Beauty vs Beast: Who's The Maverick Now
Monday, July 3, 2017 at 3:00PM Jason from MNPP here - I think that most of us have mixed (to put it mildly) feelings about Tom Cruise, who is celebrating his 55th birthday today (yes, he was Born on the Third of July). But there's no arguing that his radar for Big Mainstream Action Movie Success has seemed fairly fine tuned for all of the four decades that he's been batting in the major leagues. Well... until The Mummy this summer, which more than just being a bad movie (he's had plenty of those) felt like an actively bad choice for him particularly. The role didn't fit him and he didn't manage to make it fit him by the sheer force of smiling will that his stardom's been so foundationally built upon.
So perhaps that why now he's finally stepping back into the role that made him a star in the first place, and asking us to remember when something as simple as a jet plane and a pair of aviator glasses was all it took to throttle the box office - the Top Gun sequel, subtitled Maverick, was finally made official this week - it will be out in two years (July 2019) and it will be directed by Joseph Kosinski, who worked with Cruise on the (underrated, says me) sci-fi flick Oblivion. So let's look back ourselves, here on this Patriotic Eve, at the movie as American as American Military Might...
PREVIOUSLY I was about to say that we couldn't have made a more wild swing, celebrating Tom Cruise this week to having celebrated Peter Lorre last week, but you know... not really? Perhaps as Cruise grows older he can embrace his diminuitive weirdness to similar effect. Anyway as for last week's Maltese contest it was Bogart who won, but barely, with just 53% of the vote. Said Tom:
"I think both are lucky Mary Astor isn't here. But as it is I vote for Sam. He does such wild and unpredictable things."
Reader Comments (9)
Ummm... Iceman is standing over the Maverick column and vice versa. Might skew this crucial and very scientific poll. So, yeah.
I'm just very concerned for the well-being of anyone that would vote for a tiny troll over the delicious Iceman.
Never seen it and never plan to. Little Tammy and his cult are toxic.
Top Gun 2? Does Cruise think this is his Color of Money? Because otherwise, I mean...
P.S. Team Iceman
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were magical together. Like Depp & Ryder, Gere & Crawford, Baldwin & Basinger, Willis & Moore. They were called "Hollywood Royalty". They don't make celebrity couples like they did before. Unfortunately Tom and Nicole didn't have biological children. It would be a privilege such fantastic genetic inheritance.
In the 1980's Tom Cruise was like those old Hollywood stars with the movies seeming to exist only for him, even directors movies like Born on The Fourth of July. He was symbol of male beauty, power, charm, box office, charisma and talent. Fortunately for Tom he has better movies than Top Gun for posterity: The Color of Money, Rain Man, Magnolia...
About two weeks ago I saw Risky Business with Tom and Rebecca De Mornay, both pretty younger and impossibly cute and gorgeous. The movie is better and funnier than Top Gun. I love Tarantino's vision on it in Sleep With Me (1994).
What?!?!? No Rick Rossovich choice?!?!? Treason! Treason, I say!!!
Agreed, forever1267 - Rossovich always rocked my world...!
Iceman all the way. He survived without any support against 5-7 enemy planes when even 2 can make you a goner. That man was a genius.