I was going to do a piece this week talking about Tom Cruise movies that were actual flops over the last thirty years. But as I did the research and did the math, I came upon a fascinating problem. Tom Cruise has basically, in the time since he became a superstar in 1986 with Top Gun, never had an out-and-out flop in the conventional sense. Oh sure, he has made some films that grossed less than studios hoped, a few genuine disappointments, and even few that lost a few bucks in the short term. But with one obvious exception from 29 years ago, just a month before Top Gun turned him into an icon, Mr. Cruise has never really had an outright starring vehicle
It was the Rebecca De Mornay coming of age sex comedy Risky Business that was Cruise's coming out moment as a movie star, earning rave reviews and grossing $63 million on a $6.2m budget. And yes, the
Fortunately for the star, next up was Tony Scott's Top Gun. If Risky Business was Cruise's Maltese Falcon, then Top Gun was his Casablanca. And since then he's basically been on a roll. What followed was a succession of hits that went well into the early 1990's. Some were very good (Rain Man, Born on the Fourth of July), some were less good (Cocktail, Days of Thunder, The Color of Money), but all were relatively successful. Barry Levinson's Oscar winning Rain Man, despite being a two-hander character drama, grossed almost as much here and abroad as Top Gun ($356m vs. $354m), and its only failure is that arguably Tom Cruise should have won the Oscar that year instead of Dustin Hoffman (Cruise had the harder, less showy role).
It wasn't until 1992 that we got what could reasonably construed as a box office disappointment in the form of Ron Howard's Far and Away. But despite mediocre reviews and a gossipy press salivating over the relative new marriage between Cruise and co-star Nicole Kidman (they met on Days of Thunder), the Memorial Day 1992 period adventure still managed to earned $138m worldwide on a $60m budget. That's not a barn-burning number, but you have to remember that marketing was a lot less expensive in 1992 (less emphasis on opening weekend for one thing), and thus a film that made over 2x its budget was at least on track to break even if not make a profit down the road. Like a few films in this conversation, it was in that confusing middle ground between out-and-out hit and out-and-out flop.
The next thirteen years (1992-2005) amounted to peak Cruise, as the star knocked out a deluge of varied smash hits and/or critical gems without interruption. This is the period where we see A Few Good Men ($243 million worldwide on a $40m budget), The Firm ($270m), Interview With The Vampire ($223m/$60m), Mission: Impossible ($457m/$80m), Jerry Maguire ($273m/$50m), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut ($162m/$65m), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia ($48m/$37m), Mission: Impossible II ($546m/$125m), Vanilla Sky ($203m/$68m), Minority Report ($358m/$102m), The Last Samurai ($456m/$140m), Collateral ($217m/$65m), and War of the Worlds ($591m/$132m). Oh, and 2002's IMAX feature Space Station 3D earned $124m worldwide, becoming IMAX's biggest grosser ever. Guess who narrated that one? You'll notice a few things going through that list.
First of all, ten of those films are R-rated pictures intended for adults. Secondly, the only ones that didn't make substantially more than double their budgets are Eyes Wide Shut (an R-rated erotic drama from Stanley Kubrick) and Magnolia (a 3-hour melodrama with Cruise in a showy "did it for scale" supporting role that netted him his third Oscar nomination). Third of all, Tom Cruise's stardom came during a time when $60m was a reasonably big budget and thus $200m worldwide was an unqualified success. Cruise's first $100m+ budget came in 2000 with John Woo's action sequel, nine years after Terminator 2 broke the $100m budget milestone. Finally, the film Cruise was promoting during the "couch jumping" incident was Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which became his biggest grosser here and abroad anyway. It is still his biggest US grosser with $234m. Oh, and The Last Samurai made a lot more money than you probably realize, as it's still one of the biggest grossing R-rated films ever.
Sadly Cruise's career will always be divided into pre-couch jump and post-couch jump. That event was just over ten years ago, and pretty much every film he has been viewed as a new test as to whether Tom Cruise is still a movie star. And to be honest, the question is often complicated but with an eventual "yes" as the answer. 2006 brought us Mission: Impossible III, which was supposed to be the surefire career resuscitator from the "devastating" $591 million gross of War of the Worlds. But despite solid reviews and a prime "summer kick-off" release date, the J.J. Abrams film underperformed compared to its predecessors. The film earned $48m on opening weekend (M:I had earned $46m as part of a $73m Wed-Mon debut while M:I 2 had earned $59m Fri-Sun during its $90m Wed-Mon debut) and didn't have the usual Cruise legs, earning $133m in the states and $393m worldwide on a $160m budget. Yes, the film made 2.45x its budget, but it was disappointing compared to the prior films and Cruise ended up earning so much of the profits via a backend deal that Paramount/Viacom Inc. basically lost money on the film (and Summer Redstone was not very happy in the aftermath). Again, it's a disappointment, but it was in no way a flop in terms of "gross vs. budget."
