Legend · Volume IV · Bilingual

King Mapother IV

Name: King Mapother IV: Tom Cruise, The Last Dynasty of Hollywood
Author: Allaj Sidibe

Tom Cruise, The Last Dynasty of Hollywood

Allaj Sidibe

Coming in 2027

“How did a dyslexic child from Syracuse become the last star who doesn't cheat?”

Syracuse, July 3, 1962. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. A father who hits, a mother working three jobs, twelve schools before sixteen, a dyslexia nobody diagnoses.

Top Gun, Rain Man, Mission: Impossible. The serious actor. The king of the global blockbuster. Then, in 2005, the televised fall on Oprah Winfrey's couch.

Cannes, May 2022. The red carpet for Top Gun: Maverick. Forty years of career. The last star who jumps out of a plane without a double.

Contents

The Rootless Child
Settling into Hollywood
The Serious Actor
The King
The Fall
The Resurrection
The Mogul

Format: Biographical essay
Release: Coming in 2027
Series: Legend
Languages: FR EN

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Excerpt from King Mapother IV

Excerpt from the book908 words · 4 min read

Prologue

Cannes, May 18, 2022

The Croisette has been closed since noon. Navy barricades hold the crowd behind the grates. Palm trees clipped square, the marble of the Palais des Festivals baking in the sun, red carpet washed one last time. It is eighty-two degrees. The wind is dying. The sea barely moves.

You watch the black cars ride up the boulevard, the journalists penned in their pits, the flashing lights that glide by without sound. On the screens set up above the terraces, the Top Gun Maverick poster has been looping since morning. The festival's official portrait: helmet, flight suit, gaze cast off-frame.

At six forty-five, Tom Cruise steps out of a car. Black suit, thin black tie, white shirt. Fifty-nine years old. He does not wave at the crowd. He climbs the steps without turning around. The French security detail walks half a meter off him, six agents, two ahead, two behind, two floating on the flanks. He knows the choreography. He invented it.

Inside, the Grand Théâtre Lumière. Two thousand three hundred seats. The room has been full for thirty minutes. Tuxedos, gowns, starched fronts. Vincent Lindon is presiding over the jury this year, seated in the front row. Kelly McGillis is not here. She told the press she was never called back for the film. On stage, Thierry Frémaux adjusts his glasses. He is holding an envelope.

Frémaux speaks in French, then in English. He reminds the audience that the last time Cruise walked up these steps was in 1992, for Far and Away. Thirty years. He runs through the films. Rain Man, Magnolia, Collateral, Eyes Wide Shut. He does not say the word star. He says actor. He says producer. He says the word legend once, at the end. He does not move.

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The honorary Palme sits on a pedestal. A hand extended. Frémaux hands it over. Cruise takes it with both hands. He looks out at the room. He does not speak. He smiles. A smile he has rehearsed a thousand times, the one that bares the teeth but never reaches past the cheekbones. Then he speaks. He says thank you in French. He says he made his first film at twenty. He says he did not think he would be here. He says he makes films for the big screen, for this room, for these seats. He holds the Palme against his chest while he speaks. He does not cry.

What he does not say is what came before.

He does not say that the film about to screen was meant to open in June 2020. That Covid stopped it cold. That Paramount, which owns the film, wanted to drop it on Paramount+ to prop up the subscriber count. That Cruise refused. That he refused a limited theatrical release too. That he demanded a global release, full screen, everywhere, on tens of thousands of prints. That he pushed the release back two years to wait for the theaters to reopen. That he stared down Shari Redstone and Bob Bakish. That in Los Angeles, in New York, in Paris, exhibitors were waiting for this film the way you wait for a reprieve. Thousands of American screens had gone dark during the pandemic. MGM had just been sold to Amazon. Warner had put its films on HBO Max the day they hit theaters. The world was saying the theater was dead.

Cruise was not saying it. He was making the film.

The screening starts at seven thirty. The score rumbles from the first frame. Two minutes in, a roar cuts across the Palais. The audience thinks it is the film. It is not the film. It is the Patrouille de France, the French Air Force's aerobatic team. Nine Alphajets in tight formation skim the roof of the Palais, blue-white-red trailing behind them, five hundred kilometers per hour over the Croisette. You hear them first as a rumble, then as a rip, then as a breath fading out. They chain three passes. Five minutes. The film keeps going without the room really listening. Some applaud. Most do not know whether they are laughing or crying.

Cruise, in the second row, smiles where the cameras cannot catch it. He paid for the Patrouille de France out of his own pocket. The detail will surface in Variety three days later. He will never confirm it publicly.

When the screening ends, at nine fifty-four, the room rises. Not in waves. In one block. Six minutes of ovation. Six minutes on their feet. Cruise, a kid from Syracuse, New York who has never won an Oscar and who was publicly disowned by Sumner Redstone in 2006, is standing in a French auditorium that refuses to sit back down. He applauds the crew. He applauds Jerry Bruckheimer. He applauds Joseph Kosinski, the director. He applauds Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, Glen Powell. At the six-minute mark, Frémaux walks back on stage to hand the room back to Cruise. The room will not stop. He puts his hand on his heart. He bows his head. He says nothing more.

Six weeks later, Top Gun Maverick has done one billion one hundred million at the global box office. By the end of the year, it will hit one billion four hundred and ninety-five million. It will be the biggest film of his career. No living star will have done a billion on an original film, no Marvel franchise, no extended universe, no comic-book adaptation, in ten years.

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King Mapother IV

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Excerpt from King Mapother IV

Cannes, May 18, 2022

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