Kerry Parnell: Forget Marvel, I still get hot for the old action heroes

Superheroes are out and a new breed of super-Boomers is in. These old-school action heroes are still packing out cinemas, saving the industry, and Kerry Parnell can’t get enough of them.

Forget action men; I’m loving the new breed of super-Boomers.

Leading them is Tom Cruise, who was in London this week, at a screening of his latest movie, Mission Impossible 7.

The 60-year-old looked hot in his aviator shades, polo shirt and jeans and not just because the UK is currently enjoying a heatwave.

No matter if he’s had 10,000 tweakments, the man is a marvel – he has been the top gun of the movie game since the 1980s and literally shows no sign of slowing.

He famously still does his own stunts – in his new movie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, released next month, Cruise can be seen driving off a ramp on a motorbike and skydiving into a canyon.

Tom Cruise is showing no signs of slowing down. Picture: GC Images

Behind-the-scenes clips show him leaping out of a helicopter “to warm up”, then doing the two-wheeled stunt over and over, to get it right.

“I just try to use every tool that I have to entertain the audience,” he told Jimmy Kimmel recently.

Meanwhile, Harrison Ford was at the premiere of Indiana Jones 5 in LA. Like Cruise, Ford, who is about to turn 81, has been a star since the 1970s and first appeared as the action-archaeologist in 1981.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be the last instalment of the franchise, but not so for its leading man, who has more projects lined up.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Harrison Ford at the Dial of Destiny US premiere... Ford’s last outing as Indy. Picture: Getty Images

Ford said he has wanted to make the film for years.

“I had been ambitious to do this film for 10 years. It was a joyous moment for me. I think it’s a rare situation that I find myself in,” he said.

Luckily for us, it’s becoming less rare, as he has a cohort of old-age-peers still packing out the cinemas. Sylvester Stallone continues to knock out hits and he’s about to turn 77. He recently headlined mobster TV series Tulsa King and has back-to-back projects, including The Expendables 4, which comes out soon.

Likewise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, 75, who revisits his long and varied career on his excellent new Netflix documentary, Arnold. He is back in action in TV series Fubar, with the tagline, “Heroes don’t retire. They reload”.

US actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says keeping busy is the key to staying active in old age. Picture: AFP

“I wanted to do the things that everyone calls impossible,” Arnold says in his documentary, explaining how he visualised his success, first of being a champion bodybuilder, then a Hollywood movie star, followed by a successful politician.

When that was over, he returned to the screen at the time everyone else retires, saying the most important lesson he has learned in life is to keep busy.

And it’s these busy Boomers who are saving the movie industry. Tom Cruise’s decision to hold back the release of Top Gun: Maverick until the pandemic was over is credited as saving cinemas, along with Daniel Craig’s last James Bond, No Time to Die.

So, bring on the super-Boomers, I say, who are showing what comes with age is not just wisdom, but willpower.

As Arnie says in his doco, “No matter what it takes, work your ass off. Do it. Do it now.”

Originally published as Kerry Parnell: Forget Marvel, I still get hot for the old action heroes