Who Won the Movie?
Tom Cruise or the chaotic collaborative Hollywood process that made the film
In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:02:42Read transcript
- Cruise and De Palma are named first, then a wrinkle: Hollywood, the studio system putting people at the top of their craft in position to succeed, with the money to build an aquarium that did not exist and blow it up, the tanks being Tom Cruise's idea; the chaotic, almost old Hollywood way the film came together is now heard of only as a cautionary tale, like the fired Star Wars director or Fantastic Four, so the victor may be that improvisatory collaborative filmmaking.
- The case cuts both ways: the manic nature of Hollywood creation showed this can work, but the film is also end times for movies, signaling a new path for the greatest movie star of the last 30 years who realizes he must keep falling off things to stay relevant into his 50s, the end of Brian De Palma, the least celebrated yet maybe most talented movie brat, the start of the powerful Wagner-Cruise partnership that ended badly at United Artists, and the end of Jon Voight's good movies after Heat; it feels like a win for nobody but Mission Impossible.
- The counter-pick is Cruise, the engine of the whole thing, since nobody else could play Ethan Hunt and the attempt to try failed; the what-ifs of a different director or Cruise continuing to make films like A Few Good Men are unknowable, and the recent films have leveled out and gotten better.
Podcast choices
- Speaker not identified
- Tom Cruise