Movies & TV blog

I’d stop seeing Tom Cruise’s movies if they were bad

By Zack McGhee | Friday, March 24, 2006, 06:52 PM

Fellow ‘DDN’ blogger Barb has an excellent post over at Chick Chat about that whole “South Park” vs. Scientology episode that’s been playing itself out over the last 10 days or so. In it, she points out that there is a growing movement to boycott Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible III, Viacom-owend Paramount’s summer tent-pole, until Viacom-owned Comedy Central puts that Scientology-mocking “South Park” episode, “Trapped in the Closet,” back into regular rotation.

You’d think that as a big “South Park” fan, and as someone who — thanks to an eye-opening Rolling Stone article — doesn’t think much of Scientology, that I’d be ready to hop on this bandwagon. Unfortunately, as a movie-lover, I can’t do that, because the cold, hard truth of it is that between all the couch-jumping and the TomKat drama and the psychiatry-bashing, Tom Cruise has somehow become a truly great actor.

Now I’m not suggesting that Mission: Impossible III is going to be a great movie, even though I’m on the record saying War of the Worlds very nearly was. But consider that he’ll face-off against Magnolia co-star Philip Seymour Hoffman, and that the movie will also feature Ving Rhames (reprising his role from the first two M:I movies), Laurence Fishburne, Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg, Billy Crudup and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. It’s also the feature directorial debut of J.J. Abrams, the creator of TV’s “Lost” and “Alias,” two shows that have given contemporary movies a real run for their money.

And besides, Cruise has gone from being the reliably great star he was in movies like Risky Business, A Few Good Men, or even Rain Man, to being the adventuresome, risk-taking, still-great actor of movies like Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Collateral and Vanilla Sky. (Not all of those movies worked, but Cruise was consistently mesmerizing.) So why not let the work speak for itself?

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