minutes cruising up and down the street to greet fans, some of whom had been waiting for hours under the blazing Côte d’Azur sun for the movie star to emerge. He made it worth their while by signing autographs and DVDs and posing for selfies.

As seen on the Palais big screen, he had to be pulled away from the crush of admirers to make his way in front of the swath of photographers and pose alongside his director, Joseph Kosinski, and blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer. They were joined by fellow Top Gun: Maverick stars Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm (who straightened Cruise’s bow tie on the carpet), Glen Powell, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, Lewis Pullman and others.

Top Gun: Maverick has been winning rave reviews from critics since it made its world premiere earlier this month in San Diego atop the retired aircraft carrier USS Midway .

“Your enjoyment of Top Gun: Maverick might depend on how much you’re willing to shut out the real world and surrender to movie-star magic,” wrote   THR chief film critic David Rooney. “Which this superior sequel — directed with virtuoso technical skill, propulsive pacing and edge-of-your-seat flying sequences by Joseph Kosinski — has in abundance.”

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Why does Tom Cruise do his own stunts? ‘No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’’

Cruise spoke at the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

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By Kyle Buchanan

• May 18, 2022

CANNES, France — It has been 30 years since Tom Cruise attended the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s evident the festival would like to make up for lost time.

Perhaps that’s why, in advance of a conversation with the actor billed as a “Rendezvous with Tom Cruise” — which was itself happening in advance of the evening premiere of Cruise’s sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” — the festival played a nearly 15-minute-long clip reel of Cruise’s filmography, hyperbolically scored to Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra.” As the actor and audience watched from their seats, the reel touched on Cruise the action star, Cruise the dramatic thespian and Cruise the romantic, though the latter section, which featured him pitching woo at a bevy of leading ladies, notably left out Cruise’s ex-wife and three-time co-star Nicole Kidman.

“It’s wild seeing this reel,” Cruise said after taking the stage. “It’s like your life in ten minutes — very trippy.”

Cruise was speaking in front of a mostly unmasked crowd in the Salle Claude Debussy, which included hundreds of journalists and a team from Cruise’s agent, CAA. “After everything we’ve been through, it’s such a privilege to see your faces,” he said. He noted that “Top Gun: Maverick” had been held for two years because of the pandemic, though he refused to show it on a streaming service in the meantime. “Not gonna happen!” Cruise said to applause.

The 59-year-old star is insistent that his movies receive a lengthy theatrical window, a mandate that has sometimes put him in conflict with studio heads, who are eager to fill their streaming services with star-driven content. And in an era where big names like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sandra Bullock have no problem appearing in films for Netflix, Cruise remains a rare holdout.

“There’s a very specific way to make a movie for cinema, and I make movies for the big screen,” said Cruise. “I know where they go after that and that’s fine.” He said he even called theater owners during the pandemic to reassure them: “Just know we are making ‘Mission: Impossible.’ ‘Top Gun’ is coming out.”

Cruise is a discursive speaker who will leap out of one anecdote before it’s done to land in another, then another. (Perhaps that would make for an esoteric set piece in one of his action films?) But it was striking how often he returned to his formative experience shooting the 1981 movie “Taps,” in which he acted opposite George C. Scott and found himself fascinated by the way the filmmaking worked. Cruise said that while shooting, he thought, “Please, if I could just do this for the rest of my life, I will never take it for granted.”

And in the absence of any challenging questions from his interlocutor, the French journalist Didier Allouch — who was mostly content to burble blandishments like “You're absolutely extraordinary” to his interview subject — Cruise had the freedom to basically spin his own narrative of being a determined student of cinema and his fellow man. (And “Taps,” of course.)

“I was the kind of kid who always wrote goals on the wall of what kind of movies I liked or what I wanted my life to be, and I worked toward those goals,” Cruise said.

Though the conversation increasingly leaned toward bland generalities — “I’m interested in people, cultures, and adventure,” Cruise said more than once — it did provide one major laugh line when Allouch asked why he was so determined to do his own stunts in the “Mission: Impossible” movies, which will soon be receiving seventh and eighth installments shot back-to-back.

“No one asked Gene Kelly ‘Why do you dance?’” replied the star.

Kyle Buchanan, a Los Angeles-based pop culture reporter, writes The Projectionist column. He was previously a senior editor at Vulture, New York Magazine's entertainment website, where he covered the movie industry. More about Kyle Buchanan

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Tom Cruise is back in 'Top Gun: Maverick'

Three Decades after the original "Top Gun", Tom Cruise returns to lead a fresh squadron of Navy fighter pilots in "Top Gun: Maverick."

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Review: Tom Cruise flies high — again — in the exhilarating ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

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“If you think, you’re dead.” That’s one of Tom Cruise’s more memorable lines from “Top Gun,” a cautionary reminder that when your engine flames out or an enemy pilot locks you in their sights, hesitation means death. Inadvertently, the line also suggests the best way to enjoy Tony Scott’s immortal 1986 blockbuster: Best not to think too long or hard about the dumb plot, the threadbare romance, the fetishization of U.S. military might or the de rigueur plausibility issues. The key is to succumb, like Cruise’s high-flying Maverick himself, to a world of unchecked instinct and pure sensation, to savor the movie’s symphony of screaming jets and booming Giorgio Moroder, not to mention all those lovingly photographed torsos and tighty-whities.

Jets still scream and muscles still gleam in the ridiculous and often ridiculously entertaining “Top Gun: Maverick,” though in several respects, the movie evinces — and rewards — an unusual investment of brainpower. I’d go further and say that it offers its own decisive reversal of Maverick’s dubious logic: It has plenty on its mind, and it’s gloriously alive.

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials .

