Summary
- Tom Cruise has become a legendary movie star with a lasting impact on Hollywood, starring in successful franchises and stand-alone films.
- Cruise has grossed billions at the box office, further solidifying his status as an accomplished action star and movie icon.
- His roles in the Mission: Impossible and War of the Worlds franchises have been both financially successful and critically acclaimed.
Very few movie stars have the aura and mysticism that Tom Cruise has cultivated throughout his long and storied 40-year career . Often known for his starring roles as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise and Maverick in Top Gun, Cruise has remained relevant thanks to his attachment to notorious multi-billion-dollar franchises and acclaimed work with visionary directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
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Viewed as one of the last movie stars in Hollywood, Cruise has had an assortment of box office smashes that have proved his worth to the industry, grossing billions of dollars, furthering the legacy of the action star as he enters his twilight years. These are Tom Cruise's high-grossing films, from action spectacles to sci-fi remakes.
7 Mission: Impossible 2
Worldwide Gross: $546 Million
Mission Impossible 2
Display card tags widget Display card community and brand rating widget Display card main info widget- Release Date
- May 24, 2000
- Runtime
- 123 minutes
- Director
- John Woo
- Cast
- Richard Roxburgh, Ving Rhames, Dougray Scott, Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton
- Budget
- $125 million
Cruise's second outing as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible 2 sees the actor and acclaimed action director John Woo deliver a messy but entertaining action movie, establishing Mission: Impossible as a premier franchise in Hollywood. The sequel sees Cruise's Hunt tracking down a rogue agent in order to stop him from unleashing a deadly virus, with the stakes being tremendously high.
Filled with love triangles and intense action sequences, the movie proved financially successful, earning $546m globally and cementing Hunt as an action hero audiences were yearning to see more of.
6 Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning
Worldwide Gross: $571 Million
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning
Display card tags widget Display card community and brand rating widget Display card main info widget- Release Date
- July 12, 2023
- Runtime
- 164 minutes
- Director
- Christopher McQuarrie
- Cast
- Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Frederick Schmidt, Mariela Garriga, Cary Elwes, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Indira Varma, Rob Delaney, Marcello Walton, Brian Law, Alex James-Phelps, Marcin Dorociński, Ivan Ivashkin, Zahari Baharov, Adrian Bouchet
- Budget
- $291 Million
The final chapters of the famed franchise begin with Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, the first of a two-part finale to the legendary M:I franchise. Setting Hunt's final mission in motion, the elusive agent and his trusty IMF team are tasked with going on a global search to find a way to destroy an AI system that threatens the entire world. Meanwhile, a mysterious old foe of Hunt's reemerges to do the AI's bidding.
While not the box office force that many had hoped for, Dead Reckoning still brought in $571m revenue during its stint at the box office, with the out-of-this-world stunts Cruise gets up to still eliciting edge-of-your-seat moments.
5 War Of The Worlds
Worldwide Gross: $603 Million
War of The Worlds
Display card tags widget Display card community and brand rating widget Display card main info widget- Release Date
- June 29, 2005
- Runtime
- 116 Minutes
- Director
- Steven Spielberg
- Cast
- Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Tim Robbins, Justin Chatwin, Rick Gonzalez, Yul Vazquez, Lenny Venito
Teaming up with one of the medium's greatest visionaries in Steven Spielberg, War of the Worlds brought Cruise into the Sci-Fi genre, delivering financially on the alien invasion epic and hauling just over $600m. War of the Worlds focuses on a dockworker's attempts to protect his family from extraterrestrial threats that violently invade Earth.
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Featuring all-star names like Cruise, Spielberg, and Morgan Freeman, the movie's intriguing plot of an alien invasion on Earth became a must-see for many audiences. In particular, War of the Worlds' sense of scale, paired with its duo of Hollywood heavyweights, Spielberg and Cruise, catapulted the movie into smash-hit territory, which was particularly impressive for a non-franchise film.
