There was a time when 43-year-old Tom Cruise was Hollywood’s “Golden Boy,” but now pundits are wondering if Scientology’s “Top Gun” has lost his punch at the box office.
It may be that his penchant for preaching Scientology rather than sticking to an understandable script has stymied the star.
The Mission Impossible franchise is on the block and if MI-III flops, it’s unlikely there will be a number four. Cruise’s star power may have faded along with his public image. Increasingly, the middle-aged icon is dismissed as damaged goods by his critics and he needs a big hit for vindication.
Early reviews are not all that encouraging.
“As for the Tom Cruise movie star franchise, I fear that MI-III marks the beginning of its obsolescence,” reports London’s Sunday Times.
Times critic Chris Ayers laments that Cruise “is turning into a kind of 21st Century David Hasselhoff, only cheesier.” And that he is “a product of a different age…[and] is going the way of Schwarzenegger.” Joking that it’s lucky “that he is more interested in religion than politics.”
The Washington Post observed, “Funny how things change. Today, Cruise is kind of a wacky entity…He’s not just an actor anymore…he’s the guy who jumped on Oprah’s couch, the guy who got bitchy with Matt Lauer, the guy who criticized Brooke Shields for using antidepressants to help with postpartum depression. He’s also the guy who bought his own sonogram machine.”
Post celebrity watcher Liz Kelly asks, “Does Tom Cruise’s hype help or hurt ‘Mission: Impossible III’ at the box office?”
It might also be said that the Cruise franchise itself hasn’t been doing that good for about a decade.
When was the last time Tom Cruise had a genuine “hit,” domestically that is?
“War of the Worlds” made more money overseas than within the US and barely recouped its production and advertising costs stateside.
Rumor has it that Steven Speilberg wasn’t at all happy about the way his star mishandled the movie’s promotion, which focused more attention on Scientology than the Sci-fi film.
Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Mission Impossible II, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, The Last Samurai and Collateral were arguably all domestically disappointing.
A frequent formula cited in Hollywood is that a film should take in double its budget domestically, including production and advertising costs, to be considered an unqualified “hit.”
Based upon that simple test Tom Cruise hasn’t had a hit movie in ten years, since Jerry McGuire.
Remember the “King of Pop” Michael Jackson?
“The Gloved One” was once a hit maker, but the public got tired of his weirdness and he became “History.”
Maybe Jackson and Cruise have more in common than rumors about their sexuality and the decision to make a Scientologist their first wife.
Box office numbers are the bottom line in Hollywood, and its time for Tom Cruise to deliver, or be labeled a dinosaur.
And given the bloated budget of his latest movie and all his bad press this may be hard to do.
Perhaps in the end Cruise will be remembered more as a product of Scientology than Hollywood.
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