#196. Tom Cruise, Star Auteur
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This is a short bonus episode with no opening banter: Mike, Sonny, and JVL spin off from their main-show review of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One into a straight-through appreciation of Tom Cruise's whole career. Sonny frames the arc through the Mission: Impossible series itself — Cruise seeking out strong directorial visions early on (De Palma's Mission: Impossible, John Woo's M:I-2, J.J. Abrams's M:I:III, plus one-offs with Kubrick, Spielberg, Stone, and Paul Thomas Anderson) before taking total creative control as producer-auteur once he partners with Christopher McQuarrie starting with Valkyrie. JVL connects this to Cruise's post-Scientology/couch-jumping box-office dip and his subsequent self-appointed role as the industry's last defender of theatrical moviegoing, wondering aloud whether any other actor-producer has ever occupied that kind of "emperor of Hollywood" position (Ben Affleck comes up as a maybe, but only as a director). Sonny then makes the case for an underrated Cruise sci-fi run — Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Oblivion, and especially Edge of Tomorrow, which JVL and Mike agree was sunk by a terrible ad campaign and a hopelessly generic title, with the group agreeing it should have kept its source novel's name, All You Need Is Kill. JVL closes out by praising the underseen Last Samurai and Collateral from that same stretch of Cruise's career.
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Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome to the Sub-Beacon bonus episode we talked about Mission impossible dead reckoning part one and we figured we'd talk a little bit about Tom cruise and you may have heard of this guy he's an actor Hollywood actor and he's got a long career how did we get here where did he start from. It's kind of an amazing evolution for for this guy like what what what do we think I mean going from from like kind of teen movies in the eighties to to to sort of be in this action or tour producer actor or tour what's what do we think well I want to think I want to think about Tom cruise in the context specifically of the mission impossible movies just for a second here because I think it's a good microcosm of his career as a whole like in the in the first in the first two thirds of his career right he's.
Sonny00:00:59He's working he seeks out and works with well-known well-respected kind of domineering directorial presences right so like Oliver Stone Steven Spielberg Tony Scott.
JVL00:01:15What's that Michael Cameron Crowe what's what's his name the the eyes wide shut who Stanley Kubrick director Stanley Kubrick right so.
Sonny00:01:29Paul Thomas Anderson and Magnolia right so he works he's working with these guys and you see that in the first first two and also kind of third Mission Impossible movies right so the first Mission Impossible movie is directed by Brian De Palma and is very distinctively a Brian De Palma film lots of split diopter shots like very heightened sense of sensuality for a for a PG 13 movie second movie is a John Woo movie and it is very distinctly a John Woo movie right lots of slow motion motorcycles car chases explosions. You know slow-mo it's it's doves flying into the into the sunset it's it's really very much again distinctively a John Woo movie and then the third one is a JJ Abrams movie now this was JJ Abrams first feature I think he was a TV guy before that but it is very distinctively again a JJ Abrams movie you watch this movie and you're like oh yeah there are the lens flares there's the kind of shaky close-up action it it feels like a JJ Abrams movie. And then after that there's a very specific shift in the series where we go from being a tour driven directorial visions to like Tom Cruise has clearly taken over control of this whole thing and all of the movies are about Tom Cruise and a very real and serious way and this is where the shift in the advertising comes right so in in these last four movies I mentioned this on the main show but the advertising campaign. We're like watch Tom Cruise hang off the biggest building in the world watch Tom Cruise hang off an airplane as it takes off watch Tom Cruise halo jump out of an airplane watch Tom Cruise jump off a mountain then into a base jump like those are that's like how the series has kind of evolved into this him taking total control over the the the product and the project and you see it in the in his partnership with Christopher McQuarrie who has either written or rewritten or written and directed everything he's done over the last decade it's actually kind of remarkable I I can't think of another
JVL00:03:34relationship exactly like that yeah so it's uh yeah Valkyrie is a is a turning point in Tom Cruise's career because this is where he meets Christopher McQuarrie and Chris McQuarrie had written that movie and then Cruise picked it up which then changed everything it went from like a 30 million dollar movie to 130 million dollar movie and they once they begin that creative partnership that
