We Need Magnolia Tom Cruise Back

I know folks line up to watch Ethan Hunt leap from a motorcycle into a helicopter or hold his breath underwater for six minutes. The commitment is awe-inspiring, and at this point, a certain legacy. But I never knew Cruise as an actor with emotional investment. When was the last time Cruise played a character who was allowed to be pathetic? When was the last time he was allowed to break, not bones, but the illusion of control?

Lately, Cruise's characters don’t fail. They get bruised, maybe, but never broken. They don’t beg. They don’t crumble. They don’t sob into the floor like a child. And maybe that’s what stardom demands—a perfectly polished, never-cracked image. Maybe vulnerability doesn’t test well in IMAX. But Magnolia is proof that Cruise doesn’t have to play it safe to be magnetic. In fact, he’s more captivating when he lets the cracks show. In Jerry Maguire, he gave us glimpses of this vulnerability. In Eyes Wide Shut, he tiptoed toward it. But in Magnolia? He dove headfirst into the abyss and didn’t look back.

Anyone who’s seen the film will probably talk your ear off about what the raining frogs meant, or whether the rapping kid was actually Jesus or just metaphorically omniscient. But I’m not here to talk about the frogs or the prophecies or even the movie, for that matter. I’m here to talk about one thing: Tom Cruise. Because Magnolia gave us a version of Cruise that feels like it dropped in from another universe. It was raw. It was weird. It was electric. And it’s been MIA ever since.

Magnolia was the first indie-style Tom Cruise performance I’d ever seen, and thank God for that. Paul Thomas Anderson somehow unlocked an entirely different gear in him, one I didn’t even know existed. Up until then, I knew Cruise as the slick, confident action star. Little weird with the Scientology stuff, but that didn't stop him from slaying in Magnolia. The guy who hangs off helicopters and jogs horizontally across the Burj Khalifa like gravity? That’s the Cruise I grew up with. That’s the Cruise most of us grew up with (unless you're like 40).

But Magnolia was a curveball. A beautifully unhinged, emotionally vulnerable curveball. Since it’s an ensemble film, the screen time is spread pretty evenly across the cast—and a stellar cast at that: Julianne Moore melting down in a pharmacy, Philip Seymour Hoffman giving the kindest performance ever put to film, and William H. Macy just trying so hard to be loved. But no one grabbed my attention like Cruise’s Frank T.J. Mackey.

Frank is a hyper-masculine self-help guru—basically a “Bro Podcast Host” before those really blew up, preaching absurdly toxic mantras to rooms full of insecure men. His seminar slogans are things like “Respect the cock, and tame the cunt,” which sounds like something a red-pilled YouTuber would shout into a webcam before trying to sell you crypto. Interestingly, watching Frank now feels more relevant than it did in 1999.

This is a man who struts on stage in all black like some deranged magician, headset mic blazing, sun-kissed skin, and ponytail flopping. He’s the embodiment of performative masculinity, teaching men how to “seduce and destroy” instead of just… going to therapy and having a genuine conversation with any woman in the world. The character would be a joke if Cruise didn’t play him so scarily straight. And that’s what makes the performance brilliant: Cruise doesn’t flinch. He goes full send into Frank’s ridiculousness—every twitch, every flex, every overly-enunciated slogan oozes this desperate need to be seen as powerful.

But it’s all a front, and the film knows it. The camera is always at a close-up angle with harsh white lighting to accentuate Cruise's ecstatic, sometimes frightening facial expressions. As if men like him are put on a godly pedestal, bathed in artificial, disingenuous light. The audience is never shown, even when they cheer for him, they're irrelevant to Cruise's journey.

As Magnolia unfolds, Cruise peels back that caricature several layers, revealing the rotting core underneath. Not in some cheap redemption-arc kind of way, but in a way that feels like a dare. He dares you to hate Frank, then dares you to feel bad about it. He dares you to see not a monster, but a pathetic, terrified man. That’s what makes this performance so ahead of its time. Cruise, in 1999, essentially played the guy Andrew Tate is trying to be in 2025—but showed us how hollow that guy really is.

