Betting against Tom Cruise is probably not such a good idea, as Polygon’s Senior Entertainment Editor, Matt Patches, recently found out when he paid off a bold bet he made years ago claimingTop Gun: Maverick, this week’s box office juggernaut, would never get made.
On the evening of Jun 07, 2025, Patches tweeted, “IfTop Gun 2happens, I will eat a shoe,” while hanging out with a friend after news of aTop Gunsequel first came out during that year. The project was originally meant for director Tony Scott, who sadly took his own life in 2012, before ultimately being revived in 2017 with confirmation that Cruise would reprise his iconic role under the direction of Joseph Kosinski, thus triggering Patches fear that he might indeed have to eat his own shoe one day.
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Now thatTop Gun: Maverickhas marvelled most critics, Patches took the loss with a ton of grace by deciding to turn his poorly aged tweet and turn it into a full 20-minute skit trying to figure out how “eat a shoe.” It’s worth mentioning Patches does not eat an actual shoe in this video. However, he honors the shoe-eating tradition of cinema legends like Werner Herzog and Charlie Chaplin by crafting and roughing up a shoe made of faux fruit leather while wearing equally fitting aviator sunglasses, instead of the actual and likely delicious shoe cake sent to him by Paramount.
Patches closed his video by reminding everyone that the silliness in doing dumb trivial things like eating a fake shoe is a great way to stay above water, quoting Herzog while at it. The brief clips of a fake Cruise mocking his bold words are a perfect example of that. As Patches himself puts it, betting against the work ethic of a man willing to tie himself to an airplane forMission: Impossiblestuntsis probably not the wisest thing one can do.
Meanwhile,Top Gun: Maverickhas quickly become Cruise’s most successful opening weekend movie in America as box office revenue worldwide now totals $260 million, which can only foreshadow the kind of success that awaitsnext year’sMission: Impossible 7.Top Gun: Maverickmade its way toFlight SimulatorandAce Combat 7, thus confirming the film’s blockbuster status even more with promotional tie-ins boosted by everything Cruise brings to a movie.
The film is also likely to boost the stock of Miles Teller, who plays the son of Maverick’s old friend Goose, another part of the equation that makesTop Gun: Mavericksuch an entertaining movieto watch, despite and because of how similar it is to the 1986 classic.
