Take your protein pills and put your helmet on (David Bowie)

Why are people so down on Tom Cruise?

I don't think it's a 'hate' thing (why would you hate an actor?) but people seem to dislike Tom Cruise for some reason.

I was thinking about going to see the latest Mission: Impossible movie, called Ghost Protocol, and I wanted to know if any of my co-workers had seen it to gauge their opinion (it's been playing in the U.A.E. for a month now so I figured someone must have).

No one had. No one had seen it, nor did they intend to. Plenty of people also took the opportunity to tell me they didn't like Tom Cruise so they didn't intend seeing it.

Clearly I didn't hit the Tom Cruise demographic! Lots of people MUST like him - he is insanely wealthy from appearing in many movies. Movie bosses don't hire actors that people dislike. Ipso facto - lots of people must like Tom Cruise. Right?

Well I'm not so sure. He's made some clunkers of late.

Here's his filmography since the last big hit he had which was also a Mission: Impossible film:

Lions For Lambs, Valkyrie, Tropic Thunder, Knight and Day

Not great films and/or inappropriate roles huh (a senator in Lions For Lambs - a film that hardly anyone saw, a German of all things in Valkyrie, somebody in a stoopid Ben Stiller comedy, and somebody opposite Cameron Diaz in the Knight and Day rom-com).

Who’s advising him? What was he thinking?

Maybe that’s it. He’s whittled down the huge base of support he won with Jerry Maguire – for me the last time he actually played a person I could believe in. Incidentally it’s actually the last time he was nominated for best actor award in The Academy Awards. I agree with them.

Anyway – I hunkered down, rugged up in my thermal gear and went and saw Ghost Protocol.



Ethan Hunt is a good role for Cruise but he’s still a cardboard cutout. The set piece action sequences are generally amazing (I had to look away a bit during the scenes on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai), and the plot is what you’d expect from a Mission: Impossible – stooped. The movement between locations is non-sensical and gratuitous - I wondered as I was watching how much backing money had come from Arabic and Indian investors. Why else go to The Burj Khalifa and Mombay??

But I still enjoyed the film and I’ll be telling co-workers to give it a chance.

By the by - I notice he’s planning to play Jack Reacher in a film version of One Shot in 2013. I gasped in amazement when I saw that. Jack Reacher is the fantastic action hero creation of Lee Childs. As written by Childs, Jack Reacher is a massive 6 foot 5 inch guy.

Gasp and ha ha ha! Tom Cruise is nowhere near that size. This is surely going to be a joke of a movie and a travesty to Lee Child’s vision of Jack Reacher.

That’s why people don’t like Tom Cruise! What an ego to think he can play Jack Reacher!!

Love and peace - Wozza