65: Tom Cruise Is A Metaphor

as well as the weekly recommendations

In this week’s edition, I’ve got the weekly recommendations as well as why Tom Cruise is a metaphor.

(Programming note: I’m out of pocket for the next two weeks, but we’ll resume operations post Fourth of July)

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🎉 The Recommendations 🎉

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📺 The Four Seasons

WHERE: Netflix

It took Ashley and me a hot minute to finish this binge, but we both ended up liking it a lot. The premise is that, every season (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter), a trio of married couples who have been friends since college, take a trip together. But the balance is soon thrown out of whack, and hijinks ensue.

It felt like the rare show that makes room for reflection, middle-aged angst, and interpersonal weirdness without resorting to cults or corpses. Smart enough to be thoughtful, but light enough to still qualify as a comfort watch.

Think The White Lotus, but more confined and domesticated and without the spectre of murder.

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📺 Stick

WHERE: Apple TV

Owen Wilson plays a washed-up professional golfer whose career flamed out after a very public meltdown following a personal tragedy. Now he’s broke, divorced, and selling golf clubs to strangers when he meets Santi, a teenage grocery store bagger who might be the next Tiger Woods, minus the sex stuff (at least so far).

You can tell Apple was going for Ted Lasso vibes here: optimistic but troubled mentor, wide-eyed prodigy, emotional repair via niche sport, etc. The main difference, though, is that it doesn’t have the same comedic engine. There are definitely fewer laughs and seemingly no interest in writing towards easy humor.

Still though, I’m enjoying it as a hangout show with real heart, and it’s become a great one to watch with my son, especially when we’re both too fried for something heavier.

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✍️ Essay: Tom Cruise Is A Metaphor

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There’s a sequence in the latest Mission: Impossible movie, the one with all the colons and subtitles, where Tom Cruise boards not one but two planes, punching out both pilots along the way, just so he can jam a thumb drive into a bomb to stop an A.I. apocalypse. He’s also falling through the sky with a busted parachute while doing this.

Technically, that’s a spoiler. But also, not really. There are no real spoilers in Tom Cruise movies anymore. Nothing dramatically interesting happens. The tension is the action. The stunts are the story.

Which is strange. Because we know he survives. And we know that every Tom Cruise character now is a misunderstood force for good, risking life and limb and ligament for humanity against a vague villainy that barely even gets named.

And intuitively or subconsciously, we accept that there are no stakes beyond the spectacle. And that’s because the spectacle IS the art now. Silly things like story or nuance or dialogue are just ornamental.

Which is why Tom Cruise is such an apt metaphor. Let me explain.

At some point in every Tom Cruise movie, he runs. Full sprint. Knees high. Arms pumping like pistons. Not jogging, but escaping. He runs like Forrest Gump WISHES he could. As if something awful is right behind him and something worse is just ahead. It’s the signature of his work. But the Cruise Run is more than a stunt or calling card or even a wink to the camera; It’s a homily.

It’s a message about how salvation lies in spectacle. That effort is a virtue.

We know this because in almost every scenario, he isn’t REQUIRED to run. None of these movies are predicated on him specifically running or ELSE. In fact, my dream in life is to pitch a version of Speed 3 where instead of a bus or boat, Tom Cruise plays himself and he has to keep running or else his co-star blows up.

It tells us he cares. That he’s willing to bypass every modern transportation method in favor of the purest physical exertion imaginable. He’s attacking intent at a molecular level.

And it works on two levels:

Story-wise, it’s “Wow, that character must really care to run so fast and far!”

Production-wise, it’s “Wow, Tom Cruise is how old and still sprinting across a glacier? He must really care about movies.”

And even though it’s obviously just a shortcut (pun very much intended), we love it. Because it’s the grand romantic gesture of character development. Why spend time building nuance and emotional arcs when you can just cut to the fantasy suite via a slow-motion shot of Tom Cruise running along the Seine in a suit? It’s the perfect utility of showing versus telling, but also in its lowest common denominator form.

All this running would make sense if Cruise had the emotional range of a grazing bovine, but this is Tom Cruise! He’s objectively a great actor! His early career is FULL of performances showcasing a range and attention to detail that very few of his peers could match.

But somewhere along the way, perhaps in the backlash to the couch-jumping episode, Cruise converted to the gospel of the spectacle. Jumping on Oprah’s couch wasn’t wrong because he was professing love. It was wrong because it was weird.

Which is where we can see a sort of divine radicalization in this new sacred liturgy, repeated in every film like a benediction: blessed is the spectacle, for they shall inherit the ticket sales.

And each spectacle begat another one more insane than the last. Motorcycling through Paris, ramping off the side of a mountainside, fist-fighting on the side of a plane at high altitude, etc.

It’s a heterodoxy of velocity and volume. An action-first theology crafted to draw contrast against the ancient, backwards ways of thoughtful pacing, emotional complication, and quiet character work.

Which is why Tom Cruise isn’t just a metaphor; he’s a mirror.

Adherents to the church of the spectacle are prospering right now. The loudest voices. The fastest opinions. The most provocative takes. Not the introspective or the measured; the most WATCHABLE.

Information is abundant. Consensus is scarce. But spectacle will see you now.

There’s a reason Tom Cruise isn’t making Magnolia or Born on the Fourth of July anymore. And there’s a reason why Tom Cruise isn’t just a metaphor or mirror; he’s also the blueprint.