They say, and not for nothing, that old wine is better than young. If you apply this “philosophical” thought to the cinema of the past weekend, it finds confirmation in the great success of Tom Cruise. The actor, who (who would have believed?!) 56 years old, achieved the best result in the entire long 22-year history of the Mission: Impossible franchise in the very first weekend of demonstration on the screens of North America. The sixth incarnation of the “Mission: Impossible: Fallout” series collected $65.5 million on “domestic” screens (jointly in the United States and Canada). Outside of North America, the film collected another 92 million dollars and the first weekend thus ended for Tom Cruise with a big box office success, which predicts a long and successful life for the film in the world box office.
The previous film in the franchise, directed by the same director Christopher McQuarrie, opened with just under $60 million in its opening weekend and went on to gross over $600 million globally. This time, McQuarrie also wrote the script for the film. Even before the film was released, film critics, who had the opportunity to see the film before the general public, unanimously gave it the highest marks. Moreover, the film caused a whole series of analytical articles about the reasons for the success of the film against the background of not quite successful action even such proven stars of the genre as Dwayne Johnson with his failed action movie “Skyscraper” in America.
All of them unanimously note that Cruise has become even bolder in performing dizzying – literally and figuratively – tricks: jumping from an airplane from the stratosphere, jumping from a building to a building (with a rather serious injury after one of them). He runs as fast as even Olympic running champions at that age could not dream of.
But, film observers note, the films of this Cruz franchise are not shy to show the weaknesses of his character. His willingness to save humanity (this time from terrorist atomic bombs) outweighs all his age problems. Again, he is ready to sacrifice the success of the operation for the sake of saving one of his associates on impossible missions. This is, of course, a purely dramatic technique and, of course, he will save all humanity, but such humanity of the movie hero makes him durable and more attractive than all those Rambo-Stallones and Terminators-Schwarzenegger with their bulging muscles. I have no doubt that Cruise is in good physical shape and can show some biceps and triceps, but if I’m not mistaken, I don’t recall him taking his shirt off even once in the movie. Every man can associate himself with such a hero. Life at the age of 56, as well as a successful franchise that is already 22 years old (!), is far from over.
In its second weekend, the musical “Mamma Mia! 2” with 15 million collections. The worldwide gross now stands at $167.2 million. Of these, almost 100 million are outside North America.
Last weekend’s surprise winner The Righteous 2 moved into third place with 14 million admissions. Still, the youthful Tom Cruise runs faster and jumps ahead of the solid equalizer of Denzel Washington. Beating Tom Cruise is an impossible mission.