What followed next was a series of lower-scale entries, or at least they felt lower scale compared to the mega-budget fantasy spectacles that were taking their place as the new A-level blockbusters. Robert Redford's Lions For Lambs is basically a 90-minute lecture about civic responsibility in a democracy, and Tom Cruise's fearless turn as a terrifying rightwing senator is the film's highlight. It was the smallest movie Cruise had made since before Top Gun, and the 2007 release still grossed $63m worldwide on a $35m budget. Not a hit, but not a mega flop and Cruise was at best the film's third lead behind Redford and Meryl Streep. He followed that up with a crowd-pleasing and self-deprecating cameo in Tropic Thunder. It's not Cruise's movie, but he was a big part of the marketing campaign so he gets a little credit (along with director/star Ben Stiller and Oscar nominated co-star Robert Downey Jr. just 70 days after Iron Man) for the R-rated war comedy's $188m gross on a $92m budget.
Next was Bryan Singer's Valkyrie for United Artists, where Cruise starred as a disillusioned Nazi trying to kill Hitler. This is another late-era Cruise picture that is perceived as a flop even though it earned solid reviews (from myself among others) and grossed $200 million on a $75m budget. Knight and Day was a critical whiff (although the "007 movie told from the point-of-view of Cameron Diaz's Bond Girl" has its quirky charms) and is considered something of a flop. Again, it's no mega hit, but it still earned $261m on a $117m budget. It was not befitting our once-biggest star, but it was no catastrophe either. Next up was Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, and I think we all remember how that went. Short version: rave reviews heralding it as an action classic, $12.4m IMAX-only debut, leggy-as-hell $209m domestic final, $694m worldwide total for a new Cruise box office record.
Next up was Rock of Ages for Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc., which would absolutely count as a Cruise flop save for the fact that it's an ensemble musical and he has a supporting role. It's also one of his very worst films, so it's fitting that the botched adaptation of the 1980's rock nostalgia stage show (and that's coming from someone who loves director Adam Shankman's Hairspray) is the rare "made less than its budget" Cruise picture. It earned ghastly reviews and nabbed $59 million on a $75m budget. While he throws himself into the role of an 80's heavy metal rocker, he was also partially responsible for the "slut-shaming" changes to the original story (he didn't want the female lead to sleep with him so as to not affect her status as a role model for young girls, which means the entire second-half romantic conflict instead hinges on a stupid "misunderstanding"), so he gets some of the blame too. But again, it wasn't a pure star vehicle.
He closed out 2012 with Jack Reacher for Paramount. Fans of the Lee Childs novels cried foul over the casting, but unlike Interview with the Vampire, said controversy didn't really help the box office in one way or another. Nonetheless, the painfully underrated Christopher McQuarrie thriller earned $218m on a $60m budget, no mega hit but enough to spawn a sequel. Cruise and McQuarrie got along pretty well, as they have worked together for the last two films. Next up was Oblivion for Universal/Comcast Corp., which was another somewhat underrated genre film. The sci-fi picture may have been stitched together from countless other genre classics, but it's a satisfying stew and it looked absolutely gorgeous in IMAX. Anyway, the April 2013 release earned an okay $286m worldwide on a $120m budget.
Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow cost way too much ($175 million, Cruise's biggest budget by a healthy margin), and thus its still strong $100m domestic take (off a $29m debut) and $369m worldwide total was not enough for Warner Bros. Still, the film is considered a new classic and it's his third-biggest global grosser that isn't a Mission: Impossible movie, behind War of the Worlds and The Last Samurai. Like a lot of late-era Cruise films, it's in that purgatory zone of not being an out-and-out hit but not really being a massive money loser either. And that brings us to today, with Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation opening nationwide starting at 7:00pm this evening.
The sheer consistency of Tom Cruise's box office run from 1983 to 2005 is uncontested, with few out-and-out misses and a string of varied hits. And even the last ten years have offered a handful of big hits and a few token disappointments, but little aside from Rock of Ages that would reach the level of his last outright flop 29 years ago. So come what may, I think we need to stop pretending that Tom Cruise still needs to prove his worth as a movie star and a box office draw. He's not as spry as he was in the 1992-2005 period, but he's still one of the safer bets in an industry. When the closest thing you've had to a true flop in well-over 25 years are the supporting roles you took in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and Robert Redford movie along with an against-type supporting turn as a long-haired rocker in a shockingly bad musical, you're still something of a movie star.
