Warner Bros showed footage of Tom Cruise in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s new film at Cinemacon on today, and the reaction was immediate: theatre owners erupted as the star appeared as a gray-haired, pot-bellied old oil man who destroyed the planet and now vows to fix it. Deadline framed the moment with a question that now hangs over Cruise’s latest turn: whether he is heading toward a first-ever Best Actor Oscar.
The footage, from a Tom Cruise Alejandro Iñárritu film set for an October release, was described as wickedly wild and comic, but with something pertinent to say about the world. That combination made the presentation stand out even in a room built around commercial crowd-pleasers rather than obvious awards contenders, and it gave the audience a glimpse of a performance that looks far removed from the action hero persona that has defined much of Cruise’s career.
The weight of the moment comes from who is involved and where it landed. Iñárritu is a five-time Oscar winner, and Cruise, 62, has been nominated three times for acting Oscars, for Born On The Fourth Of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia. He also received an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in November, putting him back in the awards conversation after years in which he was better known as the biggest movie star in the world than as an Academy Awards regular.
That matters because Cruise has been here before, and then elsewhere. In 2008 he played Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, a performance that showed he could be absurd, sharp and fully committed to a character that had little to do with his polished public image. The new role pushes even harder in the opposite direction, with the footage suggesting a deliberate and risky shift into a bruised, comic and politically pointed part that would be unusual for an actor of his scale.
The comparison some awards watchers are already making is to Henry Fonda and Paul Newman, both of whom won competitive Best Actor Oscars after first receiving Honorary Oscars. That is not a prediction, but it is the reason the room buzzed. A performer who has spent decades as the industry’s most reliable draw is now being shown in a role that could make Academy voters look at him differently, and it arrives with enough spectacle to keep the commercial crowd interested too.
The tension is that Cinemacon is not built to crown Oscar contenders, and yet this footage landed like one. The owners in the room gave it an ecstatic reception, which tells you both that the film plays big and that Cruise’s gamble may be working before it has even reached theaters. If the final release matches the footage’s promise, the question is no longer whether the film will get attention, but whether this is the performance that finally puts Cruise in line for his first competitive acting Oscar.
