- Dear Tom Cruise
- 'Your brand has passed its well by date and you're having to run faster and faster just to stand still.' Phil Raby
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Dear TC,
You’ve been Top Cat for so long, that it’s hard to imagine you as Officer Dibble, but time is catching up with you. Your brand has passed its well by date and you’re having to run faster and faster just to stand still.
I was listening to you on the radio today, at the premiere of Knight & Day in Leicester Square, where you’d been doing your usual schtick of turning up early, signing autographs, letting people take pictures of you, and generally being a good egg. Or, as you might put it, working hard. Hard work is what got you to where you are (or were), and it’s just about keeping you precariously balanced halfway down the greasy pole. The interviewer asked you how you felt about the relative failure of this new film, Knight & Day, in the States. In your inimitable way, you simply ignored the question and came out with the same line you have probably used for every movie you’ve starred in, about how thrilled about the film you are, how proud of it, and how audiences are going to love it. All the world is a promotional opportunity, and you never miss a chance to blow the publicity trumpet.
Of the other great cinema icons of the 80s Arnold has already moved on to being a politician; I’m not sure that’s an option for you. I don’t know how to put this politely, but I suspect that your affiliations might be a handicap to your being elected. Stallone is still hard at it, but he is so far over the hill that he’s gone down into the valley and is halfway up the next hill. Only little Tom is left, peddling away as hard as you can, and grinning that grin. Of course, you could always take up acting; we know from Magnolia that you can do nasty extremely well. But nasty is not who you think you are, and I know how difficult it would be to move from Superstar to Supporting Actor.
But as this new film reveals, you are not the star you were. In fact the last 10 years have not been your most glorious: Valkyrie was neither commercially or critically successful, Mission Impossible 3 was a step too far (and the same is true in spades for Number 4, due next year), and neither of the 2 Spielberg films (Minority Report and War of The Worlds) were exactly classics. And even if we throw in Vanilla Sky and The Last Samurai, we still aren’t talking about a serious contribution to cinema. Although, to be fair, that’s never what you really planned. It’s been the Cruise brand from the beginning, and 25 years somewhere near the top for a not especially talented, not especially handsome actor is very good going. The only question is, what do you do when the sun goes down?
Phil Raby
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