The beginning of the end:
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| Tom Cruise as German Army WW2 plotter Oberst Klaus von Stauffenberg, 2008. Critics hated his acting but at the time I thought it was a relief to see Tom Cruise not playing Tom Cruise again. Owen Gleiberman of Variety says this movie marks the beginning of the end for Cruise's descent into a box-office bore. |
The new Cruise era really kicked off with “Valkyrie,” the 2008 historical-curiosity thriller that cast him as a one-eyed German officer who became a secret member of the anti-Nazi resistance, leading a plot to assassinate Hitler. As ideas for movies go, this one wasn’t bad, but I remember being struck by how jarring it was that Cruise didn’t even try for a German accent. I realize, of course, that this isn’t exactly an issue of the strictest historical accuracy (the Germans didn’t just speak with German accents, they spoke German), but the point is: If you’re going to sign on to do a film like “Valkyrie,” why not use it as the opportunity to change up your persona? Don’t just give us the same-old same-old Tom Cruise, only now in an eyepatch and Iron Cross costume.Cruise's new outing, The Mummy, just got clobbered in its opening weekend by Wonder Woman, in its second weekend.
The movies that Cruise has made since then — “Knight and Day,” “Oblivion,” etc. — have played like imitation Tom Cruise movies, and that’s because the thing that they’re mimicking, as if it were there in the way it always has been, is his identity as a superstar.
Update: 5 Reasons Why Tom Cruise’s ‘The Mummy’ Disintegrated at the Domestic Box Office
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