Tom Cruise is a bona fide action star—even now, at 56 years old. Within just the past couple days, he’s told Jimmy Fallon about breaking his ankle on the set of Mission: Impossible – Fallout and challenged James Corden to go skydiving. He’s pulled off a lot of stunts over the years, but perhaps more impressive of all is the one he’s done most consistently: Running. Cruise running in movies has become a bit of a film industry meme, actually—so much so that there’s a 19-minute video compiling all of his running scenes ever (as of 2016, that is), below. It turns out that the more Cruise runs, the better his movies do, and there’s data to back that up (via Rotten Tomatoes)!
The website broke down Cruise’s filmography by how much he runs in each movie, and it’s true that generally speaking, the more he runs, the higher the rating the movie ends up earning. Movies in which he runs in a range between not-at-all to what the site considers “middle distance” hover at a Rotten Tomatoes score of around 62 percent.
When he really gets going and gets into Marathon Cruise mode, though, his movies achieve an average score of 71 percent. For the record, the films in that category are The Firm (1992), Minority Report (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015), Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), and The Mummy (2017).
The full article is full of fun trivia, including the movie in which he runs the most: Mission: Impossible III, in which he runs about 3,212 feet, which equates to approximately 0.6 miles, or nearly a kilometer.
What’s your favorite Tom Cruise run ever? Sprint down to the comments and let us know what you think!
Featured image: Fox
