There are performers who polarize people and then there’s Tom Cruise. The guy has been an A-Lister for as long as anyone has in history [Clint Eastwood and a few others excluded], yet he still has an uphill battle with so many people and for many of the wrong reasons. His religion. His personal life. His views on medication. That he lost his shit on daytime television. I’ve always said that you should just assume the worst from celebrities. Athletes. Politicians. Hell, people in general. Assume the worst and be surprised if they aren’t up to some wacky or evil shit. They aren’t role models and what they do in private is their business. Actors are meant to entertain you or make you feel. They aren’t there to showcase how you should live your life or even how you view the world. Their success should be something you want to emulate but that’s about it. We as people don’t have the time for the personal trainers and dieticians and handlers and assistants that allow them to be what they are. They are not us. The absolutely stupid Tiger Woods fiasco is truly and wholly none of our damned business, yet because the guy likes to part legs we have to endure email joke forwards, lame watercooler jokes, and see a legendary player sink under the weight of all the prying and prodding. I’m not absolving the guy, but what he does in private is his business and it’s not like was murdering kids. Unless you count the dead and drying on hotel sheets.

Tom Cruise is a microcosm of the celebrity machine being turned against a star.

You look through the man’s body of work and there are so very few examples of circumstances where the guy didn’t absolutely kill himself to deliver a good performance, go above and beyond to promote, or add something new to his resume. It doesn’t always work [The Last Samurai, Lions for Lambs, Legend], but typically not because the leading man failed his task. There are roles he probably wasn’t the best choice to play or ones that his skill set didn’t complement best but it’s hard not to realize what a unique talent he is. We’ve watched the guy from his early twenties to late forties with very little fat in his resume and a whole bunch of really solid films, whether they be art [Magnolia, Vanilla Sky] or commerce [Mission: Impossible, Top Gun].

I know people who hate the man because he’s not tall and he played a fighter pilot in a movie. I know people who hate the man because they heard he’s gay. I know people who hate the man because he has a religion they don’t feel is a religion and he promotes it aggressively. I even know a person who hates him because he treated Nicole Kidman poorly.

Is all of that stuff even true? I doubt it. I can’t stand Scientology, but what the heck does it matter to me? I can’t stand most religions, and if it’s not a religion I can’t stand whatever bracket of society it’s in.

But it doesn’t mean jack shit about the movies I see. The sports video games I play. The teams and players I root for.

Where this all is going is that Cruise’s one superpower was that his brand was impervious to continued failure. He’d have a film tank and follow it up with a hit or a critically acclaimed performance or a film that killed internationally. He was never down for long and he was up a lot more than he was down. Except for now. He’s really in unfamiliar territory. He can still get a film made with a snap of his fingers, but the dollars aren’t the same and there’s a lot of rebuilding to be done, especially when even though the guy looks younger than me, he’s almost fifty and that has a bearing on the box office potential for a man who has made a career of playing young and fiery men of action.

Now, Variety is floating the possibility of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt becoming part of an ensemble (based on news of Jeremy Renner joining the film) or even becoming phased out in a possible spin-off or reboot situation. While I’m of the belief that the films always should have been more team-based (the first fifteen minutes of the first film had me jazzed and then Emilio got punctured), I don’t think this is the right way to evolve the franchise or for the right reasons.

Tom Cruise isn’t the king of the multiplex right now and the last [and in my opinion best] M:I film didn’t perform well. His Knight & Day didn’t do well, though he was a lot of fun in the movie and my problems with the movie were its title and the mismatch of Cameron Diaz with Cruise rather than the film itself or Cruise. It was way better than Salt, which is inexplicably a hit.

I understand finances and their importance in the movie business. I understand that there’s an ebb and flow to what a talent is able to operate with based on performance, guarantees, and whatnot. I don’t understand how Nicolas Cage is impervious to these rules, but I digress.

Tom Cruise IS Mission: Impossible. Back in 1996 (god was it that long ago… that was one of the first email movie reviews I wrote on The CHUD Report, the newsletter that became this site), all of the concern was that he was creating a new character to be the lead and whether or not the big screen was able to capture the television show’s vibe and do it justice. While it certainly was its own animal, there’s no denying that the franchise was and still is viable. Maybe it’s sunk to where it really belong in the pantheon but is 100 million in grosses something to piss at?

Tom Cruise’s star has been dimmed by perception. Not because he’s less talented, less able, or that he’s choosing worse roles. He’s delivered when veering from his comfort zone (Tropic Thunder, Magnolia, and to a lesser extent Collateral), but there’s an incredible amount of animosity towards the man very much having to do with him as a person rather than as one of the rare talents we have. I have been arguing with folks about this for a long time, but the Oprah appearance really was the watershed.

I ask now for folks to try a cooler head on for size. He’s one of the best movie stars we’ve ever had, and on top of that he’s a damn fine actor. Let’s not get all caught up in the now. There’s a lot of gas left in that tank.