A lot of consideration and calculation have clearly gone into this long-aborning blockbuster sequel, insofar as Cruise (one of the producers) and his collaborators have taken such clear pains to maintain continuity with the events, if not the style, of the first film. That’s no small thing, more than 30 years after the fiery young Maverick lost Goose, made peace with Iceman and rode off into the annals of fictional U.S. Navy history. And rather than let bygones be bygones, the director Joseph Kosinski and a trio of screenwriters (Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Cruise’s favorite auteur-wingman, Christopher McQuarrie) have resurrected those threads of rivalry, tragedy and triumph and spun them into uncharted realms of male-weepie grandiosity.

Some of this continuity is a matter of basic story sense, rooted in a shrewd understanding of franchise mechanics and an equally savvy appeal to ’80s nostalgia. But it also has something to do with the 59-year-old Cruise’s close stewardship of his own superhuman image, a commitment that speaks to his talent as well as his monomania. And with the arguable exception of “Mission: Impossible’s” Ethan Hunt, few Cruise characters have felt as aligned with that monomania as Maverick. From the moment he entered the frame in ’86, sporting flippant aviator shades and riding a Kawasaki motorcycle, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell announced himself as a signature Cruise creation — a precision-tooled amalgam of underwear-dancing sex symbol (just three years after “Risky Business”) and the envelope-pushing, heights-scaling action star he would become.

These days, the need for speed still persists for both Cruise and Maverick, even if the latter does more flying than running. But for all the barriers he’s broken and all the miles he’s logged in his career as a Navy test pilot, Maverick occupies a state of self-willed professional stasis. Unwilling to be promoted into desk-job irrelevancy, he is a captain by rank and a rebel by nature. The opening sequence finds him playing Icarus with one of the Navy’s shiny new toys, thumbing his nose in the process at the first of the movie’s two glowering authoritarians. (They’re played by Ed Harris and Jon Hamm.) Old habits die hard, but so do the ghosts of the past, and Maverick, for all his reckless abandon in the cockpit, will soon find himself breaking his own rules by thinking more carefully, and tactically, than he’s ever had to do before.

Called back to the elite Navy training school where he flew planes, defied orders and irritated his peers with distinction, Maverick is charged with preparing the program’s best and brightest for a stealth attack on a far-flung uranium enrichment plant owned by some conveniently unidentified NATO-threatening entity. As impossible missions go, it makes the Death Star trench attack look like a grocery run — a tough assignment for Maverick’s 12 brilliant but still-untested pilots, played by actors including Lewis Pullman, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez and a terrific Glen Powell as a smug, know-it-all Iceman type. And then there’s the hotheaded Rooster (Miles Teller, sullen as only he can be), whose candidacy is complicated by the fact that his late father was Maverick’s wingman and best friend, Goose (the great Anthony Edwards, seen here in brief shards of footage from the first “Top Gun”). Talk about chickens coming home to roost.

Rooster’s background is a ludicrous contrivance. It’s also the perfect setup for the kind of rich, thorny cross-generational soap opera that — as much as its aspect-ratio-fluctuating flight sequences and its climactic surge of Lady Gaga — is this movie’s reason for being. Those planes may be powered by fuel, but “Top Gun: Maverick” runs on pure, unfiltered dad energy. Try not to smile whenever Cruise’s Maverick flashes a mischievous avuncular grin beneath his helmet and chases his young charges in F/A-18s all over the Mojave Desert, teaching them new moves while wasting no chance to reassert his own superiority. Back on the ground, Maverick and Rooster’s surrogate daddy-son tensions flare into the open, exacerbated by guilt, resentment and their recognition of their shared stubbornness.

The drama might have taken on an intriguingly Oedipal edge if the filmmakers had thought to bring back, say, Meg Ryan as Carole, Goose’s wife and Rooster’s mother. But here, with the exception of Monica Barbaro as one of Maverick’s most gifted proteges, women are few and far between, and even the more prominent ones get mostly perfunctory treatment. With no sign of Kelly McGillis as the Navy instructor who once took Maverick’s breath away, it falls to another flame, Penny (a lovely, underused Jennifer Connelly), to mix a few drinks, provide a flicker of romantic distraction and snuff out the first film’s lingering homoerotic vibes. Not that there are many such whiffs here, and more’s the pity: Kosinski, who previously directed Cruise in the shiny, empty science-fiction drama “Oblivion,” is a skilled craftsman with none of Scott’s horned-up filmmaking energy. (He does salute the original with an opening blast of “Danger Zone” and a rousing game of football in the surf, though the latter is more team-building than steam-building exercise.)

Scott’s admirers may miss that disreputable edge, the unrepentantly vulgar sensibility that made the original “Top Gun” a dreamy, voluptuous hoot. There’s some compensation in Kosinski’s fight and flight sequences, full of face-melting ascents, whiplash-inducing loop-de-loops and other airborne stunts that prove considerably more transporting and immersive than what the first “Top Gun” was able to accomplish. That’s only to be expected, given the more sophisticated hardware involved. Like any proper commercial for the military-industrial complex, “Top Gun: Maverick” teases the latest cutting-edge advances in aeronautics and defense technology, a field that has evolved roughly in step with an ever more digitally subsumed movie industry.

At the same time, thanks to Cruise and Kosinski’s unfashionable insistence on practical filmmaking and their refusal to lean too heavily on computer-generated visual effects, their sequel plays like a throwback in more than one sense. But the era that produced the first film has shifted, and “Top Gun: Maverick” is especially poignant in the ways, both subtle and overt, that it acknowledges the passage of time, the fading of youth and the shifting of its own status as a pop cultural phenomenon. The original was a risky, relatively low-budget underdog that somehow became a perfectly imperfect movie for its moment, soaring on the wings of its dreamy eroticism and recruitment-commercial aesthetics, a mega-hit soundtrack and an incandescent star. It ushered in a new era of decadence for its producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and for the many gung-ho American blockbusters they would keep cranking out.

