Box-office numbers tell only a part of the Tom Cruise story, so why aren’t we looking at the other narratives?
If Edge of Tomorrow, the new Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller, has taught us anything, it’s this: Your film could gross some $29 million in its first three days in the US, and some $110 million worldwide, with the film yet to open in some key overseas markets, and yet, its performance could be labelled a disappointment. In absolute numbers, perhaps the film is a disappointment. The top film of the weekend was the other newcomer The Fault in Our Stars, which grossed some $20 million more than Edge of Tomorrow, and the latter didn’t even make it to second place, which went to Maleficent, in its second weekend. So I’m not saying that the cold-hearted box-office narrative isn’t important. For good or bad, we’re in an era where audiences have come to obsess about not just the film or its stars but also how much money it makes. But I’m saying that this is not the only narrative. There are other things to be considered as well.
The Fault in Our Stars is a tearjerker based on a book that has sold over ten million copies, and Maleficent is a reworking of Sleeping Beauty, which is not just a beloved fairy tale but a beloved Disney movie. Those things loom on the cultural landscape like family heirlooms, passed along from generation to generation. In other words, given that Edge of Tomorrow was a fresh property (i.e. not a sequel or based on a book) competing against two films with large built-in audiences, given that its target audience may have been facing blockbuster fatigue (after the new Spider-Man movie, the new X-Men movie, the new Godzilla movie), given that the film’s marketing didn’t exactly position it as a must-see (remember that generic trailer, which seemed cobbled together from a dozen other sci-fi films?), and given that it has a star who’s not exactly hot property right now (i.e. he’s no Leonardo DiCaprio), I’d say the film hasn’t done too badly.
This may not be much consolation to the studio that made the film, and they may only be interested in the box-office narrative – as spun by a pure “trade paper” like Variety, which talks about numbers because it’s read primarily by people in the industry. But why should every media outlet do the same thing, under the assumption that that’s the only thing that matters to us, the general audience, every Monday morning? We’re told that this film is a blockbuster, or that one flopped. Don’t movies mean more to us than just the money they make? Don’t the trajectories of movie stars count for something? How many male movie stars from the 1980s/90s are still making movies that connect with audiences worldwide? Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Costner, Bruce Willis – when was the last time one of them was in a film that made some $140 million in its opening days? Why aren’t we talking about that instead of mourning the (apparently) dimming star power of Tom Cruise?
Among the films in the last decade that featured Cruise in the lead – i.e., not counting Lions for Lambs, Rock of Ages and Tropic Thunder – War of the Worlds made close to $600 million worldwide, Mission: Impossible III made $300 million, Mission: Impossible IV made $700 million, and the “disappointing” Oblivion made $300 million. Maybe these aren’t top-of-the-heap numbers, but Cruise’s track record has been remarkably consistent – even when the film is widely reviled (Knight and Day, $260 million), even when his casting irked fans of the book (Jack Reacher, $200 million) , even when he played a Nazi (Valkyrie, $200 million) or a grim killer (Collateral, $200 million). So how is it that we keep hearing the narrative that Cruise is a has-been? The American-media spin is that his films don’t do all that well in the US and that he has to rely on global grosses – but it’s all money, right?
The other interesting narrative about Cruise is about his willingness to work with interesting filmmakers (James Mangold, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg) and in quick-and-dirty “genre” pictures like Jack Reacher. In this, he is like one of the Old Hollywood stars, who kept making films that worked and films that didn’t, except that the media at the time did not call into question their stardom because of their inability to out-blockbuster the current blockbuster. Outside of numbers, the only narrative about Cruise that people seem to buy is that his personal life puts people off – but is that really the case? In a 2005 article in Slate, Edward Jay Epstein, the author of The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood, wrote, “So, while Cruise, for better or worse, emerges as one of the most powerful — and richest — forces in Hollywood, the media remain totally fixated on the fact that he’s a Scientologist and the anachronistic notion that he is fabricating his love life…” Almost ten years later, the media’s fixation doesn’t seem to have changed at all.
