Tom Cruise's Dark, Twisted Journey to Scientology's Top Gun
As audiences take in Cruise’s latest hit, ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ top Scientology reporter Tony Ortega looks back on how the star became the Church of Scientology’s Maverick.
Tony Ortega
Published May. 28, 2022 11:34PM ET
With Top Gun: Maverick debuting in theaters this week, Tom Cruise is available to the press again, which explains why I was seeing video of James Corden at 5 a.m. on a tarmac waiting to join Cruise in his personal jet aircraft.
The Late Late Show host’s antics on Cruise’s plane delivered the intended effect: Tom as cooler-than-you pilot really is like the superheroes he plays in the movies.
But for me, it had another connotation.
Seeing Cruise pilot his aircraft, I couldn’t help thinking of something Marc Headley told me several years ago.
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more at link
= new reply since forum marked as read
the popularity of Cruise. 
And don't even get me started on scientology. 
I'm guessing even more implausible than the first one.
... good for the people who got out of the cult. I thought he was involved/indebted more than a "true believer" but maybe I was wrong.
Are bsc and the leaders are con artists/ abusers, this has been well documented.
If anyone said anything about any of this to suck me in or at any point had I been stupid enough to go to any events etc. I would be laughing my gda off at them and run fast.
I had forgotten just how crazy they are, my brother was telling me about it and I read some of the linked articles about Nicole Kidman’s “training” before I was blocked by a paywall.
It is mind boggling how many people get sucked into this crap- it reads like a bad sci fi novel.
The fact that they bullied or maybe bribed the irs into giving them tax exempt status says a lot about the state of this country.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
In Scientology, Xenu (/ˈziːnuː/),[1][2][3] also called Xemu, was the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who brought billions[4][5] of his people to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack"
in DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the thetans (immortal spirits) of these aliens adhere to humans, causing spiritual harm.[1][6]
These events are known within Scientology as "Incident II",[7] and the traumatic memories associated with them as "The Wall of Fire" or "R6 implant". The narrative of Xenu is part of Scientologist teachings about extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in earthly events, collectively described as "space opera" by L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, warning that the "R6 implant" (past trauma)[8] was "calculated to kill (by pneumonia, etc.) anyone who attempts to solve it".[8][9][10]
Within the Church of Scientology, the Xenu story is part of the church's secret "Advanced Technology",[7] considered a sacred and esoteric teaching,[11] which is normally only revealed to members who have completed a lengthy sequence of courses costing large amounts of money.[12] The church avoids mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story's confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of copyright and trade secrecy.[13] Officials of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story.[14][15] Despite this, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public via court documents and copies of Hubbard's notes that have been distributed through the Internet.[14] In commentary on the impact of the Xenu text, academic scholars have discussed and analyzed the writings by Hubbard and their place within Scientology within the contexts of science fiction,[16] UFO religions,[17] Gnosticism[18][19] and creation myths.[11]