I'm halfway through Tom Cruise's filmography, and one aspect of his acting which stood out to me is that he's unafraid to show vulnerability on screen, be it fear, silliness, or embarrassment, i.e.
- Jerry Maguire face-planting onto the floor when he rushes back into the office after being fired.
- Ethan Hunt in Fallout after the bathroom fight when Ilsa tells him he doesn't know what he's involved with. "I don't know what I'm involved in. I don't know what I'm involved in... What am I involved in?"
- Ethan Hunt in Rogue Nation when he attempted to jump over the hood of the car, slipped and face-planted onto the floor.
- Bill Cage when he is wiped out by a car while running to Rita in Edge of Tomorrow.
- Jack Reacher looking at the knife when he has to face off with the bad guys who have assault rifles.
I couldn't help but think of Harrison Ford. It’s been said somewhere by someone that one of the great traits Ford has as a screen actor is the ability to show fear without undermining his hero status, and I think Tom Cruise shares this trait, as well as humor. Their characters are funny and they will often lean into the humor without undercutting it, and that makes them more relatable. However, despite those similarities, the way I respond to them as an audience member is very, very different.
Harrison Ford is an actor I grew up watching, and Star Wars and Indiana Jones were the main staples. While I did enjoy those films, even as a kid, there was an energy Ford brought to the screen which felt dangerous. Thankfully, this is all brilliantly examined by Pop Culture Detective in this video, and jumping off the back of that, I want to talk about the power dynamics between Tom's characters and the female leads in his action films.
Let’s start with Nick Morton in The Mummy, who is an adventurous type in a similar vein to Indiana Jones. Both characters go around stealing artifacts. Although Indiana Jones would claim he’s preserving them by putting them in a museum, he's still stealing them from the indigenous culture. Nick is more honest with himself about being a thief. Another distinction between Nick Morton and Indiana Jones is how they interact with their respective heroines. Our first introduction to Jenny Halsey in The Mummy is when she, without hesitation, slaps Nick across the face and calls him out for stealing some papers from her. Nick plays dumb because he thinks she won’t want to admit that they slept together. However, Jenny is not at all embarrassed by this and instead uses it to get in a dig about Nick’s prowess in bed. In response to this, Nick makes a quip that she didn't complain the night before about his performance. The key difference between what you would see from a character like Indiana Jones in this scene is that at no point during this exchange does Nick get in Jenny’s face or manhandle her to try and intimidate her physically to reassert his masculinity.
Then there's Bill Cage in Edge of Tomorrow, who, like Nick Morton, is a morally ambiguous character. Cage is a coward who finds himself a safe job far away from the fighting, but is suddenly stripped of his rank and thrust onto the frontline after the attempted blackmail of an army general backfires. When he first comes across Rita Vrataski on the beach, he is lying on his belly, out of his depth in battle and looking up at her with bewilderment and awe, the Angel of Verdun. Rita is then immediately killed by a rocket blast right in front of him. The second time Cage meets Rita on the beach, he saves her life by pushing her out of the way of the rocket and getting hit instead. This is where we see Rita’s determination and single-minded focus to win the war; she does not stop to mourn or thank the man who saved her life; instead, she steals Cage’s power back and leaves him for dead on the beach. This ruthlessness does not deter Cage from seeking her out again on the battlefield. He knows Rita is his way off this beach. Once Rita understands that he has the power to reset the day, this is where Cage’s purpose changes from trying to save himself to serving Rita. We witness this with the scene at the farmhouse where he is kneeling at her feet serving her coffee.
By this point in the film, Cage is as well trained as Rita, but his authority never supersedes hers; he is only ever subservient. He does try to deter her from the mission by not admitting that they have been at the farmhouse before. He already knows that no matter what he does, he can’t save her, he can’t get her past this point, and what gives him away is three sachets of sugar. That one caring act of being prepared to make her coffee as she likes it is enough for Rita to realize that he’s lying, that they have been at this farmhouse multiple times. Here is where something shifts in Cage, because after witnessing Rita’s death this time, instead of telling her in the next loop that he can reset the day, he decides to find the omega on his own, knowing that if he succeeds, Rita will be dead.
"I’m a soldier. Why does it matter what happens to me?"
Cage is learning that in war you can’t save everyone, something Rita knew when in one loop she unceremoniously took his power pack after saving her. This is when he begins to be on an equal footing with Rita, demonstrated in the scene where they both realize, and agree without words, that they have to break into Whitehall to steal the transponder. While they had been a team before, Cage is now fully onboard with the job of finding and killing the omega. They then only have one shot left at succeeding, because Cage has lost the ability to reset the day anymore, but Rita trusts Cage to do it. This finally shows that they are equals.
In contrast to Nick Morton and Bill Cage, there’s Ethan Hunt, a morally good character who is intelligent, highly capable, and most importantly, empathetic. I won't go through all six Mission Impossible films, but instead, solely focus on the dynamic between Ethan and Ilsa. Ilsa saves Ethan on multiple occasions in Rogue Nation.
