In the 1990s, Tom Cruise was elevated from one of the biggest movie stars in the world to Hollywood royalty when he broke an impressive box office record. Cruise is one of the last remaining movie stars who can draw an audience to watch a film at a theater based on their involvement alone, but he became the superstar he is today thanks to an impressive box office success in the 1990s.
With hits like Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise is now keeping the moviegoing experience alive for another generation. Cruise has been bringing crowds into movie theaters since he first became a star in the 1980s. As his star continued to rise throughout the ‘90s, he became one of the most successful actors in Hollywood history, in no small part to this impressive box office feat that remains notable in an age of superhero movies and big-budget franchises.
Why Tom Cruise’s Record Was So Impressive At The Time
In 1996, Cruise became the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in the United States: A Few Good Men in 1992, The Firm in 1993, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles in 1994, Mission: Impossible in 1996, and Jerry Maguire, also in 1996. This was an impressive record at the time and remains so in the franchise age when movie stars are increasingly becoming a thing of the past.
Cruise’s ‘90s box office record is particularly impressive because the success of a movie is out of the actors’ hands, which means that most actors’ filmographies are very hit-and-miss. But, throughout his decades-long career, Cruise has had very few misfires. Actors often get pigeonholed by a certain genre – Sylvester Stallone makes action movies, Julia Roberts makes romcoms, etc. – but Cruise has dabbled in many different genres over the years. One of the most laudable things about his ‘90s box office streak is the range of different movies: a pair of legal thrillers, a gothic horror movie, a spy action movie, and a romantic comedy-drama.
How Marvel & Franchises Have Warped This Record
The rise of Marvel Studios and the franchise model has warped these kinds of box office records because the concept of a traditional movie star is fading. Tom Cruise’s back-to-back hits in the ‘90s all attracted blockbuster crowds on the basis of the actor’s star power alone. These days, the real movie stars are I.P.s like Harry Potter and Captain America. Between 2015 and 2019, Robert Downey, Jr. starred in five huge blockbusters back-to-back – not including his uncredited cameo appearance in 2016’s The Nice Guys – but he played Tony Stark in all five movies, which begs the question: were those movies sold by Downey’s star power, or Stark’s?