Why was Tom Cruise’s Olympics appearance so weird?

After the bizarre, weather-beaten and at times purely controversial Olympics opening ceremony, the finale to a largely successful event was more assured, not least because of its most spectacular coup de théâtre. The now-sixty-two-year-old Tom Cruise, still the biggest movie star in the world, literally and symbolically, transferred the Olympics from Paris in 2024 to Los Angeles in 2028 by abseiling from the top of the Stade de France, collecting the Olympic flag and transferring it to the Hollywood sign above LA, with much airborne derring-do and implicit early promotion for the next Mission: Impossible film, to be released next summer.

Cruise’s status as a living legend is now beyond discussion. If 2022’s sublime Top Gun: Maverick proved anything, it is that Cruise — then a man in his late fifties, but looking at least a decade and a half younger — can have it said of his character, by an awestruck subordinate, “he’s the fastest man alive,” and the line seem exhilarating, rather than cheesy. Let’s pass over the fact that he hasn’t taken on a demanding acting role since 2017’s American Made — although a forthcoming collaboration with Alejandro González Ińárritu should change that — and instead revel in the knowledge that he remains an all-American icon, the finest ambassador that his country could have at home and overseas.

Except, as ever with anyone of Cruise’s standing, there is an elephant in the chambre — and that, in his case, is his enthusiastic embrace of Scientology. Although the bizarre days of his couch-jumping in the mid-2000s are long since past, when journalists wishing to interview Cruise for War of the Worlds were compelled to undergo a crash course in dianetics before they were allowed to enter the actor’s presence, there is still a disconnect between Cruise’s energetic and charismatic public persona and the question of what, exactly, he really believes and stands for when he isn’t single-handedly lifting up buses with his bare hands or skydiving off helicopters.

It may not have helped that, in France, Scientology is not regarded as a religion, but as a cult. As the journalist Yashar Ali remarked, “It’s quite frustrating to see Tom Cruise, one of the top leaders of this borderless totalitarian state and cult of personality, receive such a position of great honor and prominence at the Olympics.” Ali makes the valid point that Cruise’s standing as the most prominent movie star in the world doubles up as endless propaganda for Scientology; those members of the organization who might be doubting their commitment to the cause are simply shown the international prominence that Cruise enjoys, and asked — implicitly or explicitly — whether someone of such stature could have achieved the glory he has done without the helping hand of L. Ron Hubbard’s acolytes.

Cruise has always been welcome in France — his pictures perform exceptionally well at the international box office, not least because the Mission: Impossible films favor spectacle and action over dialogue — and he famously enjoyed a personal audience with the then-president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2004, during which Cruise claimed that he had attempted to educate Sarkozy about the virtues of Scientology, and the embarrassed president insisted that all they had talked about were movies. Whoever was telling the truth, it’s undeniably true that Cruise has an especial affinity with the French (a key action scene from Mission: Impossible — Fallout was set in Paris, with the Arc de Triomphe prominent) and this stands at odds with the way that his religion is treated by the country.

It is doubtful that even the famously charismatic and charming Cruise could single-handedly alter the country’s perceptions of Scientology, although he has undeniably attempted to, and this, perhaps, remains an impossible mission even for the world-conquering superstar. Yet amid the praise for his latest daredevil antics, it’s worth considering that there could be an ulterior motive to his splashy heroics, one that makes the adulation that bit harder to swallow.