tom cruise

If we’re being honest with each other, I’m not typically a big fan of behind-the-scenes videos and features. These days they all seem the same: an actor jumps in front of a blue background and lands on a blue foam pad, and everyone stands up and smiles at each other for a job well done. My one big exception is Tom Cruise movies. Cruise’s action films are a testament to doing things the hard way, so every highlight reel of the actor slamming into cars, hitting his head against walls, or getting punched in the face is a testament to a dying trade.

Look, I know that Tom Cruise must be getting older. There are lines on his face that weren’t there before and, like many gym rats, he’s been forced to trade leanness for bulk over the years just to maintain his active lifestyle. And I know that, someday, Tom Cruise will reach an age where the aches and pains catch up to him and he’ll no longer be able to pull off at least three incredible stunts per movie. But you know what? Today is not that day, and if this new batch of Mission: Impossible 6 set photos is to be believe, this is not that movie.

To understand why I’m more excited than most for The Mummy, it’s important to make a list of all the things that I’m a sucker for. Tom Cruise movies? Check. Trailers or commercials that use the Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint it Black’ as a musical cue? Check-check. Movies where soldiers fight monsters? Check-check-check. In fact, if you do the math, the only thing on my Hollywood wishlist that the second The Mummy trailer doesn’t deliver is a John Wick-style gunfight, and there’s still time. One of those might still find its way into the final movie.

Universal’s The Mummy will soon be upon us, poised to unleash its wrath of ancient magic, curses, and hopefully a lot less bloodthirsty scarabs than the Brendan Fraser version. While you wait for Sunday’s new trailer, please enjoy the new teaser above, as well as a brand-new poster featuring the terrifying Princess Ahmanet.

Watching the Mission: Impossible movies is like watching Tom Cruise engage in a series of escalating dares. Like the Fast and the Furious franchise, each new M:I movie features an increasingly bonkers stunt scene, made all the more impressive by Cruise’s dedication to performing his own stunts (or as much of them as humanly possible). It’s hard to imagine how Cruise and returning writer / director Christopher McQuarrie will outdo Rogue Nation’s riveting plane sequence, but according to the producer of Mission: Impossible 6, they have something “mind-blowing” up their sleeves. How mind-blowing? Well, Cruise has been training for the stunt for a whole year.

Have you seen The Mummy trailer yet? Looks pretty cool, right? Tom Cruise seemingly comes back from the dead after a plane crash and has to stop an evil mummy princess from burying the world’s iconic landmarks in sand. We even mashed the trailer up with Mission: Impossible and created the Ultimate Tom Cruise Movie Crossover. But the only thing better than a movie trailer is a fabulously glitchy movie trailer, and Universal unwittingly gifted us with one last night, in the form of The Mummy, feat. Tom Cruise Screaming.

Every year, when the bottom drops out of the summer movie season and audiences decide to stay home and watch television instead, some well-meaning critic will publish an article asking if cinema is dead. And every year, I pose the same question in response: “Is Tom Cruise still an action star?” As long as Tom Cruise is running across multiplex screens — fighting rogue nations, government consiparcies, and even the occasional mummy — there is still hope for cinema. Then, when Cruise’s career is done and Hollywood is in ashes, then, cinema, you have my permission to die.

The first thing I think of when I hear the name Edward Zwick is his Oscar-winning 1989 film Glory. Specifically, I think of the time my entire 7th grade class was assembled in Marlboro Middle School’s amphitheater to watch it. And when the same thing happened again in 8th grade. And then again in high school, where I was shown Glory two more times in history classes. My colleagues on the ScreenCrush staff all have similar stories. For a certain generation of American school kids, Glory was like a rite of passage.

The Late Late Show With James Corden is no stranger to running stars through their career history, but if there’s anyone to run anywhere, it’s Tom Cruise. See the Jack Reacher star reenact an impressive span of his iconic movie career for James Corden, and we’ll show you the special guest!

If you have ever seen at least a couple of Tom Cruise movies, it will come as no surprise to you when I say the guy likes to run onscreen. Like, a lot. It’s his version of Humphrey Bogart’s overcoat or John Wayne’s hat. It’s his calling card, his signature. It wouldn’t be a true Tom Cruise film without it. His hair gets longer or shorter, he gets older and gains a couple of wrinkles. But the running never changes.

In the first Jack Reacher: Never Go Back trailer, Tom Cruise beat up 11 guys. In this new IMAX trailer, which is only 90 seconds long, he beats up eight. That includes a guy on an airplane, a guy he kicks in the face, a guy he jumps on from a great height, a guy he punches through the window of his car, and a guy he strangles with his own telephone cord while talking to him on the phone. He also threatens this man with the line “Maybe I rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.” Oh please oh please oh please Tom Cruise, rip his arm off and beat him to death with it. I’ve always wanted to see you rip a guy’s arm off and beat him to death with it. All my friends say it’s not physically possible. But I believe in you dude! Power of positive thinking!

By my count, Tom Cruise beats up 11 men all by himself in the trailer for Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. 11! And that doesn’t include the four guys he beats up before the trailer starts that they show lying on the ground. And this is just a two minute and 30 second clip...