Tom Cruise is soaring high after the record-breaking success of Top Gun: Maverick. The second-highest-grossing film of 2022 broke the bank with a stunning $1.5 billion at the box office and on top of that grabbed 6 Academy Award nominations, including one in the Best Picture category. This victory for Cruise must be sweet because he went against the tide during the pandemic and refused to let his film go to streaming. However, it is also this quality of the actor that makes him unfit to play MCU’s Iron Man.
Tom Cruise Would Have Delayed Top Gun: Maverick For A Decade
Tom Cruise in Top Gun- Maverick
It’s well-known now that Tom Cruise spent more than a decade trying to get Top Gun: Maverick off the ground. At first, he teamed up with Tony Scott, the director of the original film. But after the unfortunate passing of the director, he brought Oblivion’s Joseph Kosinski onboard to helm the Christopher McQuarrie written script. The movie was originally set for a July 2019 release, but it was ultimately released in 2022, after a 3-year gap.
Tom Cruise
At Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Hollywood superstar talked about his faith in the project and how far he was willing to delay the film to ensure a theatrical distribution. As per Cruise:
“People have been asking for the movie for 34 years, what’s a couple more years? I would have held out for 10 years. Look, the film is made for the big screen, I have friends all through my actors’ friends and studios in theatrical, I made it for theatrical, that’s what I did. We all did, we all made it for theatrical, it wasn’t just me, the whole crew.”
His determination to keep Top Gun: Maverick a theatrical release made him prevent streamers like Netflix and Prime Video from acquiring the sequel. While his dogged resolve is admirable, it’s also probably proof of the fact that he wouldn’t have been a good fit for the role of Iron Man/ Tony Stark.
Why Tom Cruise Wouldn’t Have Been The Perfect Iron Man
Robert Downey Jr. and Kevin Feige
Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man. To this day, fans have been clamoring for the actor to return to the MCU after Avengers: Endgame saw him bid goodbye to the franchise his character began. However, most MCU fanatics know that RDJ wasn’t the original choice to play Tony Stark. Tom Cruise was initially offered the role but he turned it down. During an interview with IGN in 2005, the celeb said that he didn’t put on the suit because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to take decisions on the film. As per the Top Gun star:
“They came to me at a certain point and, when I do something, I wanna do it right. If I commit to something, it has to be done in a way that I know it’s gonna be something special. And as it was lining up, it just didn’t feel to me like it was gonna work. I need to be able to make decisions and make the film as great as it can be, and it just didn’t go down that road that way.”
Cruise’s work ethic hasn’t changed about two decades down the line. So even if he was offered the role of Tony Stark now (as he was rumored to be in Doctor Strange 2), since the MCU is exploring multiverses and variants, it wouldn’t have worked out. In fact, chances are that he wouldn’t have even considered stepping into the role now.
After all, lately, the Marvel superhero universe has been all about churning out movies and shows like a factory setup rather than paying special attention to each project and making it as great as it can be. So Cruise wouldn’t have agreed to work in such a monotonous setup. However, maybe if Marvel Studios fixes its way of working, it can draw Cruise’s eye and a collaboration might happen in the future. But for now, that remains a pipe dream.
