Hear Me Out: Tom Cruise should win the first Oscar for stunts
If there was any justice, then the Academy Awards would have introduced an award recognising stunt performers a long time ago. Fortunately, it looks closer to happening than ever before, and when it does, it would be the easiest publicity in the world to name Tom Cruise as its inaugural recipient.
Of course, it would need to be viewed both internally and externally as being more than a cynical move to generate the maximum amount of attention, but it’s not as if the daredevil action star doesn’t have it in his locker to earn it. If anything, were Cruise to discover that the Oscars were debuting a stunt category, knowing how determined he is to master his craft, he’d probably go out of his way to ensure he won.
After all, the most recent Mission: Impossible movie saw him ride a motorcycle off a cliff and parachute to safety, which is jaw-dropping on every level. Hypothetically, were the Oscars already in a position where it handed out trophies to the people who designed, choreographed, and executed the most dangerous and awe-inspiring stunts to appear on-screen in the year Dead Reckoning released, then he’d be the odds-on favourite.
2026 will mark the first time in a quarter of a century that a new award will be added into the mix, with casting directors finally getting their moment in the spotlight. That’s in no way to suggest that the people who assemble ensembles aren’t deserving of the accolade, but there’s only so long the Academy can continue to ignore the campaigning for stuntpeople when it’s only growing more vocal.
Stuntman-turned-director David Leitch is at the forefront of that movement, simply because he knows exactly how important those professionals are to ensuring the wanton acts of carnage and destruction audiences take for granted go off without a hitch despite their inherent dangers. They’ve been viewed as the unsung heroes of the industry for decades, so why not go right ahead and sing their praises on Hollywood’s biggest night of backslapping self-congratulations?
Admittedly, it’s not as simple as it appears, with John Wick director and fellow proponent Chad Stahelski breaking down the complexities. “The question is, we haven’t had the real talks about how do you even determine what to award,” he explained to Comic Book Movie.
“Like is it for best stunt? Is it best choreography? Best action sequence? Best stunt ensemble? Does the stunt coordinator get it? The guy doing the gag get it? The martial arts choreographer? The fight choreography? The stunt double? The second unit director? The editor? Who gets the award?” he pondered. “All these are great questions that just need to be talked about by smart individuals on both sides of it, the stunt community and the Academy.”
Not to assume how the things work behind closed doors, but given that it would be a technical category, it could realistically be shared among multiple recipients. That would theoretically open the door for the coordinator and performers at the very least getting a prize, which would presumably be based upon a single isolated stunt rather than an action sequence at large.
This isn’t to suggest that if and when a stunt Oscar happens, Cruise should get it simply because he’s Tom Cruise. That’s definitely part of it from a mainstream awareness perspective, but alongside whoever he collaborates with to conjure his latest death-defying act, it would be the easiest way to immediately elevate an award that should have been part of the proceedings for a long time.
When one of cinema’s biggest stars is famed for doing his own stunts and pulls off feats that even seasoned pros would need to steel themselves for, then he’d hardly be undeserving of the honour, either.
