I was transfixed by Tom Cruise's hair rewatching Mission: Impossible 2

What is going on with Tom Cruise's hair in Mission: Impossible 2? I spent literally the whole of the two-hour and 3 minutes run time of the John Woo-directed 2000 movie enthralled by what action was up next for Ethan Hunt's long-flowing mane.

Indeed, I think Woo must have been equally enchanted by Cruise's hair as the constant slow-motion shots kept zooming in on every single magnificent strand. Ethan looks kind of like a surfer dude with his messy layered locks and perhaps that's to fit in with the Aussie setting as the spy chases Dougray Scott's forgettable villain Sean Ambrose around Oz. Even at the start of the movie, where Ethan's hanging off a rock, the camera is fixated on Cruise's mop as it darts about in the breeze.

Going down something of an internet rabbit hole on the subject of Cruise's hair in Mission: Impossible 2 I discovered a whole Reddit thread dedicated to the subject where they've ranked Tom Cruise's hair throughout the Mission: Impossible films. "Tom Cruise rocks long hair imo," commented one user, who ranked the star's mop in M:I2 as the best and M:I Dead Reckoning Part One as the worst.

Looking into why Tom's hair on M:I Dead Reckoning Part One — the most recent of the Ethan Hunt movies — ranks poorly I can see that he was wearing a wig at times which could explain it. Director Christopher McQuarrie said that Cruise had to wear a wig due to continuity issues as they were filming the seventh and eighth movies back to back. McQuarrie was full of praise for the "sensational wig" so perhaps that's not why some people aren’t keen on Cruise's hair here!

McQuarrie told Empire Spoiler Specials [quotes via Screen Rant]. "The one I absolutely love is Ethan and Hailey [Atwell] when he says goodbye to her at the end. And she says, 'Go'. That shot was shot two years later than the shots on either side of it. Originally they had a different piece of behavior that, in the course of the new ending of the movie, it just didn’t work…

"Tom's wearing a wig in that shot because he's got his [Part Two] hair. So keep in mind that any pickups and reshoots that we did after we started shooting Part Two, Tom’s got a different hairstyle. He's wearing a wig in a lot of the movie. In the [food delivery scene] he's wearing a wig. And it's a sensational wig by our amazing makeup department."

Rewatching Mission: Impossible 2 it's still as silly as I remember. You can see why it only has a 42% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes as it lacks the pace of the first movie. There are far too many chases, the endless slo-mo shots become laughable and the baddies aren't particularly interesting. However, it's still well worth a watch for Cruise's hair alone!

I can't wait to see what Tom's hair will be doing in the next film, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, which is set to premiere in movie theaters worldwide on May 23, 2025.

Mission: Impossible 2 is free on Prime Video in the US and is available in the UK via Netflix and ITVX.