What Do We Think Tom Cruise Loved the Most About ‘The Flash’?

Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Flash.

"Show me The Flash!" —Tom Cruise, probably.

Months before audiences got their eyes on DC's long-gestating superhero film, Cruise requested a private screening at his home, and his eyes were wide open. Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Cruise later called director Andy Muschietti to share his enthusiastic review, reportedly saying that The Flash is "everything you want in a movie" and "this is the kind of movie we need now." As the guy who "saved Hollywood's ass," he would know!

"The movie was finished by the time that [Cruise] saw it, so it was a confidence boost," Muschietti recently admitted to GamesRadar, with his sister and producing partner Barbara Muschietti adding, "It's a very cynical industry, and to hear people that really have no skin in the game, because they have nothing to gain, just say something that lovely — in the case of Tom Cruise, he called us, talked for 15 minutes, praising Andy, praising the film, and it just feels very good because we really work very hard to make these movies."

We sadly don't have actual footage of Cruise watching The Flash, but thankfully, we'll always have the iconic video of him going to see Tenet in a theater, so it's easy to believe this experience was virtually the same.

Now, with the film in theaters Friday, it's the perfect time to speculate on what he loved the most about the superhero flick.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Flash.

A Double Cruise

After five decades of performances, Cruise somehow has never played a twin or time traveler who meets another version of himself. Watching Ezra Miller have a blast pulling double duty as a younger, dumber version of the same character must have been intriguing for the Mission: Impossible star. If the rumored Edge of Tomorrow sequel ever happens, and Cruise's William Cage faces off against an alternate version of himself in a time loop, you won't have to look far for the inspiration.

Second Chances

When George Clooney shows up in the final Flash scene to reprise his universally-rejected portrayal of Batman, Cruise likely leaned forward in his chair and did the Leonardo DiCaprio meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Not because Cruise thought he saw himself onscreen, but rather, he saw a blueprint for revisiting some of his own poorly-received characters. Actually, wait a minute, what if he combines the double Cruise and second chance concepts? Just imagine Senator Jasper Irving and rockstar Stacee Jaxx in the Lions for Lambs and Rock of Ages crossover that no one asked for!

Who Needs Top Gun?

Maybe the funniest bit in The Flash is that, in the alternate timeline that Barry is knocked into, Eric Stoltz was never fired from Back to the Future. Instead, he turned in such an incredible performance that a character in The Flash proudly shows off a Stoltz tattoo on his leg. But that's not the only game-changer in this world's film history. Michael J. Fox, who replaced Stoltz as Marty McFly in our universe, instead starred in Footloose, while real-life Footloose star Kevin Bacon became Maverick in Top Gun instead of Cruise. On the surface, you might assume that Cruise would be bummed by the thought of someone else taking on his iconic character. However, the optimist in me thinks Cruise's creative mind would focus instead on the other famous roles he might have played in the second Barry's timeline. "I could have yippee ki-yay'd those motherf---ers in Die Hard! Or, hell, I'm basically Batman! Oh man, Terminator, c'mon, I'll always be back!'

I Can Live Forever!

Criticism's been leveled at The Flash for its use of CGI and AI to include previous incarnations of DC characters played by now-dead actors, with George Reeves' and Christoper Reeve's Supermans among those to appear. Meanwhile, in Cruise, you have a 60-year-old who continues to put his body in harm's way for the sake of cinema, whether it's death-defying stunts in the still-ongoing Mission: Impossible franchise or his plan to shoot an upcoming movie in actual outer space and become "the first civilian to do a spacewalk outside of the space station." That's a man who loves to know that his likeness has the potential to be used in film for hundreds of years to come.

The Running. It's Got to Be the Running.

We wanted the truth, and it was right in front of us the whole time. Of course, Cruise, who has long felt the need for speed, would be entranced by someone able to run so fast that they can literally speed backward in time. And that sequence where Barry suddenly loses his powers and awkwardly jogs around a room? Cruise had to be losin' it over all those wrong moves.

That said, despite Miller's turbo sprints, Cruise's title as our premier movie runner is safe, and the stats back it up. In 2018, Rotten Tomatoes calculated Cruise has run just over 24,000 feet onscreen. The very scientific breakdown resulted in the determination that the more he runs, the higher the movie is rated. And still, even the most elite can always get better, which is why I think there's a chance that Cruise went full rom-com during The Flash's end credits. "I'm just a handsome boy, standing in front of a superhero, asking them to let me be that fast."