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Tom Cruise’s commitment to the world of big-budget, theater-centric Hollywood filmmaking has been incredible to behold in recent years. With so many studios and filmmakers leaning away from theatrical releases, practical effects and stunts, and original ideas, creators like Tom Cruise have become more and more rare.
Films like the Mission: Impossible franchise and 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick have proven that Tom Cruise hasn’t missed a beat in his super-stardom, and though his fame has ebbed and flowed over the years, he’s never been more beloved than he is now. In the wake of Top Gun: Maverick‘s major success, another film from original Top Gun director, Tony Scott, is absolutely begging for the legacy sequel treatment with Tom Cruise returning once again — 1990s Days of Thunder.
Days of Thunder Is One of Cruise's Most Underrated Films
The Racing Epic Is Packed With Unforgettable Action and Drama
Just four years after the major success of Top Gun, director Tony Scott and rising star Tom Cruise came together once again to craft a similar piece of blockbuster fun with 1990’s Days of Thunder, a film focusing on the intense world of stock car racing. Shot with the same level of intensity and modern flair as Top Gun, Days of Thunder stands out today as one of the most modern-feeling films from the early 1990s. It’s a bit of a shock to realize that the movie came out thirty-five years ago, as Tom Cruise has remained incredibly famous since then, Tony Scott’s style and manner of direction have remained timeless, and the effects and stunt work remain unparalleled.
In the grand scheme of Tom Cruise’s filmography, Days of Thunder is noticeably absent from most discussions of the movie star. The film is often cited as a mediocre knock-off of Top Gun, but that really isn’t giving the film a fair shake. Sure, it shares a lot of DNA with the fighter pilot classic, but its roots in a more intimate, personal setting, like a sport instead of a military operation, make it work on different levels. Tom Cruise’s character, Cole Trickle, has an incredibly engaging character arc over Days of Thunder, and while it isn’t the deepest or most existential film that Cruise has appeared in, his performance is genuinely soulful. He brings a real sense of emotional turmoil and tension to Trickle, and his commitment to the character and his place in the world of the film is what makes Tom Cruise so special.
On top of the character work, Days of Thunder contains some of the most striking images of fast-moving cars ever put to screen. Especially for the time it was made, Days of Thunder‘s racing sequences are absolutely stunning to behold. Tactile, dynamic, and packed with a real sense of speed and weight, Tony Scott’s direction lifts up a film that could have so easily been a mediocre piece of sloppily-crafted action and turns it into a straight-to-the-vein injection of pure excitement and adrenaline. There’s a reason that Tony Scott has stood out as the blueprint for the modern era of action filmmaking, and Days of Thunder is a perfect example.
Days of Thunder Is Perfect For A Maverick-Style Legacy Sequel
The Nature of The Film Expertly Primes It For A Modern-Day Follow-Up
So much of Days of Thunder is built around the relationship between the young up-and-comer played by Tom Cruise and the aging veteran of the sport played by Robert Duvall. This mentor/mentee relationship is what makes Days of Thunder work as well as it does, and the idea of legacy is a huge part of the film. For that reason, a Top Gun: Maverick-style follow-up to Days of Thunder would be a slam dunk. It’s an obvious angle to take with the story and its characters, but it is a compelling one nonetheless. Tom Cruise has gracefully aged into the position where he could easily play the past-his-prime version of Cole Trickle, and a young new hotshot driver could challenge him and his ways of thinking.
Ironically, the upcoming F1 film starring Brad Pitt is actually directed by Joseph Kosinski, the same man who helmed Top Gun: Maverick. F1 seems primed to be another rip-roaring action spectacle packed with practical stunts and effects and utilizing real-life Formula-1 cars. According to the trailers, F1 seems to also be utilizing Brad Pitt’s age to tell the story of an aging driver taking on a younger, hungrier protégé — something that a sequel to Days of Thunder could do. With F1 taking advantage of many of the ideas that a Days of Thunder sequel could tackle, it seems that a legacy sequel to the original Tony Scott racing classic would have to veer in a different direction — something that Tom Cruise and company could easily do. The role that Robert Duvall has in the original film is almost exclusively one on the sidelines of the action, something that would not happen with Tom Cruise in a legacy sequel. To sideline the original star on that level would be a mistake, and it’s not something that would serve the film on any story level.
If, instead, Days of Thunder‘s legacy sequel were to be more positioned as something like Rocky Balboa, a story of an iconic figure in a specific sport having to come back to prove his position and retain his legacy, then the film could have a unique and exciting angle. Cole Trickle is no Rocky Balboa in the current pop cultural zeitgeist, but in the world of Days of Thunder, the character clearly had the potential to be one of the best stock car racers of all time. If a sequel were to bypass that entire era and bring audiences back into the world in the aftermath of Trickle’s rise and fall, it would be incredibly compelling to see his return. Tom Cruise’s acting ability has only strengthened and become more subtle over the years, and his role in a Days of Thunder sequel could easily be his most emotional character in years.
A Brand-New Modern Action Franchise Starring Tom Cruise Would Be Incredible To See
Establishing Days of Thunder In The Modern Hollywood Landscape Would Help Push The Action Genre Forward
With the Mission: Impossible franchise seemingly at an end in the wake of the epic Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise needs a brand-new action franchise to lead into the future of the Hollywood blockbuster landscape. He has said repeatedly that he has no plans to give up acting in the future, so he’ll need a new outlet for his bold and exciting creative juices. A stunt-heavy sequel to Days of Thunder could perfectly establish a new franchise for the star, and, like the Rocky franchise, it could become a surprisingly long-running and well-liked series. The original Days of Thunder didn’t break any major ground, didn’t shake the foundations of the action genre or the world of racing, and didn’t shoot Tom Cruise into the stratosphere any more than he already had been, but it served as an excellent addition to two already excellent careers — Tom Cruise’s and Tony Scott’s.
What began with a solid, exciting action movie in 1990 could so easily spawn an entire world of bold new practical filmmaking. So many people were apprehensive about a sequel to Top Gun so many years after the original’s release, but Maverick proved that it was possible to one-up a classic, and that could so easily be done with Days of Thunder. It’s practically begging for the chance to become the next Top Gun: Maverick, and it would be a major mistake for Hollywood not to take advantage of that fact. The combination of high-stakes action, practical stunts and effects, and Tom Cruise in the lead makes Days of Thunder a no-brainer for a modern follow-up, and the fact that Tom Cruise himself has expressed interest in a sequel should be a sign that this franchise should be a priority.
The original Days of Thunder is criminally underrated, but a great legacy sequel could change that fact. Fans would flock to the Tony Scott classic if they were to be provided with a great modern-day sequel, and that’s exactly what Tom Cruise and company should be focused on. In the same way that a film like The Color of Money (another Tom Cruise picture) utilized its connection to The Hustler, a brand-new stock car racing film starring Tom Cruise could wonderfully take advantage of Days of Thunder and everything associated with it. Legacy sequels are not always great, but when they’re done well, they can be some of the most effective means of franchise-building in cinema. Days of Thunder is worthy of a legacy sequel, and it’s worthy of being the beginning of the next phase of Tom Cruise’s action career.