“Top Gun: Maverick” is a longer, costlier and appreciably weightier affair, and its expanded emotional scope and heightened production values (including a score by the original film’s composer, Harold Faltermeyer) give it a classy, elegiac sheen; it’s like a hot summer diversion in prestige-dinosaur drag, or vice versa. As a rare big-budget Hollywood movie about men and women who fly without capes, it has a lot riding on it. Once set for a summer 2020 release but delayed almost two years by the pandemic, it arrives bearing the hopes and dreams of a tentatively resurgent industry that could use a non-Marvel theatrical hit. And as such, everything about its story — from the intergenerational conflict to the high stakes of Maverick’s mission to the rusted-out F-14s collecting dust at the periphery of the action — carries an unmistakable subtext. Is this movie one of the last gasps of a dying Hollywood empire? Or is its emotionally stirring, viscerally gripping and proudly old-fashioned storytelling the latest adrenaline shot that the industry so desperately needs?

It’s hard to consider any of this apart from Cruise, whose attention-grabbing actions during an earlier phase of the pandemic — shooting a video of himself going to see “Tenet” in a packed London theater , verbally lashing members of his “Mission: Impossible” crew for flouting COVID-19 protocols — suggest a man who’s placed the weight of an entire troubled industry on his own shoulders. His endless search for the perfect action vehicle has sometimes felt like a quest for some elusive fountain of Hollywood youth, and it’s led to gratifying highs ( “Edge of Tomorrow” ) and inexplicable lows ( “The Mummy” ). Like Maverick, to whom someone wise once said, “Son, your ego is writing checks that your body can’t cash,” Cruise just won’t quit, won’t give up, won’t listen to anyone who tells him no. As a sometime fan of Cruise’s egomania, at least when he’s dangling from a helicopter or literally running to catch a plane, I’m not really complaining.

And so there’s some irony and maybe even a hint of self-awareness in the fact that while Cruise owns just about every moment of this movie, another star winds up stealing it. As Iceman, Maverick’s old adversary turned wingman, mentor and ally, Val Kilmer haunts “Top Gun: Maverick” from its earliest moments but enters it surprisingly late, anchoring a perfectly timed, beautifully played scene that kicks the movie into emotional overdrive. Watching Ice as he greets and counsels Maverick, you may find yourself thinking about the actor playing him, about the recent toll on his health and the rickety trajectory of his own post-’80s and ’90s career, subjects that were illuminated by the recent documentary “Val.” In one fictional moment, he gives us something unmistakably, irreducibly real, partly by puncturing the fantasy of human invincibility that his co-star has never stopped trying to sell.

‘Top Gun: Maverick’

Rated: PG-13, for sequences of intense action, and some strong language Running time: 2 hours, 17 minutes Playing: Starts May 27 in general release

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Tom Cruise: An Eternal Youth

After 40 years, Tom Cruise continues to push the envelope in film. Exposing one's heart to the world through their work is not only risky business, as far as Cruise is concerned, it is the o... Read all After 40 years, Tom Cruise continues to push the envelope in film. Exposing one's heart to the world through their work is not only risky business, as far as Cruise is concerned, it is the only way to achieve an end that feels complete. After 40 years, Tom Cruise continues to push the envelope in film. Exposing one's heart to the world through their work is not only risky business, as far as Cruise is concerned, it is the only way to achieve an end that feels complete.

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TOM CRUISE is a global cultural icon who has made an immeasurable impact on cinema by creating some of the most memorable characters of all time. Having achieved extraordinary success as an actor, producer and philanthropist in a career spanning over three decades, Cruise is a three-time Oscar® nominee and three-time Golden Globe Award® winner whose films have earned over $10 billion in worldwide box office—an incomparable accomplishment. Eighteen of Cruise’s films have grossed over $100 million domestically, and a record 23 have made more than $200 million globally. His latest film, Mission: Impossible – Fallout has made over $775 million worldwide becoming Cruise’s most successful film to date.

Cruise has starred in numerous legendary films such as Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, Risky Business, Minority Report, Interview with the Vampire, A Few Good Men, The Firm, Rain Man, Collateral, The Last Samurai, Edge of Tomorrow, The Color of Money and the Mission: Impossible series, among many others. Combined, the Mission: Impossible franchise has brought in over $3.5 billion since Cruise conceived the idea for a film adaptation of the classic television series and produced the first in 1996. He is currently in production on the long-awaited sequel to Top Gun.

A consummate filmmaker involved in all aspects of production, Cruise has proven his versatility with the films and roles he chooses. He has made 43 films, contributing in a producing role on many of them, and collaborated with a remarkable list of celebrated film directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, Neil Jordan, Brian De Palma, Cameron Crowe, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ed Zwick, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, J.J. Abrams, Robert Redford, Brad Bird, Doug Liman and Christopher McQuarrie.

Cruise received Academy Award® nominations for Best Actor for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire. He was a Best Supporting Actor nominee for Magnolia and won Golden Globes (Best Actor) for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire, in addition to a Best Supporting Actor prize for Magnolia. He also received Golden Globe nominations for his roles in Risky Business, A Few Good Men and The Last Samurai. Cruise has earned acting nominations and awards from BAFTA, the Screen Actors Guild, the Chicago Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review.

