Tom Cruise’s 2023 Oscars Snub For ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Leaves Twitter Furious: “The Oscars Are Stupid”

The 2023 Oscars nominations came and went without paying the slightest attention to Tom Cruise and his performance in Top Gun: Maverick. The 2022 action movie has been nominated in Best Picture categories for both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globe Awards, but Cruise has yet to be nominated for Best Actor. What gives?

Many have expressed that Cruise and Top Gun can’t be separated, calling the movie a star vehicle for the actor. Following the Oscar nominations, journalist Max Weiss tweeted, “I will say this. If you’re going to nominate Top Gun: Maverick For Best Picture, you’ve gotta nominate Tom Cruise. He’s the whole thing. He’s the Top Gun AND the Maverick. He’s the movie and the movie is him.”

Very valid point. Decider’s John Serba wrote in his review of Top Gun: Maverick: “Cruise is very much in his sweet-spot zone here, charismatic and ever-so-slightly self-effacing, even looking his age a little bit, as the character demands at this place and time. You’ll never take the movie star out of this guy.”

And Cruise’s Top Gun costar Jennifer Connelly would agree. Earlier this week, she told Variety, “He’s extraordinary. He does an amazing job in the movie. He’s extraordinary as a person and fantastic as an actor, and I think that he is just perfect.”

When talking about Cruise’s Oscar potential, she added, “He embodies that character so beautifully, and I think he absolutely deserves it.”

She continued to praise the relationship Cruise’s Navy Pilot character has with the others, specifically with Miles Teller’s character, Lieutenant Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, which Connelly described as “beautiful and moving.” Connelly also gave a mention to “the work that he did to accomplish those flying sequences.”

Top Gun: Maverick comes 30 years after the original film and brings Cruise back as the eponymous character, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. The pilot “must confront the ghosts of his past” when he begins training a group of graduates and meets the son of his former friend, Lt. Bradshaw. The synopsis teases, “Bitter rivalries ignite as the pilots prepare for a specialized mission, which will require the ultimate sacrifice from those chosen to fly it.”

The movie was the second-highest grossing film of 2022, raking in over $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office. Top Gun: Maverick held the number one spot until December when it was eclipsed by James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of the Water.

At the 2023 Oscars, Top Gun: Maverick has been nominated for six awards, including, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song, Best Editing, and Best Visual Effects. For Best Picture, the action flick is up against Everything Everywhere All at Once, All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, The Fabelmans, Tár, Triangle of Sadness, and Women Talking.