How It Felt To Watch Tom Cruise Return To The Movies With Tenet, According To John David Washington

Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick

Most of Tom Cruise’s film work over the last decade has taken place at either Paramount Pictures or Universal Pictures, but recently, the Mission: Impossible star helped Warner Bros out by hyping up the experience of seeing Tenet in a theater. Cruise was clearly impressed with Tenet, and star John David Washington was pleasantly surprised that an actor he watched as a child was going to bat for his biggest movie yet.

The video of Tom Cruise traveling to view the latest Warner Bros flick (or as call it, Mr. Cruise Goes To See Tenet) was released last week, and here what John David Washington had to say about it while he was recently promoting Tenet alongside director Christopher Nolan:

That was a trip, I gotta be honest. I remember seeing Top Gun as a kid. So, him standing at a poster that I’m on saying, ‘Back to the movies’ was just an epic moment. I really found great satisfaction in that clip for sure.

Tom Cruise is currently in the United Kingdom shooting Mission: Impossible 7, so it was easy enough for him to head to London and attend a Tenet screening. The video tracking this cinematic venture was initially vague about what movie he was seeing, but all became clear when he pointed to a gigantic Tenet display featuring John David Washington, as Washington referenced in his interview with Extra.

However this special Tenet screening came together for Tom Cruise, considering that he’s spent more than two decades contributing to the spy/espionage genre as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movies, the fact that Tenet, which also rests nicely in the genre (albeit with way more of a sci-fi bent) has his stamp of approval is unquestionably welcome press for Warner Bros. And with John David Washington rising through the Hollywood ranks, maybe there will be an opportunity for him to work with Cruise someday. Is there still time to cast Washington in Mission: Impossible 8?

Tenet follows John David Washington’s character, who is simply identified as The Protagonist, learning to manipulate time in order to prevent World War III from unfolding. Washington’s costars include Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Martin Donovan and Dimple Kapadia. So far critical reception towards Tenet has been fairly positive, with the movie ranking at 79% on Rotten Tomatoes.

As for Tom Cruise, along with filming Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 back-to-back, he’s also preparing to legitimately venture into outer space for a Universal movie that will be written and directed by Doug Liman and has Christopher McQuarrie attached as producer. Cruise and Liman are also still attached to Edge of Tomorrow 2, a.k.a. Live Die Repeat and Repeat, although it remains unclear when or even if that project will actually move forward.

Tenet begins its U.S. theatrical rollout this Thursday, September 3, and you can read CinemaBlend’s review of the movie now. Find out what else is supposed to hit the big screen before the year is over with our 2020 release schedule.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.