Tom Cruise and filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie have taken it upon themselves to tackle one of the biggest issues plaguing our world today. No, they aren’t going to fix global warming. They don’t have a cure for cancer or how to end terrorism. Instead, they’re taking on a problem that affects millions upon millions of people every day — motion smoothing.
All kidding aside, the duo just released a video from the set of “Top Gun: Maverick,” with the hopes that they can help people fix the worst thing about high-definition TVs. For those that don’t know what motion smoothing is, don’t worry, the star of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise is here to explain. And over the course of the one-minute-and-a-half video, he and McQuarrie do their best to explain the “soap opera effect,” why filmmakers hate it so much, and most importantly, how to turn it off.
Cruise and McQuarrie are far from the only people in the film industry attempting to fix this problem. Just a few months ago, a letter was sent to members of the Directors Guild of America, signed by Christopher Nolan, containing a survey about how they can go about ending the plague of motion smoothing. Nolan said that he and Paul Thomas Anderson have already reached out to TV manufacturers about the issue. This is also something that Rian Johnson has talked about on social media, and cinematographer-turned-director Reed Morano has tried to fix with a petition years ago.
Obviously, the timing of this new de facto PSA from Cruise and McQuarrie is timed with the release of “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” on Blu-ray. The duo wants to make sure you watch the actor risk his life for your entertainment with the best possible picture quality. So maybe, after years of this fight between filmmakers and TV manufacturers, all it’s going to take is a simple PSA?
At the very least, hopefully, this saves many people the heartache and difficulty of trying to explain it to their parents why they have to change the settings on the brand-new TV they got for Christmas.
https://twitter.com/TomCruise/status/1070071781757616128