Cruise’s previous few films include the critically acclaimed American Made, The Mummy, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Oblivion and the suspense thriller Jack Reacher, which earned $218 million worldwide. Prior to that, he made a memorable appearance in Ben Stiller’s comedy smash Tropic Thunder, as the foul-mouthed Hollywood movie mogul Les Grossman. This performance, based on a character Cruise created, earned him praise from critics and audiences as well as his seventh Golden Globe nomination.

Cruise has been honored with tributes ranging from Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year Award to the John Huston Award from the Artists Rights Foundation and the American Cinematheque Award for Distinguished Achievement in Film. In addition to his artistic contributions, Cruise has used his professional success as a vehicle for positive change, becoming an international advocate, activist and philanthropist in the fields of health, education and human rights. He has been honored by the Mentor LA organization for his work on behalf of the children of Los Angeles and around the world. In 2011 Cruise received the Simon Wiesenthal Humanitarian Award and the following year he received the Entertainment Icon Award from the Friars Club for his outstanding accomplishments in the entertainment industry and in the humanities. He is the fourth person to receive this honor after Douglas Fairbanks, Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Empire magazine awarded Cruise its Legend of Our Lifetime Award in 2014. Most recently, Cruise was the first actor to receive The Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation’s Pioneer of the Year Award in 2018.

• Top Gun: Maverick (2021)
• Mission: Impossible Fallout (2018)
• American Made (2017)
• The Mummy (2017)
• Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)
• Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015)
• Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
• Oblivion (2013)
• Jack Reacher (2012)
• Rock of Ages (2012)
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
• Knight and Day (2010)
• Valkyrie (2008)
• Tropic Thunder (2008)
• Lions for Lambs (2007)
• Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)
• War of the Worlds (2005)
• Collateral (2004)
• The Last Samurai (2003)
• Minority Report (2002)
• Vanilla Sky (2002)
• Mission: Impossible 2 (2001)
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
• Magnolia (1999)
• Jerry Maguire (1996)
• Mission: Impossible (1996)
• Interview with the Vampire (1994)
• The Firm (1993)
• A Few Good Men (1992)
• Far and Away (1992)
• Days of Thunder (1990)
• Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
• Rain Man (1988)
• Cocktail (1988)
• The Color of Money (1986)
• Top Gun (1986)
• Legend (1985)
• Risky Business (1983)
• All the Right Moves (1983)
• The Outsiders (1983)
• Losin’ It (1983)
• Taps (1981)
• Endless Love (1981)

• Trending on RT

(Photo by DreamWorks/courtesy Everett Collection. Collateral.)

All Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked By Tomatometer

Collateral celebrates its 20th anniversary!

From his teen idol days in the early ’80s to his status as a marquee-lighting leading man today, Tom Cruise has consistently done it all for decades — he’s completed impossible missions, learned about Wapner time in Rain Man , driven the highway to the danger zone in Top Gun , and done wonders for Bob Seger’s royalty statements in Risky Business , to offer just a few examples. Mr. Cruise is one of the few honest-to-goodness film stars left in the Hollywood firmament, so whether you’re a hardcore fan or just interested in a refresher course on his filmography, we’re here to take a fond look back at a truly impressive career and rank all Tom Cruise movies.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) 97%

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) 96%

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 96%

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (2015) 94%

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) 93%

Risky Business (1983) 93%

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) 91%

Minority Report (2002) 89%

Rain Man (1988) 88%

The Color of Money (1986) 88%

Collateral (2004) 86%

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) 84%

American Made (2017) 85%

A Few Good Men (1992) 84%

Jerry Maguire (1996) 84%

Magnolia (1999) 82%

Tropic Thunder (2008) 82%

The Firm (1993) 76%

War of the Worlds (2005) 76%

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 76%

Mission: Impossible III (2006) 71%

The Outsiders (1983) 70%

Taps (1981) 68%

Mission: Impossible (1996) 65%

The Last Samurai (2003) 66%

Jack Reacher (2012) 64%

Interview With the Vampire (1994) 63%

All the Right Moves (1983) 61%

Valkyrie (2008) 62%

Top Gun (1986) 58%

Mission: Impossible II (2000) 56%

Oblivion (2013) 54%

Knight and Day (2010) 52%

Far and Away (1992) 50%

Vanilla Sky (2001) 43%

Rock of Ages (2012) 42%

Legend (1985) 41%

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) 38%

Days of Thunder (1990) 38%

Lions for Lambs (2007) 27%

Losin' It (1982) 18%

The Mummy (2017) 15%

Cocktail (1988) 9%

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Star Wars' Next Movie Breaks 25 Years Of Tradition

The incredibles live-action concept trailer: scarlett johansson’s elastigirl, millie bobby brown’s violet & more, star wars canon will struggle to top grand admiral thrawn's final moments in legends.

Tom Cruise is one of the most popular actors of his generation, and here’s every upcoming movie he will appear in. Tom Cruise was born on July 3, 1962, and made his big-screen debut in 1981 in the romantic drama Endless Love , where he only had a bit part. Later that year, he had a supporting role in the drama Taps , which helped open more doors for him in the entertainment world. Cruise’s breakthrough came in 1983 with the teen comedy Risky Business , where he played the lead role. Later, in 1986, his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun helped cement his superstar status.

Since then, Cruise has worked with a number of directors and explored various genres – from gothic horror with Interview with the Vampire , where he played vampire Lestat, to action spy movies like the Mission: Impossible saga and psychological dramas like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut . Although he has also been part of less popular and successful projects, such as the 2017 version of The Mummy , Cruise continues to be quite popular with the audience, in big part thanks to the Mission: Impossible franchise, which continues to produce more and more movies, all starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt.