4 Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation
Worldwide Gross: $682 Million
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Display card tags widget Display card community and brand rating widget Display card main info widget- Release Date
- July 31, 2015
- Runtime
- 131 minutes
- Director
- Christopher McQuarrie
- Cast
- Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Simon McBurney, Zhang Jingchu, Tom Hollander, Jens Hultén, Alec Baldwin, Mateo Rufino, Alec Utgoff, Hermione Corfield, Nigel Barber, William Roberts, Barnabás Réti, James Weber Brown, Robert Maaser, Wolfgang Stegemann, Fernando Abadie, Patrick Poletti, Martin Cochrane, David Peart, Ash Merat
- Budget
- $150 million
Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation continues the daring stunts and high-octane action that the Mission: Impossible franchise is renowned for, with Cruise and his creative team soaring to new heights in the movie. Bringing Christopher McQuarrie onboard to direct, Rogue Nation continues Hunt's journey as the search for The Syndicate, a group of high-level agents, goes international while the CIA commences a mission to find Hunt and his comrades.
Grossing a total of $682m during its run in cinemas, Rogue Nation continued the franchise's financial growth from one movie to the next, in part powered by Cruise's commitment to bringing never-seen-before stunts to the silver screen, and Rogue Nation's engrossing espionage storytelling.
3 Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol
Worldwide Gross: $694 Million
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Display card tags widget Display card community and brand rating widget Display card main info widget- Release Date
- December 21, 2011
- Runtime
- 133 minutes
- Director
- Brad Bird
- Cast
- Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Samuli Edelmann, Ivan Shvedoff, Anil Kapoor, Lea Seydoux, Josh Holloway, Pavel Kříž, Miraj Grbić, Ilia Volok, Goran Navojec, Pavel Bezděk, Ladislav Beran, Pavel Cajzl, Vitaly Kravchenko, Andrej Bestchastny, Jan Filipenský, Jiří Kraus, Ales Putik, Tomáš Valík, Randy Hall
- Budget
- $145 million
The fourth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, continues the momentum the IP was building, reaching just shy of the $700m mark in its worldwide box office total. In Ghost Protocol, Hunt and the IMF squad work without resources as they aim to find a way to prove their innocence after being implicated in a bombing attack that tarnishes the IMF's reputation.
Marking a shift for the franchise, Cruise goes above and beyond in terms of stunts, showcasing his bravery and commitment to the craft with his daring climb of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper, taking Mission: Impossible to new heights, literally. Such stunts, along with the reinvention of the franchise, resulted in a significant jump in box office revenue compared to its predecessor, Mission: Impossible 3, almost doubling its worldwide gross.
2 Mission: Impossible—Fallout
Worldwide Gross: $791 Million
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Display card tags widget Display card community and brand rating widget Display card main info widget- Release Date
- July 27, 2018
- Runtime
- 147 minutes
- Director
- Christopher McQuarrie
- Cast
- Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley, Frederick Schmidt, Alec Baldwin, Yang Liang, Kristoffer Joner, Wolf Blitzer, Raphael Acloque, Andrew Cazanave Pin, Christophe de Choisy, Raphael Desprez, Jean Baptiste Fillon, Maximilian Geller, Olivier Huband, Vincent Latorre, Thierry Picaut, Alexandre Poole
- Budget
- 178 million
Mission: Impossible—Fallout stunned audiences upon its release. Cruise's variety of groundbreaking stunts and the intensity of the film's action sequences were unlike any of the franchise's previous entries, and audiences arrived in droves to see the spectacle.
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Grossing just under $800m, word of mouth and strong critical scores aided the sixth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise, with Hunt and his dedicated IMF crew attempting to foil the plans of a terrorist group that sees Henry Cavill's August Walker taking center stage as the antagonist opposite Cruise.
1 Top Gun: Maverick
Worldwide Gross: $1.496 Million
Top Gun: Maverick
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- Release Date
- May 27, 2022
- Cast
- Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Val Kilmer, Jay Ellis, Jon Hamm, Bashir Salahuddin, Charles Parnell, Lewis Pullman, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Ed Harris
- Runtime
- 130 Minutes
- Director
- Joseph Kosinski
- Budget
- $170 Million
To the surprise of many, Top Gun: Maverick, while highly anticipated, smashed box office expectations, shattering Cruise's previous record by a country mile. It delivered nearly $1.5 billion in total revenue, ranking as one of the most profitable and successful movies of all time.
Following Pete Mitchell's return and with a new generation of pilots to teach, featuring budding acting talents in Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, and Danny Ramirez, Top Gun: Maverick's thrilling and captivating ride had audiences and critics alike giving rave reviews. Enhanced by its strong patriotic themes that propelled the movie to greatness, Top Gun: Maverick continues to illustrate that Cruise still stands out as an icon of Hollywood while entering the twilight of his career.
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