Kenneth Glad
Moviegoers have spent twenty years watching a famous leading man jump from airplanes and scale the sides of glass skyscrapers. The public expects high-octane thrills and massive explosions from him every time. Now, a massive career shift is testing that familiar image.
Tom Cruise holds three Academy Award nominations to his name. But he lost every single one of them.
Voters have largely ignored the massive star since the early two-thousands. The Los Angeles Times notes that his immense global fame constantly overshadows his actual technical acting abilities.
Fans instantly remember the leather jackets and the aviator sunglasses. They often forget the deep emotional weight he brought to his early dramatic roles.
Decades ago, he took major pay cuts just to work with serious directors on challenging scripts. But after facing a major public relations crisis nearly twenty years ago, he retreated entirely into the safety of blockbuster action movies.
An expensive gamble
That long streak of highly calculated, safe choices just ended. His latest major project is an incredibly expensive, surreal global warming satire called “Digger”.
The film opened to a dismal $8 million box office return. Behind the scenes, the LA Times reports that the overall production budget exceeded $125 million.
Acclaimed filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, who has four Academy Awards to his name, directed the bleak comedy. Cruise plays a billionaire oil tycoon named Digger Rockwell.
He completely sheds his polished hero image for the strange part. Instead of playing it safe, he embraces the role of a complete buffoon, and the newspaper praises the film as a showcase of his comedic skills.
Returning to form
A standout moment features a wild ten-minute monologue aimed at a stadium full of angry bureaucrats. Observers note that the actor dives fearlessly into the utter absurdity of the climate crisis.
He successfully blends the raw anger and dangerous charm of his historical dramatic performances into one bizarre new character.
He easily deserves a nomination for the daring role. The spectacular box office failure will probably bury his chances, though. Hollywood rarely hands its highest acting honors to a massive financial disaster.
So the aging superstar is already returning to highly familiar ground. The outlet reports that he is now preparing to shoot a sequel to his classic racing hit, “Days of Thunder”.
Source: Los Angeles Times
