Xer Icon: Tom Cruise

I was a bit hard on poor old Tom "Aliens Are in My Head!" Cruise a while back, but the fact is that he has portrayed some of the most iconic Xer characters ever to appear on film. In 1983, his high-school pimp in Risky Business codified our generation’s ideas about down-to-earth entreprenurialism. His hotshot fighter pilot, in 1986’s Top Gun, was thoroughly emblematic our of love of adrenaline-pumping experiences -- the "X" in X Games might as well stand for Generation X instead of "extreme." And no fictional character is a better example of Xer burnout than 1996’s Jerry Maguire.

It remains to be seen whether Cruise’s hellbent-on-survival Ray Ferrier in the new War of the Worlds will come to be seen as iconically Xer. I suspect the pragmatism and determination he projects in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds will indeed come to be considered definitive of our generation. After the other shoe drops, and we’re called upon to defeat the aliens -- whatever form they come in -- we’ll know for sure. I think we’ll step up to the bat and hit a home run... because what other option do we have?