Tom Cruise Wants Movies To Look Better On Your TV
Tom Cruise has been a movie star for over 30 years, but he still cares a great deal about how his movies look when you watch them at home.
That’s one takeaway from a video that was shared on Cruise’s Twitter account on Tuesday. In the 90-second video, Cruise and his director friend Christopher McQuarrie speak from the set of the sequel to Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick, in order to remind those watching to remember to turn off the motion smoothing on their televisions. The video had been viewed more than a million times on its first day.
While promoting the DVD and Blu-ray release of the 2018 movie Mission: Impossible – Fallout, in which Cruise stars, McQuarrie wrote and directed, and both men produced, the two men have something to say about making the film as good as possible.
“We want you to enjoy it to the fullest possible effect, just as you would in a theater,” McQuarrie says of the Mission:Impossible movie.
“To that end we’d like a moment of your time to talk about video interpolation,” Cruise says.
The director describes this, also called motion smoothing, as “a digital effect on most high-definition televisions that is intended to reduce motion blur at sporting events and other high-definition programming.”
Finishing each other’s sentences, Cruise and McQuarrie go on to describe the “side effect” of this, which makes movies look like they were “shot on high-speed video instead of film.” Warning that many TV manufacturers ship their product with motion smoothing on by default, the two men also say that different brands use different names for the feature.
“If you own a modern high-definition television there’s a good chance you’re not watching movies the way the filmmakers intended, and the ability to do so is not simple for you to access, McQuarrie says. He and Cruise urge TV owners to perform Internet searches in order to learn how to turn off the feature on their sets.
I’m taking a quick break from filming to tell you the best way to watch Mission: Impossible Fallout (or any movie you love) at home. pic.twitter.com/oW2eTm1IUA
— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 4, 2018
On Samsung televisions, motion smoothing is referred to as “Auto Motion Plus.” On LG TVs, they call it “Trumotion,” and on Vizio models, the feature is known as “Smooth Motion Effect.” Owners of other TV brands are advised to look up the name of their model and the phrase “motion smoothing,” in order to find instructions on how to adjust the feature.
Top Gun: Maverick, which is set for release June 26, 2020, will arrive 34 years after the original 1986 Top Gun, which was directed by the late Tony Scott. McQuarrie is listed as the film’s screenwriter, while Joseph Kosinski will be directing.
