Cannes | It was always going to be tough for Tom Cruise to top his last premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, for Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, when eight fighter jets swooped over the proceedings, trailing red, white and blue smoke to match the colours of the French and American flags.
At that Cannes – his first return to the festival in 30 years – Cruise was treated like a heroic saviour of a movie industry that was just then recovering from COVID-19. Sure enough, Maverick soon went on to make more than $US1 billion worldwide.
