Tom cruise, hollywood and the box office gender gap | thearticle

Tom Cruise’s new film has just been released. _Top Gun: Maverick _is the sequel to _Top Gun_, one of the biggest hits of the 1980s. It made a total domestic gross of $176,781,728. 

Internationally it took in an estimated $177,030,000 for a worldwide box office total of  $353,811,728. _Top Gun _was one of the huge box office hits of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer

that took mid-1980s Hollywood by storm, along with _Flashdance _(1983), _Beverly Hills Cop _(1984) and _Beverly Hills Cop II _(1987). The obvious selling-point of the sequel is that it stars

Tom Cruise, who was in his mid-20s when the original was made, and is now 59. But, more interestingly it doesn’t star Kelly McGillis, who played the female lead, Charlotte “ Charlie ”

Blackwood, in the original. She was then 29. According to McGillis, now 64, she was not asked to appear in the sequel. The female lead, Jennifer Connelly, is 51. Do the maths. At 59 Cruise

is considered young enough to appear in the sequel. So is Val Kilmer, now 62. But McGillis isn’t.   Cruise has already signed up for two more _ Mission: Impossible _ films. That’s what

happens when your films have grossed over $4 billion in North America and over $10.1 billion worldwide, making you one of the highest-grossing box office stars of all time. It’s worth

mentioning that Harrison Ford will turn 80 in July but the fifth _ Indiana Jones _ film is due out in 2023, while Sam Neill (74) and Jeff Goldblum (69) both star in _ Jurassic World Dominion

_ , out this summer. Samuel L. Jackson (73) was the highest grossing star of 2020 and 2021 at the US box office. Of course, _Top Gun: Maverick _is not a one-off. Or, more to the point, the

story of Kelly McGillis is not a one-off. Think of some of the other top female stars of the 1980s and ’90s. Jamie Lee Curtis (_Halloween, Trading Places _and _A Fish Called Wanda_), Meg

Ryan (_When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle _and_ You’__ve Got Mail_) and Julia Roberts (_Pretty Woman_, _Sleeping with the Enemy, My Best Friend’s Wedding_) are all between their

mid-50s and mid-60s, around the same age as Tom Cruise, but it is unthinkable that they would be cast as the romantic interest in _Top Gun: Maverick_. Interestingly, the Academy Award for

Best Actress often goes to great actresses in their mid-fifties and beyond. Think of Frances McDormand in _Nomadland_ and _Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri_ , Julianne Moore in _

Still Alice _ , Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in _The Iron Lady_ and Helen Mirren in _The Queen. _However, they won their awards playing famous figures from history, women with

Alzheimer’s or what some critics might call cranky older women. But these films are symptomatic of the growing divide between films that win awards and adventure films that are huge box

office hits. If you look at the actresses who make the top 20 highest grossing stars at the US  box office in 2021, only one is over forty; the other eight are in their 20s or 30s. If you

look at the men, six in the Top 20 are between their mid-50s and mid-70s and Dwayne Johnson will be 50 next year. The moral to their story is that if you are a talented actress and you want

to win awards, play British queens and great character parts. If you want to be in huge box office hits, i.e. adventure movies with dinosaurs, superheroes and middle-aged men on fast

motorbikes, do it while you’re young. Alternatively, hope for a revolution in attitudes in Hollywood. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering

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