Tom Cruise is turning Glen Powell into a movie star, Willy Wonka style

Tom Cruise has long been a controversial figure in Hollywood, but he’s always had plenty of cheerleaders, too. (Yes, even ones outside the hallowed halls of Scientology’s Celebrity Center.) He can count as one of his most ardent supporters the up-and-coming movie star Glen Powell, who counts Cruise as a friend and one of his foremost Hollywood mentors. (The other being cinema elder statesman Denzel Washington.) We’d already heard in a previous profile how Powell keeps a journal of “icon wisdom” that includes a lot of advice from Mr. Cruise. In a new interview with GQ, Powell delves deeper into their bromance, which to a layman’s ears might sound a bit like psychological torture.

For instance: On one occasion, Cruise flew Powell from the set of Top Gun: Maverick at Pinewood Studios in England back to London in his helicopter and, as a prank, pretended the craft was about to crash. “Tom goes ‘oh no, oh no,’ and he starts dropping the helicopter over London,” Powell recalled. “I was like, ‘Am I about to be the unnamed guy that dies with Tom in a smoking hole in the middle of London?’”

Another time, Cruise reportedly sent Powell to a Los Angeles theater to watch a “film school” movie he had made exclusively for friends. Powell was the only person in the theater for the six hour presentation about the art of cinema and filmmaking. “[Cruise] is like: ‘Do we all agree that this is what a camera is? This is the difference between a film camera and a digital camera…’” Powell shared. “The funniest part is on flying. It was like he put together this entire flight school. So he would literally go ‘OK, this is what a plane is. Here’s how things fly. Here’s how air pressure works.’”

Descriptions of this friendship range from heartwarming to excruciating to genuinely alarming, but it makes more sense when you view Tom Cruise as the Willy Wonka of modern movies. He’s trying to train up a new generation of cinema stars in the old-school style. For a stuntman and cinema devotee like Cruise, obviously that means a little bit of death-defying antics and a lot of in-depth filmmaking education. (There are plenty of people out there who would kill to watch his “film school,” but unfortunately it’s just for friends, according to Powell.) A bit of testing the younger man’s mettle is required in such a scenario.

Luckily, in Glen Powell, Cruise has found his Charlie Bucket, a successor who is down for all the shenanigans, single-mindedly determined to make it as a star, and most importantly, loves the craft. “The one thing I feel we’re kindred spirits in is he’s obsessed with movies. That was our love language on set,” Powell said. “I got to watch a guy who knew every department. He was able to clearly interface with everyone, and be so friendly and respectful and be able to communicate that vision.”