The first time the audience and Ethan meet Ilsa is at a moment when Ethan is incredibly vulnerable. He just witnessed the murder of a fellow IMF agent before being gassed and kidnapped, where he wakes up tied to a pole in a basement under threat of torture. It is only because of Ilsa that Ethan makes it out alive. The second time they cross paths is after the opera in Vienna, where we learn that Ilsa is an MI6 agent who is deep undercover.
Slowly, the film is building a connection between Ilsa and Ethan, but one that doesn’t override either one's main objective. As much as Ilsa has a sense of loyalty to an agent from an allied country, and saves Ethan again from the water tank, to escape from Ethan in the bike chase, she steps into his path suddenly, causing him to fall off and skid into the dirt. In any other film, this would be a humiliating moment for the main character, and there would almost certainly be a scene to balance it out and give the upper hand back to the male hero, but not in Rogue Nation.
There is not one scene where Ethan tries to reassert control or dominance over Ilsa, like the kind you would see in a Harrison Ford film where he gets into the personal space of a woman to sexually intimidate her. Instead, it is established that Ilsa, throughout the film, is Ethan's equal, and his masculinity is not threatened by this; nor is he humiliated in being rescued by her; and he feels no need to try and assert his dominance.
This is something which continues into Fallout, where once again Ilsa saves Ethan, and once again they are starting from opposite objectives. Ethan has to break Lane out, Ilsa has to kill him, and the essence of their relationship is distilled beautifully by Christopher McQuarrie.
There is emotional maturity and understanding between the two of them that elevates their relationship above what you would normally find in this genre of film between two spies of the opposite sex.
However, the character who is the most interesting to look at in terms of male/female power dynamics is Jack Reacher, as he is probably the most traditional action hero Tom Cruise has played. Reacher is a gruff, no-nonsense man of few words, and as the book outlines, his philosophy is: Hit early, hit hard. Kill with the first blow. Get your retaliation in first. This man is dangerous. Yet, at no point do I feel that the female characters are in danger around Reacher simply because they are women.
First off, the waitress who clears away Reacher’s table. It’s a small but, I think, important interaction. All Reacher does is give her a "fancy it" kind of look, but there's nothing aggressive or leary about it, and when she rejects him, he's disappointed but quickly moves on.
Secondly, the dynamic between him and Sandy in the first scene at the bar; he is being tough on her, but we know that he’s seen her argue with some guy before coming to sit at his table, so he’s probing. He’s trying to work out what her angle is. He’s mean, but he’s never intimidating. Then later, when he goes to Sandy's work, he’s pissed that she tried to set him up, but at no point do I ever feel Sandy is in danger, and at no point does Reacher try to exert information out of her by getting into her personal space. He never uses the threat of sexual violence to get that. His whole attitude is much more that of a disappointed dad. When he understands what is going on with her, and that she is a victim too, he softens toward her because she is just a kid.
Then there’s the main relationship between Jack and Helen. From the get-go, there’s an attraction but also competitiveness. Two very intelligent and competent people who are good at what they do spend the first half of the film trying to get a handle on one another and their motives. But in terms of sexual power dynamics between the two, I think there is one part where the film has Reacher lean into an action film trope, but then pulls away from it.
It’s the scene with Helen in the hotel, where Reacher is shirtless and says they need some sleep. He reaches across her, and for a moment, Helen thinks he’s suggesting sex, but instead he puts her keys in her hand. I think that was Reacher playing with her a bit, teasing her about something possibly happening to see how she would react, but it never feels threatening. He doesn’t linger in her personal space because he knows that nothing can happen between them. He will leave town once the mystery is resolved. The one scene where they do get close, where they linger and lock eyes, is the moment in the lobby where Helen gives Reacher the address to the gun range. That scene feels very different to what you would normally see in this kind of film. They feel very much like equals, like they’ve come to understand one another at last, and while they both feel the attraction, Reacher is never dominating.
To me, it feels like Reacher is thinking about more than sex between them. To me, there is a hint that he’s thinking he could have a different kind of life and that if he wasn't who he was, he could have a normal life with her.
TL:DR: Ultimately, what I find reassuring about Tom Cruise’s characters in action films and how they relate to the heroine is that they avoid the standard trope of sexual banter or intimidation. There may be sexual tension between them, but it’s not the dominating force in their interactions. The films respect the abilities and agency of the heroine and never tell us that the male hero is emasculated for being rescued or held accountable by a woman.
Thank you to @indifferentvincent for letting me ramble in the DMs and helping me make this coherent.
i’m not gonna lie when i say that if they do make the edge of tomorrow [live.die.repeat.][groundhog day ex machina] sequel, i just want it to be about rita vrataski and when she had the power to repeat the day. from her uniform to her weapons all have stories of her past mistakes and by far she had more repeats than tom cruise’s character. way more. and i want to just see emily blunt be a badass figuring shit out without anyone helping her.