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2014 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
bala
June 13, 2014
Hmm, would’ve appreciated this piece better if I hadn’t read a couple on Tom Cruise in the last month or so 🙂 Here’s one – http://www.laweekly.com/2014-05-22/news/the-last-movie-star/
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MANK
June 13, 2014
The American-media spin is that his films don’t do all that well in the US and that he has to rely on global grosses – but it’s all money, right?
Its all money but not the same money.The studio gets almost 50 to 70 percent of the BO takings in america while for overseas , its only 25% of the BO.hence this obsession with home BO.
I must confess i am not a big fan of Cruise.Hes not an actor whom i find very exciting to watch. But i do feel the bias in media against him . You rightly pointed out that there arent that many stars from the 80’s who still command some power at the BO.I liked him in Tropic thunder though.i liked his performance which was a kind of self parody.
btw Brangan, your obsession with figures and numbers is also new. i dont think you have ever rattled of BO figures this extensively in any of your pieces before..
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venkatesh
June 13, 2014
@Mank: Spot on with regards to the takings overseas versus the one in the U.S.
@BR: But this phenomenon is not new nor is it only Movie based. What about music ? Highest earning star of a few years ; no not that one, its in fact Prince. When was the last time you saw him gracing the covers of the top-shelf Music magazine ?
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brangan
June 14, 2014
MANK/venkatesh: You’re right. This is a much bigger story.
About this particular story, the first version was about how James Cameron’s fingerprints are on every sci-fi blockbuster. (The earlier, good Cameron, that is — till “True Lies.”) But I’ve talked about that, so I thought I’d write about how Tom Cruise is like the older Hollywood stars in the choices he makes. Then it became a piece about how certain stars don’t get credit for pulling off films that are different — eg. Cruise here and Aamir with “Talaash.” (There was endless whining about how the latter didn’t make it to the 100-crore mark, when in reality the money it made WRT to the kind of adult film it was is actually quite remarkable.)
But that became really, really long and I decided to stick to just Cruise and numbers. But as Bala says, that was probably a mistake as it isn’t exactly the freshest of angles. Oh well!
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Shankar
June 14, 2014
Just for the record, I loved the Edge of Tomorrow. As you said, despite the fatigue of all the summer blockbusters and Cruise himself seemingly acting exclusively in sci-fi or disaster movies lately (just the perception), I loved this film. I just came back from watching it so it’s fresh but can’t immediately put a finger on why I liked it. I’ve got to think more about it but I know I liked the story, kinda like an edgier Groundhog Day, at least the basic premise. Also, I’ve always had a soft corner for Tom maybe because he has been a star for 30 years and started off in the 80s. I mean it was thrill to watch Top Gun in Pilot and some of that nostalgia is always there. But I agree he hasn’t been getting his due credit in the past decade. His longevity is perhaps the reason why the media has moved on, they need fresh blood! But that reason alone is a testament to his success!
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venkatesh
June 14, 2014
Does any one else have to enter their credentials again when “liking” a comment ?
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Karthik
June 14, 2014
“In other words, given that Edge of Tomorrow was a fresh property (i.e. not a sequel or based on a book) competing against two films with large built-in audiences, given that its target audience may have been facing blockbuster fatigue…”
Edge of Tomorrow *is* based on a book. Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s sci-fi book, All You Need Is Kill. There are generous changes in the script – a side character (who, as a photo journalist, is assigned to cover the war against mimics) becomes the lead character (in the film, Tom Cruise), becuse the lead character in the book was a low ranking Japanese soldier.
I guess Tom Cruise was in no mood to work with Kamal Hassan’s Dasavatharam make-up man to contort himself into a thin-eyed Japanese man.
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oracle86
June 15, 2014
FYI, Edge of Tomorrow is not a “fresh property” – it is an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s cult classic Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill.
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brangan
June 18, 2014
Karthik/oracle86: yeah, I see that. I guess what I was trying to say that it’s not based on a hugely popular pre-existing source, like “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings”.
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ultrakamina
June 18, 2014
Reblogged this on kaminare.
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