It’s eerie how prescient the whole thing feels. It’s like PTA saw the future and said, “Here, let me show you where masculinity is heading—and how sad it’ll look when it gets there.” I truly respect this stance as a male director back in the day when films like Fight Club or Pulp Fiction, though also criticizing the violent culture of toxic masculinity, still indulged in its clichés.

But what really devastates me is how emotionally brave Cruise is in this role. We’re not talking about physical stunts—this is Cruise emotionally flinging himself off a cliff. One of the most unforgettable scenes is the Gwenovier interview, where a steely journalist (April Grace is phenomenal here) systematically dismantles Frank’s carefully curated persona. And you see it—all of it—play out on Cruise’s face. The micro-expressions. The tightening jaw. The flustered smirk barely covers the panic. He tries to flirt his way out. He tries to bulldoze through it. After all, he's only seen women as absent, weak figures, but she doesn’t budge—and neither does the truth.

It’s that moment when Frank realizes he’s been cornered, and Cruise plays it with a kind of subtlety that most actors wouldn’t dare attempt. Tragically, Cruise reportedly drew from his own experience with his father for the scene. I've heard of method acting, but this scene feels so unbelievly natrual I can imagine the places Cruise had to go to in order to get there, and the fact that he was willing to do it gives me a positive and hopeful belief that men who've gone through similar experiences can understand it's not inherent, only learned and can be rectified. After all, if we can respectfully discuss the ways women have been traumatized by male figures in their lives, leading to unhealthy promiscuity and validation, then we should be able to talk about this as well.

The scene that absolutely wrecked me, and I did not expect it to come, was when Frank visited his dying father (Jason Robards). By this point, all the bravado has drained out of him. He’s not even visible at first—he’s behind a door, voice trembling, stuttering, begging the universe for a script he doesn’t have. When he finally enters the room and collapses by the bedside, it’s one of the most honest breakdowns I’ve ever seen on screen. Not just because of the tears, but because of the timing of them. Cruise doesn’t cry for the camera. He cries because he’s run out of lies. Because there’s no one left to impress, he has to be the ugly raw man he never wanted to deal with. He’s not mourning a man. He’s mourning a version of himself that never got to exist.

Let me be clear: I still like modern-day Cruise. The guy does his own stunts and pushes himself to the edge of physical capability — feats my ego whispers I could possibly do, too, if I just trained hard enough. So yes, the stunts are cool. The Mission: Impossible franchise is still firing on all cylinders. Top Gun: Maverick was a banger. Cruise’s career is a masterclass in reinvention. But as I watched him cling to the edge of a mountain this week — eyes wide, teeth gritted, dangling over the abyss like a man one wrong move away from total collapse — all I could think was: I need more of this pathetic man.

For the first time, I truly felt a sliver of sympathy for men like him. And not just sympathy, recognition. Not because I forgive the strange, uncomfortable legacy he carries, or because I’m suddenly fine with the image-manufacturing machine that surrounds him. But because in that moment of vulnerability, something cracked. Behind the action-hero mask, I glimpsed the terrified boy trying not to fall. And that, I think, is where empathy starts, not with absolution, but with the willingness to see the full, messy human beneath the myth.

This doesn’t mean we let powerful men off the hook. Empathy isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s not about forgetting, or excusing, or rewriting history. It’s about widening the frame. It's about realizing that even the most unrelatable people might be driven by fears, losses, and pressures we understand all too well, and that in understanding them, we learn more about ourselves. Maybe even heal a bit in the process. Empathy, at its best, isn't about siding with the monster. It's about recognizing the monster’s humanity, and then deciding what to do with that knowledge.

My friend recommended I watch Magnolia, stating, "It's so you," and I'm not entirely sure what that insinuated, but it introduced me to the kind of role only PTA knows how to bring to life. Because Magnolia showed me the versatile range Cruise had, I don't necessarily want another Frank T.J. Mackey (though honestly, if PTA wants to check in on Frank post-cancellation, I’m in), just something similar, something louder. Because, as Magnolia proves, Tom Cruise doesn’t need explosions to blow us away. He just needs to stand still and let us watch him fall apart.