Star of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has avoided any and all Scientology questions and instead leaned into the role of Movie Savior

Tom Cruise poses on the red carpet upon arrival for the U.K. premiere of the film ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’ in London on June 22, 2023. Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

There are movie stars and then there is Tom Cruise. Forty years a star, enough classics to make listing even a few here pointless, and, now, someone who can stake a legitimate claim to saving Hollywood (or at least jolting some life into that lazy, bloated monstrosity). Last year’s Top Gun: Maverick, with its millions at the box office, helped rescue the movies and movie theaters from the brink of Covid-19 and streaming. This year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh and ostensibly penultimate installment of the secret agent series, should reach similar heights. Tom Cruise is as big as he’s ever been — a feat as staggering as any Ethan Hunt stunt.

Because then there’s all the other stuff. The Scientology of it all. The Church’s interminable history of alleged abuses and misconduct and Cruise’s status as its most prominent figure, a high-ranking member with deep ties to leader David Miscavige. Cruise has been a Scientologist for nearly as long as he’s been a star, his introduction to the Church reportedly brokered around 1986 (the same year Top Gun came out) by his first wife Mimi Rogers. A lot has allegedly happened in that time, from the harrowing accusations against the Church itself (abuse, trafficking, forced labor, to name a few, all of which the Church has denied), to the various claims about Cruise’s relationship with it (the alleged arrangement of romantic partners, for one, which the Church has also denied).

And yet, none of it’s ever really caught up with Cruise, let alone dragged him down. Even Alex Gibney, who directed the damning Scientology doc Going Clear (based on Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name), admitted to Rolling Stone recently that he was “surprised” Cruise had avoided any kind of reckoning.

“There are stories about him that, if one could get people to go on the record, would be shocking,” Gibney said. “But they have to be willing to do it. And so far, they haven’t been.” (Cruise did not respond to a request for comment.)

Tom Cruise speaks during the inauguration of the Church of Scientology in Madrid, Spain, on September 18, 2004. PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP via Getty Images

It’s easy to let one’s imagination run wild with known unknowns (just ask Donald Rumsfeld — or don’t, actually); but the thing is, there’s already a lot we do know about Tom Cruise and Scientology. It’s not some nasty secret stashed away. It barely qualifies as dirty laundry at this point. We’ve had years of tell-alls, exposés, memoirs, documentaries, lawsuits, even one unforgettable episode of South Park. At the most recent Oscars and Golden Globes, where Top Gun: Maverick was fêted with multiple nominations (and even won an Academy Award for Best Sound), hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jerrod Carmichael both joked about it. They weren’t even subtle or winking, like the kind of jokes 30 Rock made about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein years before the full extent of their alleged transgressions were revealed. Carmichael flat-out said the three Golden Globes Cruise returned in protest of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association should be exchanged for Shelly Miscavige — David’s wife, who hasn’t been seen in public since 2007.

With Tom Cruise, it’s yet to reach the point where we, as a culture, are devastated, disheveled, distraught, screaming, “He can’t keep getting away with it!” He remains deeply beloved, and not even in an unsettling, upsetting way, like some of our other prominent problematic actors. And it has everything to do with the way Cruise has thrown himself completely into his work over the past 10 years or so — the way he’s effectively replaced Scientology with a different public-facing religion: The Movies.

There was a brief window where it was possible the Tom Cruise/Scientology partnership would end in some kind of mutual assured destruction. The man was on an absolute tear in the mid-2000s, railing against psychology and pharmaceuticals, scolding Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants, then doubling down during a contentious interview with Matt Lauer. It was a time when Cruise was willing to sit down with a major publication like Rolling Stone for a wide-ranging, on-the-record interview, and give quotes like: “If you really want to know, get What Is Scientology?, the book, and look at it, because that’s what Scientology is. It’s a very large body of knowledge with tools that are available. It’s ah… it really is the shit, man.”