Civilisations are often remembered not for their politics or their leaders, but for the figures they worshipped. Ancient Greece is as known for Achilles and Odysseus as for its achievements in democracy and philosophy. Medieval England is remembered less for the Plantagenets than for the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood. The wild west has Davy Crockett, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Years from now, people may look back on the past 40 years not as the era of the post-cold war consensus, 9/11 or the great recession, but as the age of Tom Cruise.

Throughout his long and varied career, Cruise has accompanied generations of moviegoers. He was on screen throughout the explosion of neo-liberal consumerism in films such as Rain Man (1988) and Jerry Maguire (1996). He entertained viewers through the age of global terror, through the paranoid espionage of his early Mission: Impossible films, or the surveillance capitalism of Minority Report (2002).

Read more: Feats of the human body behind Tom Cruise’s stunts in Mission: Impossible movies

And as his off-screen life has often been manic, so too have his films exploded onscreen. His body has contorted, stretched and leaped across impossible boundaries to keep the public........

© The Conversation