Cannes Loves Tom Cruise and He Loves Them Right Back at ‘Mission: Impossible’ Premiere
The emotional screening was the end of something for Cruise, but also a collective celebration of Movies The post Cannes Loves Tom Cruise and He Loves Them Right Back at ‘Mission: Impossible’ Premiere appeared first on TheWrap.
CANNES – The Cannes Film Festival halts for movie stars, especially when that star is Tom Cruise celebrating what’s meant to be the final film of his blockbuster franchise with “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” at a glamorous red carpet premiere.
The carpet stretched on and on with a live DJ and woodwinds playing the famous movie theme, but the frenzy extended into the Grand Lumiere Theater itself where a packed crowd dressed in black tie was waiting to fall in love. And they did.
The emotional screening was the end of something for Cruise, but also a collective celebration of movies punctuated by explosions of applause throughout the nearly three-hour action extravaganza, capped by a wild standing ovation from an appreciative crowd.
The ovation stretched until Cruise finally took the microphone.“I’m grateful for 30 years to be able to entertain you with this franchise,” he said to the audience. “We just want to thank you all.”
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie agreed. “Everything we do, we do for the audience,” he said. He has spent most of his recent career working cheek by jowl with Cruise. “This response is why we do it. The big screen is why we do it.”
In a world where so many norms are cracking apart, where the chaos of the Trump administration makes for a dizzying daily life and international alliances seem on the edge, the arrival of a major Hollywood blockbuster was a moment of true escape for the usually serious movie festival, a visit to a place where heroes don’t lie to your face and do the right thing for the right reasons. In other words: Hollywood.
As you might imagine, Cruise not only dangles from bi-planes in this movie and runs at a breakneck pace through the streets of London. But he also dives 500 feet in glacial waters to make his way into a submerged submarine which – wait for it – holds the key to humanity’s survival.
Still, the premise of the movie did address our current world, in which an AI super force is able to muddy reality so much that no one knows who to believe or what to trust. The AI has the aim of taking over the world and reducing it to a human- free planet. Which means villain Esai Morales (Gabriel) isn’t really villain enough for this crew.
Whether or not that makes total sense, it sufficiently reflects the path of our conspiracy-obsessed world to make it plausible — and to require a true, selfless hero.
And so President Angela Bassett chooses to trust Ethan Hunt, one last time.
Cruise himself remains steadfastly apolitical, focused instead on saving the theatrical movie business. In that, he has full-throated partners in the international film world gathered in Cannes, which insists not only on proper high heels on the red carpet but in having no part of Netflix’s global dominance in entertainment.
And so on this night, this generation’s last great movie star drank in the adulation that comes with delivering three solid hours of nostalgia, action and heroism on a massive screen.
The post Cannes Loves Tom Cruise and He Loves Them Right Back at ‘Mission: Impossible’ Premiere appeared first on TheWrap.