Sonny00:03:59makes Cruise's career going forward but it's also very interesting to look at uh Cruise's Cruise's career and Cruise's personal life and how those kind of collided right about 2000 what is it five 2006 2007 so he like he goes from being arguably the biggest star in the world to like having a real crisis with the couch jumping the Scientology videos all of that and you see you see a very marked decline in the box office in this period right so Valkyrie didn't do okay didn't do great um you know uh Edge of Tomorrow does okay does better overseas than it does domestically but it's still not great night and day again like it does okay not great um and at the end of this run uh basically around the time uh Mission Impossible uh which one is it Mission Impossible Rogue he basically says I am only making it I can control all of from here on out uh and and he makes Mission Impossible movies he revisits Top Gun he makes the mummy which is a disaster uh you know doesn't doesn't work but it's still very clearly a franchise thing that he is trying to turn into his own little cinematic universe and the only movie I think in this whole stretch that is not a big franchise picture that is like an original kind of smaller scale thing is American made which is about uh drug running in the CIA not particularly successful doesn't do very well and he has uh he has shifted very strongly away from stuff that could be considered um might be considered like Oscar bait Oscar Oscar stuff to like very pure cinema popcorn action we're getting people in the theaters and they're gonna have a good time they're gonna leave uh with a smile on their face sort of stuff um which is interesting I mean again it's just a very marked shift
JVL00:05:59well he realized that he had to save Hollywood basically right is that that's what's going on right no I think uh look in Richard Rushfield our pal writes about us all the time that back in the day one of the things is that Hollywood had somebody who was the fixer right somebody who was basically the Avatar for Hollywood itself and who when the industry was in trouble would broker the peace and figure things out and you know once upon a time it was the studio owners uh then it became you know like the agents it would be you know the the Michael Ovitz was the the guy who would go and there there isn't that anymore that post has been ad the emperor of Hollywood post has been has been abdicated and I think you could say that Tom Cruise is trying to fill that uh from the product standpoint and I mean he he saved movies almost single-handedly with Maverick last year right and uh like I just don't know you know the guy has decided he is not chasing Oscar uh approbation anymore he's just going to try to make really good movies that appeal to the broadest possible audience that can help save the theatrical experience while everybody else is pushing their to streaming
Mike00:07:16God love him well it's also it it doesn't make sense on paper right like it's almost a career in Reverse uh for what you would expect you would expect expect a
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Mike00:07:29a guy at his age right he's what 61 uh now like now is when a an actor of his age and experience would be making like Lions for Lance Scorsese yes uh you know collateral exactly um and and I mean I there is the sort of you know picture of Dorian Gray aspect of it but it's like that's actually what I think is very interesting is how he sort of how his career kind of where it started is just not where where it's ended um and and it all seems to be in Reverse um very interesting I
JVL00:08:08don't know I I don't know that we have an auteur like him somebody who does it from not the directing side but who does it as a producer and actor that's I I just don't think there's an analog can um either of you guys think of one I mean our auteurs are you know I guess you could say Ben Affleck maybe but that's as a a director right and an actor um yeah I mean I I honestly cannot
Sonny00:08:43think of anybody in modern I mean you could go back to see this is one this is one of these things where I wish I knew old Hollywood a little better I feel like you could probably make this case for John Orson Welles but Orson Welles was a director Orson Welles was a director but like you even John Wayne though directed a couple movies I mean like I I think I I don't know I honestly cannot think of another another person exactly like this again I think if you go back to old Hollywood um the the there's a brief period in between in between the time when the old studio moguls fell and before the the new Hollywood Rose uh with the era of the auteurs and the the Brat Pack and all that that you could you could probably find some actors who were like actors who kind of controlled everything like that but I I don't know the history well enough
