Ethan Hawke Posed A Fascinating Question About Tom Cruise’s Career: Would There Be A ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ If He Won An Oscar For ‘Magnolia’?

Tom Cruise was notoriously reluctant to make a sequel to Top Gun, calling it “irresponsible” in an interview with Playboy in 1990. That was then; “Top Gun: Maverick is 2022’s highest-grossing movie” is now.

Cruise is the face of three franchises: Mission: Impossible, Top Gun, and Jack Reacher (there will not be a third Jack Reacher movie with Cruise, not with the success of the TV show without him, but Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is underrated). But his first sequel (Mission: Impossible 2) didn’t come until 19 years into his career, and a year after he made two of his most daring and best movies, Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia. Would there be a Top Gun: Maverick if the Oscars had respected the c*ck (Cruise lost Best Supporting Actor to Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules.)

It’s a timeline-changing question that Ethan Hawke — who, like Cruise, has been nominated for multiple Oscars but never won — posed in an interview with Indiewire.

“John Coltrane never won a prize. There are benchmarks that society likes, but they can’t be benchmarks for the artist because then you’re just lost. Sometimes I wonder if Tom Cruise won the Oscar for Magnolia, would it have changed the trajectory of his career” he said. “It kind of seems like he gave up on chasing approval from the industry and just did his own thing. That’s probably a good thing for him, but sometimes I wish they gave him more prizes for Magnolia so that he had done it again.”

I love the Mission: Impossible movies and Top Gun: Maverick was a blast, but I agree with Hawke. Cruise is fantastic in Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut and Collateral, and it would be thrilling to see him take on daring dramas for adults again instead of sticking with tentpoles. Indie theaters need your help, too, Tom!