The seventh installment in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise is out, and it’s shaping up to be another behemoth at the box office. What’s particularly interesting about this franchise is how, unlike almost every other intellectual property, it’s mostly gotten better over time. Usually, the opposite is true. Much of the juice driving this is none other than Tom Cruise himself, the seemingly ageless wonder who continues to defy expectations.
The other and maybe more important part of this magic formula is writer and director Christopher Macquarrie. Since 2008, he and Cruise have collaborated on 11 projects for a combined box office return of over $5 billion. Their projects’ combined earnings are comparable to entire movie franchises. Their earnings rank between “Avatar” and “Despicable Me” for the biggest box office returns of all time. The most significant collaboration between the two was “Top Gun: Maverick,” which was one of the most successful films ever.
Since they first met on the set of “Valkyrie” in 2008, these two have been box-office gold. But their projects haven’t always been critical darlings, 2017’s “The Mummy” being their most notorious stinker. But even their bad films drive lots of people to movie theaters. Some of that is because Cruise is arguably the last true movie star. There are lots of actors who are famous, like Zendaya or Robert Downey Jr., but Tom Cruise is the closest thing today to the classic Hollywood movie star — akin to Cary Grant or John Wayne. Back then, the
