If you've witnessed enough of someone's public assholery, it's impossible to achieve the *willing suspension of disbelief* necessary to see them as a nice, funny, average guy on screen.

Or it could be just a dull movie?

Tom Cruise is great when he has great material, his creepy Xenu stuff aside.

And you're mental; Top Gun was a legendary work of cinematic genius. It was pure distilled 120 proof 1980s.

People keep dogging him for his religion, but I think that's pretty messed up. I think Scientology is a cult too, but that makes him a victim.

But yeah, creepy. And a pretty shitty actor, though that never stopped anyone else from being a famous and successful box office draw.

I'd never go to a Tom Cruise movie. He's a douche.

Much as I love Top Gun (and it's existance means I can never properly hate Cruise, no matter how crazy he gets), a sequel would be completely ridiculous.

Meh.

Have you ever actually seen his co-star in the movie up close?

yeah, it's as unexciting as seeing her in high def on the tonight show with Jay Backstabber Leno.

He's like Mel Gibson. The older he gets, the less likeable he is. The only action film star who didn't get old-creepy is Bruce Willis. I still love his films.

The only Tom Cruise movie* I've ever seen is Rain Man. I hear some of his other movies are good, but I have no desire to ever see Top Gun.

* I'm not including early movies where he had bit roles, like The Outsiders.

Wait - where did Paul say he didn't like Top Gun? I'm not saying he does like it. But all I *read* was that he thinks Top Gun 2 will be an atrocity. With which I would agree.

Also - Tom Cruise's best movie by far was Risky Business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is crazypants.

movie looked generic and shitty. happens every summer with a handful of "blockbuster" movies.

nothing to see here, move along.

Tom Cruise should retire until they make Magnolia 2.

@3 He may have started as a victim, but now he is a whole lot closer to cult leader than he is to follower.

Enough Les Grossman, that was only funny for a couple minutes and only b/c of Matt McC. Is there any photo proof of this Seinfeld two-faced date Cameron Diaz?

@7, you are insane. Bruce Willis is incredibly creepy. Not as creepy as Mr. Cruise, but still creepy as hell.

Cruise is approaching Jack Nicholson levels of being unable to play any character except himself. Which is a problem, because he hasn't got the personality of Nicholson. The chances of him making a good movie are extraordinarily low, since no one in their right mind wants to see even a few seconds of the actual Tom Cruise.

Can you believe Tom Cruise was the Taylor Lautner of his day?

@15 ftw. But Top Gun was cool, and most of it was his hot female costar, the cool jets, and our overwhelming and unquestioning American thirst for oil at all costs.

Knowing a portion of my $10 ticket price will to go to fund Scientologist missionary work is enough to keep me from ever paying for another of his flicks.

Wasn't Top Gun that gay porn flick with all the sailors who constantly take showers with each other?

... the marketing vice-president at 20th Century Fox is media-shy? Huh?

I liked Minority Report, but almost didn't go see it because I hate Tom Cruise so much. I liked it in spite of him. Yay for Philip K. Dick stories on film...I can't resist.

Like @20, if I see a movie with Tom Cruise in it, it's in spite of him, not because of him. And I'm pretty sure Top Gun was the last movie I've seen in which he was the main star.

I watched Top Gun over and over again... until I discovered gay porn.

Diss Top Gun all you want, but it was hugely popular and made a shit ton of money in its day. So of course they will do a sequel (or remake or whatever). It's almost inevitable. I'm sorta surprised they haven't done it already.

I totally loved Less Grossman as a cameo in Tropic Thunder. It was hilarious... for about 5 minutes. It is a great character in short bursts. But I can't imagine watching that schtick for a whole movie. Pass.

I never liked him because his midline was off - then when he got braces to correct it, he made up some bullshit excuse about it being "medically necessary." Also, his laugh is totally fake.

Les Grossman is a pretty funny character, I was glad to see him on the MTV movie awards. Can't predict how much his feature film will suck, but it should be kinda funny at least.

