Has Tom Cruise Jumped the Shark?



Laffy Daffy. (image via defamer)

Will MI:3 Crash and Burn?

On the surface Tom Cruise conveys the very essence of box office magic. The sure thing. But the recent bout of bad publicity, from his battle against Comedy Central (he won but he really lost), the mocking websites, his daffy couch jumping session on The Oprie, the often blogged about passionless PDA's with Katie Holmes, and the rising anti-Scientology backlash (see: Rolling Stone) all suggest that possibly -- quite possibly -- there are structural flaws in the previously impenetrable Tom Cruise armor.



(image via defamer)

Pop-cultural historians of the future may trace back the moment of The Cruiser's calamitous decline to the moment he dumped his PR guru Pat Kingsley for his sister, the woefully underqualified Lee Ann DeVett. MI:3, not inconceivably, might be a disappointment. Of MI:3, Fox411's Roger Friedman says:

"The $200 million-plus popcorn adventure is being released on May 5, and as an added bonus, Cruise's baby with Katie Holmes is due on or about that day.

"It's the ultimate tie-in, and an amazing achievement considering that one year ago today, Cruise and Holmes did not even know each other.

"... he's got to sell 'M: I3.' So far, there's only a short teaser trailer to go by, and the American version relies heavily on recent Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain.

"Hoffman looks good, but Cruise's role seems vague. The only interesting thing about him is that he has a romantic interest who looks a little like ...Holmes."



Even Oprie cannot stand against the disgusting voodoo of the Thetans. (image via sisna)

"In the last few days, Cruise has hit a major speed bump in the 'M: I3' campaign. Whether it's true or not, the public now believes that he somehow convinced Comedy Central to pull an episode of 'South Park' that mocked him and Scientology.

"This comes on the heels of another and similar case of Cruise censorship that swept through the press: that Cruise got the producers of the film 'Thank You for Smoking' to clip out Holmes' sex scene montage before the movie was shown at Sundance.

"Whether it's true or not, Holmes has been completely absent from the 'Smoking' publicity, avoiding all the premieres and press junkets."

And then Roger gives the breakdown:

"Aside from the two previous 'Mission: Impossible' movies and 'War of the Worlds,' Cruise has not been much of a box-office blockbuster.

"'War,' to set it aside, had the added advantage of being a Steven Spielberg movie with incredible special effects. It took in around $230 million, the same as the 'Mission: Impossible' movies.

"But regular Cruise dramas have had middling results. 'Collateral,' 'The Last Samurai' and 'Vanilla Sky' were each $100 million movies. Of course, you have to remember that Cruise likely got $20 million off the gross on those. That doesn't leave much of a profit margin.

"So 'M: I3' suddenly takes on a new importance."

Indeed. The full, interesting article here.