It looks like Paramount had better cancel the upcoming Mission Impossible sequels because Tom Cruise is apparently too old for action movies. At least, that’s what the author of the Jack Reacher novels thinks.
Tom Cruise is arguably the pre-eminent action star working today. The 57-year-old continues to push the limit when it comes to his daring on-screen stunts, leaping between buildings, performing a HALO jump, and piloting a helicopter in a 360 downward spiral between mountains — and that’s all just in the most recent Mission Impossible film, MI: Fallout. To say that Cruise is too old to be doing what he is doing better than anyone else seems absurd, but that’s exactly what author Lee Child said in a recent interview.
Child spoke to The Sunday Times about his decision to end the Cruise-starring Jack Reacher film franchise after just two films — despite Cruise’s desire to make more. “Cruise was reluctant. He had his own investment in it, he was going to argue against it. It sounds extremely patronizing but I think it’s good for him. He’s too old for this stuff,” Child said, according to The Independent. “He’s 57, he needs to move on, transition to being a character actor.”
While Child is certainly entitled to his opinion, we wholeheartedly disagree with his point of view. For one, Cruise’s action movies are still killing it at the box office — the most recent MI film was the franchise’s highest-grosser ever. Not only that, but the idea that older actors can’t cut in action movies has been pretty thoroughly debunked by this point. Sylvester Stallone is still convincing as Rambo, Arnold Schwarzenegger is still indestructible as the T-800, and Harrison Ford will no doubt whip us into a frenzy in the next Indiana Jones movie. That trio of action stars are all in their 70s, and at the rate that Cruise is going, he’ll probably still be filmed jumping out of planes when he’s 90.