JVL00:09:35honestly yeah and he's he's a reminder of how important the producing role is right you know like the producing credit is so weird because uh that you can have a movie with 17 absolutely meaningless producing credits on it and you can have movies in which the producer is really just a you know a weak sister who is there running as a gopher uh carrying out the director's vision or something like that the producing role is really what you make of it and Cruz is is an incredibly strong producer I guess Paula Wagner should get a bunch of credit for this since she was his production partner for like 30 years their split has never been fully explained to me I don't quite understand why they split um yeah but he's he's just a very strong producer and having a really strong and talented producer can make a movie materially better yeah
Mike00:10:29all right well any other thoughts on on mr. Tom Cruise any any favorite favorite Tom Cruise movie
Sonny00:10:37you know I think my I I talked about this sometimes on Twitter but I really think the most underappreciated era of Tom Cruise is the stretch from like 2002 to 2014 or whatever where he makes for giant budget sci-fi movies at a time when nobody is making giant budget original sci-fi um and they're all minority report what's that war the world it's minority war the world's uh oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow he makes he makes these four movies in in a in a I don't know again about a decade's time frame um and they're all they're all pretty they're all at least pretty good uh I would say oblivion is the least of them um and even that still has like some great visual images you know Tom Cruise is still doing his Tom Cruise thing uh so it's it's definitely watchable and it has a great soundtrack uh this was Joseph kasinski's um follow-up to Tron Tron Legacy uh you know where he he basically like made two movies that work better as music videos than they do as proper feature films um but it's still it's still you know really really fun to watch but I mean like he's he for all the we we constantly whine about how there's nothing new nothing original everything is franchises blah blah blah and like I mean the reason for that is the Edge of Tomorrow only made 400 million bucks worldwide uh you know Oblivion did not do that well worldwide Minority Report and War of the Worlds are pretty pretty successful but not huge hits um not enough to you know justify their budget so I mean like I you know we we we have made the world ourselves that we live in and uh if you're if you are annoyed that it is not better it's because people don't show up for the things that are that are good and interesting or at least
JVL00:12:26new and interesting but also in the middle of that stretch he makes The Last Samurai and collateral both of which are fantastic movies in very different ways yeah I love The Last Samurai collateral is a really underappreciated Michael Mann movie in which Bruce himself is sensational uh he gives us that absolutely wheels off performance and Tropic Thunder and you know I'm sorry night and day it's a great rom-com night and day is what that Sandra Bullock and uh what was the Sandy Bullock um Channing Tatum movie right night and day is what what The Lost City should have been
Mike00:13:08all I know is I don't know what Edge of Tomorrow is I only know that movie has lived I repeat yes
JVL00:13:13yes would it have been better off if that had been the actual title of the movie there's there's I
Sonny00:13:19it's it so I revisited the the advertising campaign for this movie as part of a newsletter I was writing a couple weeks back um and I I watched the trailer the first trailer for Edge of Tomorrow and it is genuinely the worst trailer I've ever seen it portrays the movie as this dour generic action movie it like barely gets into the premise but like more like a bigger sin than that again is that it just makes it makes it look sad and boring um and that is the least that is that movie is so funny and so uh so lively and has such great comic uh has such a great comic sensibility to it that it's like it is practically a crime how it was marketed to folks it didn't help the name did not help either edge of tomorrow like could not possibly be more generic um this is probably one of the same reason it's one of the reasons why oblivion didn't do very well either oblivion what what does what the fuck does oblivion mean um but the uh you know I like it's it's it's just a it's a good reminder that like you really uh and I I think this is a thing that we can pick up on in Tom Cruise's career is that the marketing really really matters and if you are not putting together a good ad campaign that highlights the best parts of what you are trying to sell people it's not going to find an audience
Mike00:14:33all I know is the uh the source material for edge of tomorrow was a Japanese novel called all you need is kill I think they should have gone with that that's that that would have been
Sonny00:14:43that would have been better too because at least it's like oh that's interesting um that's an interesting non-grammatical sentence but all you need is kill I love it all you need is kill
?00:14:58you
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