Related: Every Movie Tom Cruise DOESN'T Run In

Although Mission: Impossible continues to be a priority in Tom Cruise’s career, he already has other projects lined up, of which not much is known, but they will take him on different adventures, including one in outer space. In addition to that, fans are waiting for the highly anticipated sequel to a 1980s classic to arrive, as its release date had to be delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic . Here’s every upcoming Tom Cruise movie:

• Top Gun: Maverick

First on the list of Tom Cruise’s upcoming projects is Top Gun: Maverick , a sequel to the 1986 movie Top Gun . Directed by Joseph Kosinski, Top Gun: Maverick will see Maverick training a new generation of pilots, among those Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), Goose’s son. This will push Maverick to confront the ghosts of his past and his deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those chosen to fly. Also starring are Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, and Ed Harris. Top Gun: Maverick was originally scheduled for a July 2019 release, and was later pushed to June 2020. Due to the pandemic, Top Gun: Maverick was delayed to July 2021.

Mission Impossible 7 & 8

As mentioned above, the Mission: Impossible movie series is still alive and keeps on producing new content. The latest entry in the franchise was Mission: Impossible – Fallout , released in 2018. Fans of the series won’t have to worry about the franchise ending with Fallout , as a seventh and eighth movie are in development, with plans of filming back-to-back. Unfortunately, the pandemic also changed those plans, and Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 were rescheduled, with their new release dates being November 19, 2021, and November 4, 2022, respectively.

SpaceX Project

The weirdest and most ambitious project in Tom Cruise’s list of upcoming movies is one that is currently referred to as the “SpaceX Project”. This will take Cruise and company to space , with the purpose of shooting a movie in space on board the International Space Station. The mission is expected to happen in late 2021 and will count with Doug Liman as director, but details on the plot, characters, and more are currently unknown.

Another confirmed project starring Tom Cruise is Luna Park , with Doug Liman also directing. Luna Park has been in development for years and has been referred to as a "passion project" of Liman. Just like SpaceX Project , Luna Park is a sci-fi movie, with the story following a group of renegade employees who “ venture to the moon to steal an energy source ”. Luna Park doesn’t have a projected release date yet, but hopefully, it will see the light soon.

Next: 2021 Could Finally Give Tom Cruise A $1 Billion Movie

Key Release Dates

Mission: impossible - dead reckoning, mission: impossible - dead reckoning part two.

• SR Originals

All 44 Tom Cruise movies, ranked from worst to best

• Tom Cruise has done every type of movie you can think of over his nearly 40-year career.
• Here we rank every one from worst to best.
• See where his latest, "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One," ranks in his career filmography.

43. "Rock of Ages" (2012)

Somehow Cruise got roped into being part of this feature-film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. But leave it to him to lay it all out there.

Though the movie is unwatchable, Cruise provides its only memorable moments when his rock-star character belts out classic songs like "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Wanted Dead or Alive."

42. "Endless Love" (1981)

Cruise's first appearance in a movie is this 1980s teen romance drama starring Brooke Shields that's best known for giving us the Diana Ross/Lionel Richie title song.

Cruise gets a brief bit of screen time as one of the male lead's friends. It's quite forgettable, but it's still better than "Rock of Ages."

41. "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" (2016)

Between "Mission: Impossible" movies, Cruise tried to kick off another action franchise by bringing the main character of the Lee Child novel series to the big screen.

Though the first movie just got over the $200 million mark at the worldwide box office, the performance (or lack thereof) by the sequel indicated no one wanted any more Mr. Reacher. It barely made $162 million worldwide.

40. "The Mummy" (2017)

Cruise was all set to be the Robert Downey Jr. of Universal's Dark Universe with the release of this movie and promises of more creature pictures to come. But playing a soldier of fortune who tries to stop an ancient Egyptian princess from taking over the world didn't grab audiences. It was another franchise not meant to be.

39. "Losin' It" (1983)

Still getting his legs under him in the movie biz, Cruise signed onto this teen comedy in which he's one of four friends who go on a hard-partying road trip to Tijuana in hopes of losing their virginity. Yes, even Cruise couldn't hide from the teen-sex-comedy genre when he started his career.

38. "Mission: Impossible II" (2000)

Man, John Woo deserved better than this. The legendary Hong Kong director took over the "Mission: Impossible" reins after Brian De Palma kicked things off with the first movie, but Woo didn't find the same success.

"Mission: Impossible II" did go on to become one of the highest-grossing movies of 2000, with over $546 million earned worldwide, but with its weak plot and character development, it has not aged anywhere near as well as the first movie (or the other movies in the franchise).

37. "Jack Reacher" (2012)

Though "Jack Reacher" was the first time Cruise worked with his longtime "Mission: Impossible" director, Christopher McQuarrie, and it features the legendary director Werner Herzog as the movie's villain, Cruise as Jack Reacher is a seen-it-before character who isn't exciting.

36. "Oblivion" (2013)

Here, Cruise attempted to go the sci-fi route in hopes of having a breakthrough "Minority Report"-like experience for the audience. But the story was nowhere as sharp, and its postapocalyptic vibe left us all feeling uninterested.

35. "Lions for Lambs" (2007)

Marking the first movie released by United Artists after Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner took over (the two left UA after a couple of years) was "Lions for Lambs," a tense drama set around the war in Afghanistan and directed by Robert Redford.

Cruise gave his all playing an agenda-pushing senator and has some strong scenes opposite Meryl Streep. But the movie is just dull.

34. "Far and Away" (1992)

Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, paired together in this 1890s-set epic directed by Ron Howard. The two play Irish immigrants seeking a fortune in America. Outside the lush photography, there isn't much to enjoy about this movie. And don't get me started on Cruise's awful Irish accent.

