Tom Cruise, Elon Musk And NASA Partner To Make A Movie On The International Space Station – Mission: Are You Crazy?

I’ve got a few things in common with Tom Cruise.

We share the same first name.

We both work in the entertainment industry.

We’re both 57 years old. 

That’s where it ends.

With full disclosure, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Cruise, or T.C., once at the very beginning of his career and another time a few years ago on the Jack Reacher set.

He was kind, patient, self-deprecating and…down to earth.

With today’s confirmation by NASA that Tom Cruise will be the first actor to film a major motion picture in space, T.C.’s “down to earth” descriptor will necessarily have to be revised. 

Instead, T.C. is growing closer to becoming an actual space oddity.

Since the beginning of his career, Cruise has defied all expectations and predictions in charting an unparalleled trajectory of superstardom and box-office dominance. While other actors can rightfully claim career box-office totals with sums greater than Cruise’s (Samuel Jackson, Harrison Ford, Robert Downey, Jr., to name a few) none have the singular track record Cruise has in building what we now recognize as a “Tom Cruise vehicle.” 

In other words, while other superstars have indeed been in ensemble vehicles like the Star Wars films or The Avengers, a “Tom Cruise Movie” tends to be just that – a film that lives or dies based on audience interest in seeing Tom Cruise in that particular film. 

Rarely has Cruise starred in a movie where the concept is bigger than his own celebrity. When he has participated in a franchise that doesn’t draw on his uniqueness, like Universal’s remake of The Mummy, it tends to fail.

Cruise was the first “A-list” actor to understand global box-office and he broke ground marketing his films all over the world, when other actors rarely bothered to promote their films outside of the U.S. and parts of Europe. 

We’ve come to associate Cruise with spectacular stunts where he puts his own life at risk.

Whether it was in the original Top Gun movie, or in the six Mission: Impossible films, Cruise understands that the audience has come to expect that he place his own life on the line – whether commandeering a jet airplane, jumping from one building to another or strapping himself to the side of a military transport behemoth. 

No other actor of his stature or age has ever put himself in harm’s way, the way Cruise has.

Cruise’s courage – or some might say insanity – aligns with his unique place in the Hollywood firmament. Few movie stars today are both as beloved and opaque, as Cruise. 

His controversial relationship with Scientology, his supposed arranged marriages and his old-school Hollywood way of remaining outside of the public eye between film projects, makes him someone we want to understand better and a figure we assume we’ll probably never truly know.

His feats of daring-do have always been tremendous “trailer-bait” for eager audiences dying to see what stunt he’ll pull next or what spectacular sequence he has up his sleeve.

When T.C. began the Mission: Impossible series of films, a source inside Paramount confided to me that the famous “helicopter inside the tunnel” sequence was Cruise’s actual brain-child, not the studio’s, screenwriter’s or director’s. Few “A-list” superstars, if any, would think to actually make a film more challenging or more dangerous when designing a production.

Cruise seemed to predict that audiences needed jaw-dropping set-pieces to get them to keep buying those precious movie tickets. 

Few industry veterans were shocked to learn that Cruise has joined forces with Elon Musk to create a film wherein T.C. would use a SpaceX rocket to catapult him into space for a real-life feature film production taking place on the International Space Station.

If anyone would pull such a stunt, Tom Cruise would.

The funny thing is that technology is so advanced today, audience members won’t likely notice the difference between whether Cruise is actually in outer-space, or simply acting against a green-screen, the way George Clooney and Sandra Bullock did, in Gravity.

Why is Cruise doing it?

Why willingly put one’s own life at risk in the service of a single film project, especially when you’re Tom Cruise and you can “cruise” along with the Mission: Impossible franchise of movies, the sequel to Top Gun and any number of other potential sequels from other beloved titles, that don’t require being hurled dangerously into outer space?

Cruise prides himself on being “the first” at things – whether it’s speeding in a fighter jet at mach 5, promoting movies globally when no one asked him to, or hanging off of a 126 story building in Dubai. 

While few of us will ever really get to know the real Tom Cruise, T.C. knows us. 

He understands that we don’t just want him to do the impossible; we need him to keep doing the impossible.

As we watch with nostalgia and awe how Michael Jordan performed superhuman feats as a basketball player in ESPN’s The Last Dance, it’s comforting to know that another superstar from the 1980s hasn’t hung up his Air Jordan’s yet. 

T.C. will be the first actor to perform in outer space. 

Anyone taking bets on who will be the first “A-lister” to literally “shoot the moon?”