Tom Cruise's antics have finally cost him and it has become increasingly clear just how badly his image has been mangled. Paramount Pictures dumped Cruise, despite his string of 7 straight 100 million dollar movies, because they believe the actors craziness has cost the studio ticket sales. It's an amazing example of what negative publicity can do when left unchecked.
Cruise is a member of a cult, Scientology, and has been on display publicy espousing their virtues and acting the madman for quite some time. And Katie Holmes and her bizarre indoctrination into the cult has only hurt him more.
Consider that Cruise is no spring chicken anymore. Kids heading for college this fall don't remember him from his prime. To them he's just some old guy. This last period in his career was his chance to connect with the younger audience and establish himself again-instread he just went insane, touted the virtues of a cult, made it appear as though Katie Holmes was brainwashed and zombified and cost himself an entire demographic.
I really don't think Cruise has the presence of mind to know how badly his image has suffered. It's bordering on irreperable. For those of us that remember Risky Business, All The Right Moves, The Firm and all the other movies that made him famous in his 20's it's kind of sad. But imagine how it looks to the audience that doesn't remember what he used to be like. Now imagine how hard it would be to try establishing that kind of image all all over again. In the current climate. Forget it. Cruise is done.
While we're on the subject of Tom Cruise, I think the one thing that no one in the media seems to mention in conjunction with his string of 100 million dollar movies is that his movies also have the biggest budgets. What we need to know is how much the studio profited, not just how much the film grossed, if we are to really judge Cruise's ability to make studio executives rich. If a movie costs, as MI: III did, 150 million to make, add to that a 40 or 50 million dollar marketing budget, what good does it do a studio to rake in 210 million? And if Cruise wasn't a nutty cultist could the film have made much more?
I speculated a while back, before MI: III semi-bombed, that his career was going to unravel. Seems like it's just beginning.
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