Has Tom Cruise jumped the shark, jumped the couch and jumped out of favor with many movie goers because his unusual behavior left him overexposed — and some moviegoers too overdosed on the tabloid Cruise to be willing to spend money to watch the Hollywood Cruise?
It certainly looks that way. The latest incarnation of “Mission Impossible” hasn’t tanked, but it has fallen short of expectations. The AP:
Fewer people chose to accept Tom Cruise’s latest mission, a possible sign that the odd behavior of Hollywood’s biggest star may have taken a toll on his box-office charm.
Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible III” debuted with $48.025 million, a solid opening, yet well below industry expectations and almost $10 million lower than the franchise’s previous installment, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Industry analysts had expected the movie to open in the range of “Mission: Impossible II,” which debuted with $57.8 million from Friday to Sunday over Memorial Day weekend in 2000, and Cruise’s “War of the Worlds,” which premiered with $64.9 million from Friday to Sunday over Fourth of July weekend last year.
Rob Moore, Paramount’s head of worldwide marketing and distribution, said he did not believe Cruise’s private life had any impact on “Mission: Impossible III,” directed by “Lost” creator J.J. Abrams. (Watch busy Cruise promote his new movie — 2:10)
“I don’t think so. There’s no question it concerns us if the press is writing about things other than the movie,” Moore said. “If people are writing about his personal life, then by definition, they’re not writing about the movie.”
But how could they avoid Cruise?
He has become as persistent and endearing to some members of the public as those emails suggesting you need to get an “enlargement.” And, actually, in Cruise’s case, the more he has gone out in public, removed from the longtime cocoon of a competent p.r. agent’s image control, the more off-the wall he has seemed and the more his public persona has withered. At times he seems to be in the news as often as a telemarketer’s calls at dinnertime. And just as charming.
Traditionally, many big Hollywood stars’images were carefully controlled so the public can accept them in roles on the screen or on the tube. This is why tabloids have had such a field day piercing the carefully (and expensively) constructed images and printing the “real” stuff about the “real persons.
In Cruise’s case, he did it for them.
When did he get to be too much? When he proclaimed his love for Katie Holmes? When he jumped on Oprah’s couch? When he lectured Brooke Shields on giving birth (not drawing on his own experiences)? When he told the Today Show’s Matt Lauer that Lauer didn’t know what he was talking about when he talked about psychiatry (but Cruise DID because HE studied it)?
Or was it that comment about how he planned to eat the afterbirth after his child was born? That will eliminate him from future gigs as a spokesman for McDonald’s, to be sure. (He later said that was only a joke.)
Whatever, but taken together this string of self-inflicted image destruction has put Cruise into the category of the “Oh, Mommy, please make him go away” celebrity.
Of course, Cruise won’t really be hurt by this. He has enough money not to have to work for several lives, in several incarnations. But he has made himself someone who many Americans would now like to see less of. Which doesn’t help box office attendance.
And some point to his behavior for what seems to be happening now:
E Online:
Tom Cruise, as the box-office saying goes, opened Mission: Impossible III. But did TomKat prevent him from opening the movie bigger?
That was the question Sunday as estimates showed the spy sequel finished atop the weekend box office, but on the low end of the expectations game.
“Mission: Impossible III,” the first big action film of the summer, opened disappointingly at the weekend box office in North American, despite a whirlwind publicity tour by its pricey star, Tom Cruise.
In recent weeks, “Mission: Impossible III” had evolved into something of a referendum on Cruise’s continuing appeal as an action star at age 43, his ability to attract women to theaters and whether a year of bad press over his personal life and Scientology beliefs had taken its toll.
It also was seen as a milestone for Paramount Chairman Brad Grey, hired last year to turn the studio around for corporate parent Viacom Inc. Paramount had hoped “Mission: Impossible III” would provide a big kickoff to the studio’s first summer slate bearing Grey’s imprint. The film also is considered an important step for writer-director J.J. Abrams, best known for the hit TV shows “Lost” and “Alias,” as he seeks to broaden his career into major feature films….
….Analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Exhibitor Relations Co. said the film could have been hurt by the distraction of Cruise’s off-screen antics. Cruise’s public life has been on display for the past year as he promotes the Scientology religion, and while he romanced actress Katie Holmes, who recently gave birth to their daughter.
“The only thing competing for attention in the marketplace was all the talk about Cruise’s public persona,” he said. “It’s hard to ever know why a film fails to live up to expectations, but in this case you can’t fault the marketing campaign. The reasons lie elsewhere.”
If at least part of the fault lies with Cruise, it’s due to several shifts.
During Hollywood’s Golden Age the studios ruled. They carefully controlled the images that were presented to the public: the star’s stage names, hair color, stories about their private lives (some stars who were gay had cover stories about marriages, affairs, etc. or super macho sounding names). Agents worked closely the studios to keep this glamor/PR machine working efficiently.
But with the death of the big studio system, stars have increasingly become more powerful. Enter the age of the colorful movie star who may do and say controversial things, come what may.
In the case of Cruise, for many years he was an empty slate upon which movie viewers could project their own interpretation of who he is. But in recent years, as he has let it all hang out with his behavior and comments, he has been in a kind of free fall in terms of personal imagery.
Before this film came out, there were many who were still insisting that no matter what Cruise would rock at the box office. With the initial returns of Mission Impossible III, it appears Cruise may be on the verge of being rocked off atop the box office gold list.
Can the script be to blame? The direction? The delay between sequels? Perhaps. But Cruise has become a walking, textbook example of media overexposure.
And it looks like has finally begun to pay the price.
ERROR CORRECTION: For some (still unknown reason to us!) reason we typed in “Jodie Foster” instead of Brooke Shields in the original version of this. Readers pointed out the error and we have fixed it. We regret the error.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.