Tom Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but after Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s overwhelmingly positive reviews, his Rotten Tomatoes average is at an all-time high. Cruise has had his fair share of poorly reviewed movies, with low points including Rotten scores such as 1988’s Cocktail with 7 percent, or 2017’s The Mummy at 16 percent, but with 30 of the 44 movies in his filmography earning Fresh scores, the bar is already set fairly high, making it all the more impressive for the 61-year-old actor to be seeing his career peak Rotten Tomatoes average in 2023.
Cruise’s first role was the 1981 movie Taps, meaning by the time of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One he’s been acting for over 42 years. The Mission: Impossible movies are the only series he’s in with more than two installments, so the fact this success doesn’t come on the back of multiple long-running franchises is even more impressive. Cruise was also at the forefront of the box office recovery with Top Gun: Maverick and now thanks to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s Rotten Tomatoes score, he’s also hit his own carer high average on Rotten Tomatoes.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is Tom Cruise’s Second-Best Movie in Rotten Tomatoes
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is tied with Top Gun: Maverick for the second-best Rotten Tomatoes score of Tom Cruise’s career with 96 percent. The only movie with a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than his last two outings is 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout with 97 percent. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is the 44th movie of Tom Cruise’s filmography, and the 30th time he’s been in a movie with a Fresh rating, so he already had a more than impressive track record on Rotten Tomatoes. Of his 30 Fresh scores, eight earned more than 90 percent, nine earned 80-90 percent, four earned 70-80 percent, and eight earned 60-70 percent.
After Mission: Impossible – Fallout (97 percent), Top Gun: Maverick (96 percent), and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (96 percent), Cruise’s best-rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes include Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (94 percent), Mission:89 Impossible — Ghost Protocol (93 percent), Risky Business, (92 percent), Edge of Tomorrow (91 percent), and Minority Report (90 percent). Coming in under 90 percent are The Color of Money (percent), Rain Man (89 percent), Born on the Fourth of July (86 percent), Collateral (86 percent), American Made (85 percent), Jerry MaGuire(84 percent), A Few Good Men (83 percent), Magnolia (83 percent), Tropic Thunder (82 percent), and even more Fresh scores under 80 percent.
Tom Cruise is Now At His Peak Career Best Average Rotten Tomatoes Score
Thanks to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s 96 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, Tom Cruise’s career average is now at 65.82 percent, the best Rotten Tomatoes average of his career. To be fair, he was already at his peak after Top Gun: Maverick brought his average to 65.12 percent, but prior to that point his best Rotten Tomatoes average was 64.95 percent after Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation’s 94 percent in 2015, and before that his best career average was 64.57 percent after Mission: Impossible III in 2006. Prior to 2006, Cruise’s average Rotten Tomatoes score was in a state of slow recovery after a rough patch in the 1980s.
Cruise started his career with a 68 percent from Taps (using retroactive scoring since Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t around yet), but since it was his only movie at the time it doesn’t count as an average, especially since his next two movies, Endless Love and Losin’ It were poorly reviewed with 26 percent and 18 percent, respectively. Despite well received movies like Risky Business (92 percent), The Color of Money (89 percent), and Rain Man (89 percent) the 1980s were hit-and-miss for Cruise and his Rotten Tomatoes average was only 58.58 percent. The 1990s were huge for Cruise with a 69 percent average, and it’s remained above 60 percent since 1996.
Mission: Impossible 7 Gives Tom Cruise His 3rd Best Rotten Tomatoes Streak
Despite the 2017-2023 four-film hot streak of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and American Made pushing Cruise’s career Rotten Tomatoes average to its peak, it’s actually only the third-best Fresh streak in his career. From 1993-1999, Cruise had six films in a row with Fresh Rotten Tomatoes scores, including The Firm (75 percent), Interview With The Vampire (64 percent), Jerry MaGuire (84 percent), Mission: Impossible (66 percent), Eyes Wide Shut (75 percent), and Magnolia (83 percent). He broke the streak with back-to-back Rotten scores in 2000 with Mission: Impossible II (57 percent) and 2001 with Vanilla Sky (42 percent).
Cruise’s second-best Rotten Tomatoes hot-streak happened from 2002-2006 featuring five Fresh movies in a row, including Minority Report (90 percent), The Last Samurai (66 percent), Collateral (86 percent), War of the Worlds (75 percent), and Mission: Impossible III (71 percent). While the most recent hot-streak is only the third longest in terms of consecutive Fresh scores, its 94 percent average beats both the 2002-2006 five-film streak’s 78 percent average and the 1993-1999 six-film Fresh streak of 75 percent, meaning Cruise’s most recent stretch of his filmography (largely comprised of Cruise’s collaborations with writer/director Christopher McQuarry) is truly peak Tom Cruise.
For an actor with as much success as Tom Cruise has seen over the course of his career, the fact that he’s still producing hits after over 40 years of acting in 44 movies is impressive on its own. The fact that he’s also one Fresh score away from tying his previous six-movie Fresh score hot-streak and consistently hitting his highest average Rotten Tomatoes scores of his filmography, including the biggest box office hits of his career, is a testament to his status as one of the few modern movie stars. The next movie for Cruise is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2, which is guaranteed to retain his peak average so long as it scores at least 66 percent.