I thought the movie was fun. Not Oscar worthy--but I had a laugh, and I've definitely seen worse. It was marketed more action-thriller/romance, and it was more campy action-romance. It didn't take itself too seriously and made fun of the genre, which was nice.

Who cares what his personal issues are? He's a good actor. He was one of the few reasons to watch Tropic Thunder. Sure he believes silly things and is abnormally short. But he can act, which should really be all that we look for in actors.

You can say equally vile things about any religion. I suspect that people in general dislike Scientology simply because the obviously made up nature of it points out how absurd all other religions are as well.

I like Tom Cruise in a lot of movies. I'm not a 14 year old girl, so I don't read celebrity gossip magazines. You people are weenies.

The real problem is focus groups.

Herds culled from the unemployable, listless masses that would otherwise be watching day time talk shows.

The marketing VP should fall on his sword for having no personal ability to measure marketability. I did not say "quality" because "quality" in movies is many different things to many different people. He should be canned.

Nothing short of a repentant autobiographic movie about the Thomas Mapother IV's life will get me to watch a Tom Cruise movie.

Cameron Diaz should just retire at this point and teach acting classes in Fort Lauderdale.

For the record, I never said anything about Top Gun except that I thought a sequel was a stupid idea. Unless Quentin Tarantino does it.

@30: It's not just about gossip. He's not a good actor. The only time his inappropriate intensity works is when a director manages to make it work for the story (P.T. Anderson, Scorsese, etc.) But Tom Cruise can't turn it on or off; he's always INTENSE and it has nothing to do with the movie he's in.

While it's true that George Clooney is always George Clooney (and Humphrey Bogart was always Humphrey Bogart), Clooney and Bogart turn their volumes up and down, depending on the material. Tom Cruise always gives the MOST EXTREME PERFORMANCE HE CAN, even when it's wildly inappropriate.

I used to sort of respect Cruise for at least one thing: he actively sought out roles where he'd be basically the second banana to a much, much better actor (Duvall, Newman, Hoffman). I assumed that was because he was hoping to learn from them. As a person, he creeps me the fuck out. Steve Martin got that whole cult thing spot-on in Bowfinger. "Welcome to Mind-Fu...I mean Mind-Head." He actually used to try to be an actor - Born on the 4th of July has some of his better work, and he has the potential of becoming a real character actor, IF his directors keep a leash on his worst tendencies.

I agree with Paul. The problem isn't that he's playing Tom Cruise, it's that he always has it dialed up to 11. Film acting involves subtlety. He's always playing to the cheap seats. It makes his characters very unrelatable, very unauthentic.

Top Gun is some of the best gay subtext ever filmed. It's a great movie for the Celluloid Closet. The way he and Val Kilmer look at each other...oooh, be still, my heart. I've never had any kind of thing for Cruise, but Kilmer's a whole different story.

What I think is weird is that he used to be my age in stories about him, but every few years, he loses a year. Now he's like 3 years younger than I am. I could swear he was exactly my age in stories about Risky Business.

The much-maligned Studio Code was useful insofar as an actor's image was presented, white-washed and with public opinion in mind. Nowadays, actors just present their own public image.

In the cases of some, like Daniel Day Lewis, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Drew Barrymore, and Natalie Portman. They mostly stay out of the public eye, rarely seem to say anything jaw-droppingly, breath-takingly offensive, and let their work speak for them.

Then we have jokes like Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, or Lindsey Lohan. They may actually be talented (I used to be a fan of Gibson), but their public antics have so detracted from their talent that it's at the point they're famous for being famous, nothing else. They've become jokes, caricatures of themselves.

Whenever I see a Tom Cruise film (by accident, I never rent or attend his films anymore, but you can't help what's on at a friends house), I can't suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy it. I just sit there being irritated that this complete and utter douchebag was paid more money for whatever role it is than good, hardworking middle-class Americans will ever see, and to thank his viewing public, he goes on talk shows and talks sh*t about mental illness. What a douche.