33. "Vanilla Sky" (2001)

At the tail end of Cruise's heartthrob phase, the director Cameron Crowe teamed with him again after their hugely successful collaboration on "Jerry Maguire" to make a very different love story.

Based on the Spanish movie "Open Your Eyes," Cruise plays a vain New York City media playboy who has a different outlook on life after being in a horrific car crash. Though Cruise, Cameron Diaz, and Penélope Cruz (who also starred in "Open Your Eyes") all give top performances, Crowe goes too weird with the story, leaving viewers out in the void by the time the movie gets into the home stretch.

32. "American Made" (2017)

Mixing action and dark comedy in telling the real-life story of the drug runner Barry Seal seemed like a nice pivot for Cruise, but at the end of the day, the director Doug Liman's movie is just too glossy to be taken seriously. (Accent update: Cruise delivers a tolerable Southern drawl.)

31. "The Last Samurai" (2003)

Cruise stars as an American soldier in 19th-century Japan who embraces the samurai culture. The movie went on to receive four Oscar nominations, but it's the kind of title in which one viewing is enough.

And on a side note: Wow, would this movie get hammered on social media if it came out today.

30. "Valkyrie" (2008)

Another release from the time Cruise was calling the shots at UA, "Valkyrie" sees him playing one of the rogue Nazi officers who attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

(Accent update: Cruise — and basically most of the other Nazi officers — decided to not even bother with a German accent. Good choice; the audience didn't even notice [ holds back giggles ].)

29. "Cocktail" (1988)

It's one of the movies in Cruise's career that ride fully on his good looks. Honestly, this movie should have just been titled "Sex." Cruise plays a hot New York City bartender who has dreams of making it big, and it's his hotness that's going to get him to the top. It's classic Hot Guy Cruise — who cares that the story is garbage.

28. "War of the Worlds" (2005)

Steven Spielberg teamed up with Cruise after "Minority Report" for this blockbuster remake of the classic sci-fi movie. Though it made a lot of money, it was dark in tone — maybe a little too dark. Be honest: Have you wanted to see this movie again?

27. "Knight and Day" (2010)

This is one of those movies that don't get enough credit. The director James Mangold cleverly takes all the common action-hero traits and has Cruise make fun of them. You might want to give this one another viewing.

26. "Taps" (1981)

Unlike in "Endless Love," Cruise really capitalized on this small role. As a military cadet who takes his responsibilities way too seriously, Cruise is a standout in the movie and showed audiences (and Hollywood executives) that he had leading-man potential.

25. "Mission: Impossible III" (2006)

J.J. Abrams takes over the franchise for this one and does an impressive job. It also helps that you have the talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the villain. It's better than "Mission: Impossible II," so we're going in the right direction.

24. "The Outsiders" (1983)

Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of the classic novel brought all the biggest names from young Hollywood together, and Cruise was right there in the mix. With Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Emilio Estevez, and Rob Lowe, the movie is pretty heavy-handed with the drama, but it's fun to watch all these amazing talents on the screen together.

23. "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation" (2015)

Rebounding from the so-so performance of "Jack Reacher," McQuarrie jumps on the "Mission: Impossible" franchise and ups the action stakes. Yep, this is the one where Cruise hangs from the side of a giant plane taking off. The movie also got an extra jolt with the inclusion of Rebecca Ferguson in the supporting cast.

22. "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" (2018)

This "Mission: Impossible" could go down as one of the best action movies ever — its stunts and action sequences are that amazing. This time, McQuarrie gives us a deeper look at what makes Ethan Hunt tick and the values he lives by. But it's really the action that stays with you.

21. "Minority Report" (2002)

With its breakthroughs in CGI and tech, the first teaming of Spielberg and Cruise lived up to the hype. This movie was so advanced in its execution and what it showcased that it had a "Jurassic Park"-style ripple effect, in the sense that it has influenced countless action and sci-fi movies since.

20. "Tropic Thunder" (2008)

Though Cruise doesn't have a lot of screen time, his presence in this movie cannot be ignored. Playing a despicable movie executive named Les Grossman, he brings that patented intensity to a role that for most actors would have been a mail-it-in cameo role. In Cruise's hands, it's one of the best comedic performances of the early 2000s.

19. "All the Right Moves" (1983)

Two months after Cruise hit theaters with his first lead movie, "Risky Business," he was back again with this very different movie about a Pennsylvania high-school football player who clashes with his coach.

"Risky Business" showed that Cruise had no problem being the face of a movie, but "All the Right Moves" proved he could be more than the charming lead with good looks. This one showed he could be a serious actor.

18. "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" (2011)

It's the movie that breathed life back into the "Mission: Impossible" franchise. It came five years after "Mission: Impossible III," and in that time Cruise struggled with an image problem and a string of underperforming movies. He had a lot to prove with this one. And with the casting of Jeremy Renner, Cruise probably sensed he could lose his beloved franchise if the movie didn't work.

However, Brad Bird's direction and Cruise's disregard for common sense — in this one he climbs the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai — put him back on top, as the movie became a global hit.

17. "Top Gun" (1986)

Before "Days of Thunder," Cruise and Tony Scott teamed up for what would become one of the actor's most iconic roles: the fighter pilot Maverick. What Cruise doesn't pull off acting-wise he makes up for with brooding looks and shirtless volleyball skills.

16. "The Firm" (1993)

In "The Firm," based on the best-selling John Grisham novel, Cruise gives a fantastic performance as a hotshot lawyer who signs on with one of the most prestigious US law firms only to find it has quite a dark side. The era of "Tom Cruise runs" really launched with this movie.

