Dear Gossips,
Lainey is traveling for work this week, which means I am in charge all week long, which is great for me because I need hella distractions! Lainey tried to text me about Kamala appearing on SNL over the weekend and I was like, I’m sorry I just cannot have this conversation, everything to do with the election makes me so upset. Like, SO upset. I am tuning out so hard my head is a transistor radio full of static! (I already voted, don’t yell at me for not caring, I’m just protecting my mental and emotional health for the next few days.) Also, I didn’t think Kamala could appear on SNL because of the FCC “equal time” rules, and sure enough, the senior Republican on the FCC is upset about it! Can’t wait to see how that plays out! Or not! Plenty of other stuff happening!
Such as Tom Cruise reportedly working on a Days of Thunder sequel. I mean, of course he is. You either walked out of Top Gun: Maverick making a Days of Thunder joke, or you didn’t—I definitely did. The thing is, Days of Thunder is a completely different beast than Top Gun. There’s an unnamed Paramount source in that article who says of a potential Days of Thunder sequel, “I don’t think a [‘Days of Thunder’ sequel] is a terrible idea. […] You might have said that revisiting ‘Top Gun’ was a terrible idea.”
Except literally no one ever said that about Top Gun. Literally everyone talked about a Top Gun sequel for thirty damn years. Top Gun is one of the most beloved Tom Cruise movies of all time, it’s a perennially popular Eighties classic (repertory screenings routinely sell out), it never lost its cultural cache throughout three decades. Days of Thunder is a trivia question, I actually heard “Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman met on the set of this 1990 film” at trivia once. Which is another thing about a Days of Thunder sequel, it definitely won’t include Nicole Kidman, so my interest is halved. Also, Tom Cruise stays finding ways not to work with women his own age.
But speaking of Top Gun: Maverick, I do want to mention that Maverick star Danny Ramirez has bounced back from the Joaquin Phoenix/Todd Haynes film disaster. He’s making his feature directorial debut with Baton, a soccer movie co-produced by David Beckham. Ramirez will star in the film, and he wrote and is producing it, too. Legit good for him. Making your own work is a sure-fire way to ensure flaky co-stars don’t screw you over.
Anyway, back to Tom Cruise. Another interesting note in that article is that Paramount wants to market Mission: Impossible 8—title to be revealed soon, the trailer is expected to front the big Thanksgiving movies and will drop imminently—as the last M:I film, but Tom Cruise wants to keep making those movies until he’s in his 80s, citing Harrison Ford as an example of an action star who just keeps going. I will point out, though, that except for returning as Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ford’s trips down memory lane have been divisive. Neither Bladerunner 2049 nor Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny were hits, and Destiny was divisive with critics and audiences (Bladerunner 2049 is a masterpiece we did not deserve).
Mission: Impossible has become synonymous with Tom Cruise, I don’t know if that franchise works without him, at least not in the short term. But at the same time, I’m not sure audiences are super into elderly action stars, either. It’s sort of like the Days of Thunder sequel. On the one hand, my instinct is to not bet against Tom Cruise. But on the other hand, I know that film does not have the cache or nostalgia factor of Top Gun, and as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (they have officially dropped “Part One” from the title) proves, audiences are willing to let Tom Cruise movies bomb. There is no such thing as a sure thing in this business, not even for Tom Cruise. But it is going to be interesting to see what happens to all these franchises of his. Can he keep them going until he ascends to an alternate dimension, or whatever happens to Scientologists who die? Or will he be forced to pass the baton, sooner rather than later?
Live long and gossip,
Sarah
