Dear Tom Cruise, please don’t make a movie in space
As lovers of cinema, making peace with the obscene financial and environmental costs of a multi-million blockbuster is part and parcel of our passion. Film is art, and art must endure. It’s also a business that makes money, but as the age-old saying goes, “You’ve got to spend money to make money”. But by God, does the film business have to spend so much money? Does Tom Cruise really need to make his next film in space?
When you look at the budgets for some of the biggest films of late, those figures are so ludicrously high that they almost dissolve into abstract symbols on the page. Avengers: Endgame cost $365million. Three hundred and sixty-five million. That’s higher than the combined GDP of several small countries. Your average audience member could barely comprehend one million if it were transferred into their bank account right now, which is interesting considering the general consensus for what constitutes an ‘average budget’ falls into the $20-70m price range.
Now with these hundreds of millions comes a far more insidious price, one in which the biggest payee is not studio executives or national film institutions – it’s the ground beneath our feet. The air we breathe into our lungs. The gaseous barrier in our atmosphere stands as the sole barrier between us and the sun, between being alive and incinerating under the heat of a giant ball of plasma. A big-budget feature has an average carbon footprint of 3,000 metric tons, which equates to more than seven million miles driven by a regular car. There’s no hiding from the fact: the film industry is bad for the environment.
Trying to conceive of those numbers in granular, real-life terms is difficult, but just imagine the simple things. The transport shepherding actors, equipment, props and construction. The amount of food needed to feed the thousands upon thousands of crewmembers and actors. The energy needed for the camera, the lights and the digital processing of all that footage. So, while the collective consciousness of the film industry is becoming increasingly aware of the need to go greener, emphasising how many more biodegradable coffee cups are being used on set or how they’ve limited the amount of paper used for scripts… somehow, it just doesn’t quite cut it.
Nevertheless, it’s a pill we must swallow. When whole productions go to gorgeous and exotic locations, when the likes of David Lean capture the epic vistas of Jordan and Syria for Lawrence of Arabia and offer it to us on glorious, widescreen, 70mm special presentations, how can we not marvel at that? We know that the amount of petrol and electricity used and the inevitable litter left behind is great, but the gift of cinema is ever so slightly greater. When Christopher Nolan or Joseph Kosinski strap gigantic cameras to jet fighters for Dunkirk and Top Gun: Maverick and actually fly them across the goddamn sky, it’s a thing of unparalleled and spectacular wonder. “Thank God for cinema!” we cry. “Thank God for Tom Cruise!”
Don’t go to space, Tom
But back to Tom Cruise, his latest Mission Impossible film cost $290m to make. Back to stupid amounts of money, jaw-dropping stunts and far-flung locations – his next movie is going to be set in space, and he’s just announced that he’s “working on it diligently”. That’s not some euphemism or metaphor for boldly going where no man’s gone before, for carrying the film industry to new heights. You heard me the first time: he’s literally going to space. Untitled Tom Cruise/SpaceX Project will be written by Mission Impossible veteran Christopher McQuarrie, directed by Doug Liman and produced by Universal, and will see Elon Musk’s SpaceX ‘Crew Dragon’ flying Cruise and Liman to the International Space Station. It’s being billed as “the first-ever Hollywood motion picture in outer space”, and you know what? I hope the thing never gets made. If it does, I hope it’s the last.
Dear Tom Cruise, please don’t make a film in space. While sky-diving off a somersaulting motorbike that’s been ridden off the top of Mount Everest (or whatever it is that happens) will undoubtedly be heart-stopping and exhilarating action, I sincerely ask that you keep your high-octane antics on planet Earth. It’s not just absurd; it’s downright tone-fucking-deaf. Beyond the abominable hubris and despicable greed necessary to think that appropriating a hundred-billion-dollar industry for a movie is a worthwhile idea, it sends a clear message. Did you think that the Hollywood elites live entirely different lives to us? Did you think that the disparity between us and them is too big? Wait until you hear this; yes, they are looking down on us – this time from outer space.
As the world lurches slowly but surely towards apocalypse and humanity shuffles ever closer to extinction, Cruise is up there making a movie. Nuclear Armageddon? Ecological collapse? Who cares! Cruise has got his space suit on! And do you know what the worst thing about it is? It’s not that the cost of living crisis is spiralling so out of control that we can barely afford a ticket for Dead Reckoning Part I, let alone our bills and rent, nor that the chances of our future children seeing a white Christmas are practically nill, nor the fact that the cost of Dead Reckoning Part II could probably single-handedly end world hunger. No – the worst thing is, despite everything that’s been said and all the cases made against it, you’ll find me first in the ticket line. “One for Untitled Tom Cruise/SpaceX Project, please!”
