Claude and I recently completed our journey through the Mission: Impossible films. If you’ve never watched any of them, I would highly recommend it. Spy stuff! Hotties! Ving Rhames! Tom Cruise nearly killing himself for our amusement! Wow!
This last part is the real draw. Despite being one of the most beautiful men on Earth and a level-25 Scientologist, or whatever, Tom Cruise is hellbent on killing himself in the most gruesome way possible. For the fourth film, Ghost Protocol, he fucking climbed from the 123rd to the 130th floor of the Burj Kalifa, the tallest building in the world. The man is not right.
But he is hot. Always has been, probably always will be. Through all the ups and downs of Cruise’s career— from his start as a teen heart throb to his emergence as one of the biggest stars in the world, from Oprah’s couch to his present incarnation as a madman bent on self-annihilation — he has always been a smoke show. And what better showcase for his persistent hunkiness than the Mission Impossible films, which span over 20 years, from the original, in 1996, to 2018’s Fallout. What can we learn about ourselves as a society through the evolution of Tom Cruise’s sex appeal? Has he changed his appearance to fit our culture’s ever-shifting standards of beauty? Or is it the other way around? Have our standards of beauty shifted in response to Mr. Cruise? Really makes you think, huh.
6. Mission: Impossible III (2006), director, JJ Abrams
Not a boy, not yet a man, this is the blandest look Cruise has rocked in any of the MI films. Unsurprisingly, apart from Phillip Seymour Hoffman (R.I.P.) — who absolutely kills it as the series’ best, and most menacing, villain — it’s also the most boring MI film.
5. Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (2011), director, Brad Bird
A Tom Cruise for Obama’s America? A Tom Cruise for Obama’s America.
4. Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (2015), directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Hmmm, it appears I was mistaken. I was going off memory, and had wrongly remembered Thomas looking better in Rogue Nation than Ghost Protocol. But a quick Google search immediately showed me how wrong I was. Boys, this is why you do your research BEFORE you blog. Anyway, I’m not changing it, because even if, on the whole, he looks better in Ghost Protocol, he never reaches the deranged sexual heights of Motorcycle Tom:
3. Mission: Impossible (1996), director, Brian De Palma
I mean…..
2. Mission: Impossible — Fallout (2018), director, Christopher McQuarrie
Tom Cruise is 56 years old in this photo. Let that sink in for a moment. In all likelihood, He will still be Mr. Steal Your Girl when he’s collecting social security. When young, beautiful women come on to him in movies, it doesn’t even feel creepy. Who could refuse the charms of a man who looks that fucking good in a turtle neck?
1. Mission: Impossible II (2000), director, John Woo
Unfairly derided as the worst film in the franchise(again, that’s the third one, imo), MI:II is when Cruise reached the apex of his sexiness. John Woo has absolutely no interest in the spy games that were the raison d’etre of the first film. He cares about one thing and one thing only: showing Cruise looking sexy as hell on a motor cycle. And oh my oh my does he nail it:
If you aren’t panting like a dog right now, something might be wrong with you. That first photo about caused me to change my underwear.
I hope this list inspires those of you who’ve never seen the MI films to give them a watch. And for those of you have seen them, it’s never a bad time for a rewatch. Even if you remember all the twists and have seen all the stunts before, are you really going to pretend like your life couldn’t use some more of this:
Tom Cruise, a man so sexy he is, right now, in the year 2021, making me want to go out and buy a pair of Oakleys. Bow down before the king.
We Almost Lost Detroit 