The ageless stardom of Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise plays a former military cop investigating a sniper case in ... more>
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LOS ANGELES Just turned 50, Tom Cruise is eligible for membership in AARP. Just split from third wife Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise is the object of told-you-so cynics who simply knew that romance wouldnt last. Just finished with his stab at something really different as a heavy-metal rock god in Rock of Ages, Tom Cruise is coming off one of the lowest-grossing movies in his career.
Yet just out with his latest action flick, Jack Reacher, Mr. Cruise remains one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
He has weathered ridicule, intense speculation about his family life, bumpy stretches at the box office brought on by audience disdain for his personal antics and some ill-cons! idered mo! vie projects.
Mr. Cruise is right where he was when 1986s Top Gun vaulted him to superstardom: On top. Maybe not the same level of on top as the 15-year stretch that began in the early 1990s, when practically every Cruise film was bound to be a $100 million hit.
But for a guy his age, with his baggage, in a business that deifies youth and excommunicates talent when it goes off the deep end, Mr. Cruise still prospers.
What you see over time is that Tom has been in such a great list of movies that are of such high quality, that ultimately, people come back to the work and the talent, said Rob Moore, vice chairman at Paramount Pictures, which released Jack Reacher on Friday.
Fans seem to agree. In a poll of nearly 1,000 people buying movie tickets at Fandango.com, 82 percent said Mr. Cruises personal life does not influe! nce wheth! er or not they will see his movies.
The target audience for Jack Reacher probably doesnt care whether hes married, separated or divorced, said Fandango.com chief correspondent Dave Karger. As long as teenage guys tell their friends that they liked it, thats all that matters. These arent people that are reading Us Weekly. They just want to know how the action is.
Arriving amid a pre-Christmas rush of films, expectations are modest for Jack Reacher, with the opening weekend projected at $15 million or less. The film was made on a moderate $60 million budget, about $100 million less than Mr. Cruises last Mission: Impossible installment, and Paramount executives hope holiday crowds will give Jack Reacher an extended shelf life after opening weekend.
Adapted from One Shot, part of Lee Childs series of best-selling books about a myster! ious ex-m! ilitary investigator, Jack Reacher features colder, crueler violence than the typical Cruise action film, which could hurt its prospects after the school shootings in Connecticut.
Mr. Cruises Reacher is a fairly merciless lone wolf, while the movie opens with gruesome slayings as a sniper randomly scopes out victims to shoot.
No question, for any of these types of movies, its a raw nerve, said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. Violent imagery of any kind may be a bit of a tougher sell right now.
Yet for the long haul, Mr. Cruises prospects look steady. Despite derision his private life has brought him, Mr. Cruise has suffered only bumps and bruises professionally. At the height of his bizarre romance with Miss Holmes, when he was jumping up and down on Oprah Winfreys couch to proclaim his love, M! r. Cruise! bewildered, annoyed and even infuriated fans.
Yet they have kept coming. A month after the 2005 couch trip, Mr. Cruise scored one of his biggest hits ever with War of the Worlds. The following year, after alienating many people with his suddenly public sermonizing about his Scientology beliefs, damage was evident as Mission: Impossible III seriously underperformed the franchises earlier installments.
He went five years without a huge solo smash, though he did delight fans with a twisted supporting role in the comedy hit Tropic Thunder and defied expectations by earning respectable box office and reviews as an eye-patch-wearing German officer in the Hitler assassination thriller Valkyrie.
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