TaylorMade
Jun 8, 2010, 9:52 PM
I saw the preview of Knight And Day right after looking at his performance at the MTV awards. And it hit me: It's a moment of fridge brilliance (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeBrilliance) that probably won't be acknowledged for some time yet.
Tom Cruise has gone from self-destructive to deconstructed.
With a character as one dimensional as Tom Cruise the Movie Star, it takes a surprising amount of time to take that construct and concept apart. And while he started slow, it's almost entirely in place.
It's 2007. He's come off Lions for Lambs, one of a string of shitty anti-war movies that sucked monkey balls. People still think he's fucking crazy, closeted, and had what remained of his brain assimilated by the Church of $cientology. People are already shining up their forks and saying that there are no more movie stars.
His cockiness is old hat. His winning smile has become tarnished and creepy. People are speculating on how much work has been done on that perfect face. No one buys the boy from Top Gun anymore, nor do they believe in the man from Mission: Impossible.
Then a little movie named Tropic Thunder turned that on it's head. In a single cameo , Tom Cruise tore down his good looks and All-American winsomeness into a reptilian, awful, fat horrid man named Les Grossman. It's refuge in audacity, the audacity that Tom once took for granted and got returned void. In Les Grossman, he takes the audacity, wipes his ass with it, and shoves it right back in the audiences face.
And we ate it up. After we took a step back and literally fucked our own faces.
We wern't supposed to know . . . or were we?
To be honest, it took me by surprise. I was of the belief that Tom Cruise had a congenital inability to laugh at himself. That he looked in the mirror and took himself so f'ng seriously that a character of Les Grossman's sheer comedy potential was simply not in his two note emotional range. Maybe he is crazy, and letting us know.
Either way, he's not doing that again.At least that's what I thought.
Mea culpa, mea culpa , mea maxima culpa for being wrong. For there he is, DANCING! And not like he did on BET's 106 and Park, doing that ...whatever it was . . .to "It's goin' Down" . . . No, he's moving, like a real human being.
Maybe it's not Tom Cruise. You tell me. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRd8JOyYlM&NR=1)
Then I saw Knight and Day. I'm not criticizing it. But - - watch that preview---------> Here. I'll wait. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpqBWEtZs24)
Did you see what you thought you saw? A spy who may very well be mentally unbalanced. It's not the same Tom Cruise. This guy's randomly shooting people, kidnapping a woman, and . . .yeah.
Real life writing the plot, maybe ? Or just a tongue in cheek way of him seeing what we did there (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I+see+what+you+did+there)?
Now, don't get me wrong. . .I am not saying Tom is all of a sudden awesome or $cientology is cool. 'Cause I'm not.
But what I am saying is that . . .Thomas C. Mapother is not quietly going into that good night. . .he's going go get Les Grossman to kick our ass and maybe drag us there.
Just sayin'.
*Taylor*
Tom Cruise has gone from self-destructive to deconstructed.
With a character as one dimensional as Tom Cruise the Movie Star, it takes a surprising amount of time to take that construct and concept apart. And while he started slow, it's almost entirely in place.
It's 2007. He's come off Lions for Lambs, one of a string of shitty anti-war movies that sucked monkey balls. People still think he's fucking crazy, closeted, and had what remained of his brain assimilated by the Church of $cientology. People are already shining up their forks and saying that there are no more movie stars.
His cockiness is old hat. His winning smile has become tarnished and creepy. People are speculating on how much work has been done on that perfect face. No one buys the boy from Top Gun anymore, nor do they believe in the man from Mission: Impossible.
Then a little movie named Tropic Thunder turned that on it's head. In a single cameo , Tom Cruise tore down his good looks and All-American winsomeness into a reptilian, awful, fat horrid man named Les Grossman. It's refuge in audacity, the audacity that Tom once took for granted and got returned void. In Les Grossman, he takes the audacity, wipes his ass with it, and shoves it right back in the audiences face.
And we ate it up. After we took a step back and literally fucked our own faces.
We wern't supposed to know . . . or were we?
To be honest, it took me by surprise. I was of the belief that Tom Cruise had a congenital inability to laugh at himself. That he looked in the mirror and took himself so f'ng seriously that a character of Les Grossman's sheer comedy potential was simply not in his two note emotional range. Maybe he is crazy, and letting us know.
Either way, he's not doing that again.At least that's what I thought.
Mea culpa, mea culpa , mea maxima culpa for being wrong. For there he is, DANCING! And not like he did on BET's 106 and Park, doing that ...whatever it was . . .to "It's goin' Down" . . . No, he's moving, like a real human being.
Maybe it's not Tom Cruise. You tell me. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRd8JOyYlM&NR=1)
Then I saw Knight and Day. I'm not criticizing it. But - - watch that preview---------> Here. I'll wait. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpqBWEtZs24)
Did you see what you thought you saw? A spy who may very well be mentally unbalanced. It's not the same Tom Cruise. This guy's randomly shooting people, kidnapping a woman, and . . .yeah.
Real life writing the plot, maybe ? Or just a tongue in cheek way of him seeing what we did there (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I+see+what+you+did+there)?
Now, don't get me wrong. . .I am not saying Tom is all of a sudden awesome or $cientology is cool. 'Cause I'm not.
But what I am saying is that . . .Thomas C. Mapother is not quietly going into that good night. . .he's going go get Les Grossman to kick our ass and maybe drag us there.
Just sayin'.
*Taylor*