15. "Legend" (1985)

Ridley Scott's beautiful fantasy movie is still a marvel of moviemaking. The practical effects and production design put into this movie, made back when CGI was scarce, are a treasure. And at the center is a fresh-faced Cruise who tries to get his girl back from the villain who gave me the most nightmares as a kid, Darkness (played perfectly by Tim Curry).

14. "Collateral" (2004)

We really don't talk enough about this one enough. Michael Mann's slow-burn crime movie stars Cruise as a hitman who forces a cab driver (Jamie Foxx) to drive him around Los Angeles as he goes on his "jobs." The acting by both Cruise and Foxx in this movie is some of their best work.

13. "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" (2023)

There are many things to love about the "Mission: Impossible" franchise: Its James Bond-like gadgets. Cruise's disregard for his life and safety when it comes to pulling off amazing stunts . But the biggest thing to love is that the films just seem to get better and better.

The first "M:I," directed by Brian De Palma, set the bar very high. However, since McQuarrie took the reins in 2015 with "Rogue Nation," the franchise has gotten a jolt in the arm. It seems to always outdo itself, and "Dead Reckoning" makes good on that promise.

The high stakes, the timely villain being AI, and, of course, Tom Cruise in the middle of some amazing thrills makes this film one of the best in the franchise.

13. "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999)

Cruise and Kidman teamed up again, this time under the watch of Stanley Kubrick in what would be his final movie. Both actors are pushed to the limits as the movie explores a marriage at a crossroads. Though "Eyes Wide Shut" is not close to Kubrick's best work, Cruise and Kidman are riveting.

12. "Top Gun: Maverick" (2022)

Thirty-six years after playing Pete "Maverick" Mitchell he returns to the role in the rare legacy sequel that's better than the original movie.

Though Tony Scott's landmark "Top Gun" made Cruise a superstar and became an instant 1980s classic, the director Joseph Kosinski has elevated the story with more death-defying dogfight jet stunts and a more compelling story.

This time Maverick returns to the Top Gun school to be a teacher of the new hot-shot pilots. But he must deal with his own demons as one of the students is the son of his best friend, Goose, who died in his arms in the first movie.

Cruise delivers one of his best performances in years.

11. "Days of Thunder" (1990)

It's pretty much everything you would think would be in a Tony Scott movie: lots of fast cars and big egos. Cruise is in his glory in every scene playing the hot-shot Nascar driver Cole Trickle (and Kidman appears as his love interest).

10. "Risky Business" (1983)

It's the movie that made Cruise a star. The coming-of-age story doesn't shy away from its mature storyline, and Cruise delivers a playful performance but also shows sparks of his dramatic chops that he'll showcase in the decade to come.

9. "Mission: Impossible" (1996)

Boy have things changed since the first "Mission: Impossible." With De Palma at the helm, the movie had its action, but it was encased in a tense whodunit thriller. Since then the action has only gotten bigger (and the story, well, less of a concern), but Cruise has always been fantastic as Hunt.

The first movie is his best acting work of the franchise. (Accent update: Cruise delivers another Southern accent while disguised at the beginning of the movie — one of those classic face-rip-off disguises. It's brief but effective in the scene.)

8. "Interview with the Vampire" (1994)

Cruise gives one of his best performances as Lestat, a vampire from the 1700s who finds a lot of drama in his undead life once he recruits Louis (Brad Pitt). (Accent update: His little hint of a French accent to stay true to the character's portrayal in the classic Anne Rice book is perfectly subtle.)

7. "Edge of Tomorrow" (2014)

Whether you want to call it "Edge of Tomorrow" or "Live. Die. Repeat.," it's just a really great action movie. With Liman directing and McQuarrie as a screenwriter, Cruise is surrounded by people he trusts to make a risky project: a soldier who relives the same day. But the MVP of the movie is Emily Blunt, who delivers a performance that makes Cruise kick it up a few notches.

6. "Rain Man" (1988)

Always at his best when he's playing a character with major conflict, Cruise plays a guy always looking to capitalize on the angles until he's finally in a situation in which he has to be on the level: building a relationship with his autistic savant brother (Dustin Hoffman).

5. "Jerry Maguire" (1996)

Receiving a best-actor nomination for his performance as a slick sports agent whose life turns upside down after having a moment of clarity, Cruise was, thanks to this movie, at his height of stardom and power in Hollywood.

4. "A Few Good Men" (1992)

Rob Reiner's courtroom drama has Cruise going up against Jack Nicholson, and it's pure magic. Yes, there's the "can't handle the truth" scene, but for us, it starts earlier in the movie when the two characters meet for the first time.

Thanks to the incredible dialogue by Aaron Sorkin, both actors subtly trade off with each other, but it's the fire being held back that makes the ending when they are face-to-face again so memorable.

3. "Magnolia" (1999)

No matter what you think of Paul Thomas Anderson's epic look at family, love, and forgiveness, it's hard to dispute that it has the most powerful performance of Cruise's career.

Playing a pickup artist who uses his talents to build a public-speaking career, Cruise appears as we've never seen him before. Anderson and Cruise connected over dealing with the loss of their fathers and use that darkness to create the character of Frank T. J. Mackey.

2. "The Color of Money" (1986)

Paul Newman won only one Oscar in his iconic career, and it was for this movie. But you have to give a big assist to Cruise.

Playing the protégé to the pool player "Fast Eddie" Felson — the role Newman first played in 1961's "The Hustler" — Cruise is a cocky player, and you can never tell whether he's on the level with Felson. Cruise proved once again that he's more than just a pretty face.

1. "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989)

Cruise got an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the veteran and activist Ron Kovic, who was paralyzed fighting in Vietnam. Oliver Stone traces Kovic's journey from being a wide-eyed soldier thinking he's doing what's right for America to coming home from the war to find everything has changed. Including the way he views his own country.

