October will be a great month for Netflix subscribers who are big fans of Tom Cruise. Netflix is adding four of Cruises’s Mission: Impossible movies to the catalog this month as well as the 1993 thriller The Firm and the 2005 adaptation of War of the Worlds. Those trying to plan a binge watch will have plenty to work with.
Netflix announces the movies and TV shows it is adding to its catalog on a monthly basis these days along with the titles that are leaving. It’s common for big batches of media from particular studios to come and go as licensing deals begin and end, but rarely is a single actor represented so strongly in one monthly turnover. It’s moments like these that explain why some critics view Cruise as the last “true movie star” Hollywood has these days.
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The Mission: Impossible franchise might be the work Cruise is best known for, but if you want to watch these movies chronologically, start with The Firm. The movie was adapted from a novel by John Grisham and directed by Sydney Pollack, and it starred Cruise as an idealistic young lawyer taking his first job out of law school. He soon finds himself embroiled in a criminal conspiracy and unsure how to do the right thing for his family.
The movie has an all-star cast aside from Cruise, including Jeane Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter and Ed Harris, among others. It was a commercial and critical success in its time, and it even inspired a TV series that ran on NBC in 2012, though it only got one season. The original movie is streaming now on Netflix.
Netflix also just added War of the Worlds – a 2005 adaptation of the 1898 novel by H.G. Wells. This was the second film adaptation of the book, and it was directed by Steven Spielberg. While it was a blockbuster success, it wasn’t quite as beloved as some of Cruise’s other work – particularly in hindsight as critics look back on the media of the early-aughts. Still, many fans will likely get a good movie night out of it now that it is on Netflix.
Finally, Netflix added the first four Mission: Impossible movies on Sunday – Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible 2, Mission: Impossible III and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Those movies cover a decade and a half of Cruise’s career, as they were released in 1996, 2000, 2006 and 2011 respectively. They can also get fans more than halfway through a binge-watch of the franchise, with only three more movies to find after that. This will come in handy with the next installment, Mission: Impossible – Read Reckoning Part Two coming to theaters on June 28, 2024.