Cruise has never been better as he delivers a tour de force performance that still gives us chills.

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Behind Tom Cruise's apparent outburst, Covid-era anxieties and power imbalances

When the film producer Anna Halberg first heard the leaked audio of the actor Tom Cruise apparently erupting at crew members on the set of "Mission: Impossible 7," reportedly because he believed they breached Covid-19 protocols, she wondered if the outburst was entirely professional.

And yet Halberg, who has spent recent months on the set of a science fiction movie in Hungary, understood the fierce urgency of Cruise's words, heated as they may have been. Covid-19, she said in a phone interview, is a serious threat that film crews need to take seriously.

"I think there is a heightened level of anxiety around making sure the production doesn't shut down, making sure you're not spending extra money, and of course keeping people safe and healthy," Halberg, who is producing the sci-fi film "Distant" for Steven Spielberg's company Amblin Partners , said.

"You can definitely feel that tension on set," she said, adding that the crew on "Distant" thoroughly abided by "strict" Covid-19 guidelines: masks, face shields, social distancing, three-times-a-week testing, extensive sanitization.

The leaked audio was published by the British tabloid newspaper The Sun , which reported that Cruise was berating two crew members who he believed had broken Covid-19 safety protocols while filming the latest "Mission: Impossible" franchise entry near London.

NBC News has not confirmed the authenticity of the audio or its context, but it has reached out to Cruise's representatives, the actor's lawyers and Paramount Pictures. The New York Times and Variety both cited unnamed sources close to the film confirming the authenticity of the recording.

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In the leaked audio, Cruise appears to tell the crew that Hollywood is relying on would-be blockbusters like theirs to boost the film industry in a time of stalled productions and theater closures.

"We want the gold standard. They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us, because they believe in us and what we’re doing," Cruise said, according to the recording.

High stakes, uncertain times

Jeremy Hartman, a cinematographer who has worked on music videos and commercials during the pandemic, said he believed the pressure to comply with the new rules was especially great on top-level producers, financiers and executives behind projects.

The stakes are high for those figures even in a normal year, but especially so these days: Coronavirus-free productions could set a template for movies and television shows stalled by the pandemic, and producers could take a major reputational and financial hit if something goes awry, Hartman said. They're also responsible for the safety of a small army of actors and behind-the-scenes workers.

"He feels he's putting his reputation on the line, judging by his outburst," Hartman said. (Cruise is both the star of the "Mission: Impossible" series and one of its producers, not to mention a world-famous celebrity with legions of fans.)

But the realities of shooting during a pandemic also weigh heavily on ground-level craftspeople and technicians, Hartman added: "There's obviously an extra level of risk we have to take because we want to work, and we want to feed our families, too."

Yves Wilson, a union camera assistant whose credits include the Robert Downey Jr. version of "Sherlock Holmes" and the FX drama series "The Americans," said he believed most crew members were united in their commitment to abiding by Covid-19 protocols, cumbersome as they might be on occasion.

"You know, as annoying as it may be to wear both an N95 [mask] and a face shield and other gear while we work, it's a relief to know there are rules in place to protect us, at least on most productions," he said.

Wilson felt some "hesitation" about returning to physical sets in late August, when he began getting opportunities to work on documentaries, commercials and the upcoming Queen Latifah crime drama "The Equalizer." But once he got back on the job, he felt grateful.

"I think there is an agreement where it's basically, 'Listen, we are very lucky to be working right now.' You can make a pretty good living in the industry while a lot of Americans are struggling and out of work," he said.

Toxic tirade?

Twitter, Facebook and other platforms flooded with reactions to Cruise's apparent rant Wednesday. The verdict was decidedly mixed, with many observers commending him for taking such an aggressive stand, and some of his fellow actors — George Clooney, Whoopi Goldberg, Josh Gad — coming to his defense . But many others faulted the veteran actor for what they saw as an unnecessarily cruel and expletive-laden tirade against workers who have significantly less power.

"lol all these people defending Tom Cruise have clearly never worked in a toxic environment under a screaming, egotistical man," the writer Olivia J. Rowe tweeted in one characteristic reaction.

The entertainment industry professionals who spoke to NBC News generally agreed that the angry tone of Cruise's apparent outburst was out of bounds. The recording is sure to draw particular scrutiny, given renewed focus on what has been described as Hollywood's culture of bullying .

"Hollywood has an entrenched and endemic issue with bullying that is exacerbated by the industry’s power imbalances,” the Hollywood Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality, led by Anita Hill, said in a report released in October .

Melanie Liu, a producer who has worked on television commercials and digital ad campaigns, said she could "understand the sentiment behind what he said."

"I get the frustration," Liu, who has produced advertisements for Kleenex and other major brands, said.

But the apparent rant also inspired her to look inward: What if she had behaved that way on a set?

"I can't even imagine how I would be reprimanded," she said. "That's not a way that I can act on the set, and we shouldn't, we certainly shouldn't exclude him from following that type of standard."

"He's a rich, powerful white man that has been placed on this pedestal on a world stage," Liu went on to say. "But if I, a young Asian American woman, took that tone with my crew on a set — that just wouldn't be acceptable."

Ava DuVernay, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind "Selma" and the Netflix miniseries "When They See Us," struck a similar chord in a tweet Wednesday morning .

"If you’ve shot during the pandemic, you know the Herculean effort it is to keep a project going within Covid protocols. Then some dude doesn’t wanna wear his shield? Nah. Been there. Felt the rage," DuVernay wrote, apparently alluding to the Cruise incident.

She added: "Also: If I did that on set, I’d be directing icing videos for the local bakery."

Daniel Arkin is a national reporter at NBC News.