Monday Morning Quarterback Part III
By BOP Staff
August 6, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jason Barney: I love the question, because it acknowledges just how major a star Cruise was (is) and gives him credit for still being bankable. The only other two that I would really put up there would be Harrison Ford and Tom Hanks. Ford is older and Hanks has taken a step back from his mega stardom, but there are few performers who have really achieved what those guys have. Maybe Depp could be on that list.
Ryan Kyle: This question really goes to show that Cruise is one of a kind. His blockbusters are consistently entertaining with no real complete duds. I agree with Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford and I think Johnny Depp deserves to have his name on the list, although his quality is very all over the place. Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington are also very consistent in their returns on money and quality, although I would not consider their films in the same "Summer Blockbuster" league that Cruise is in.
I think Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Christian Bale, and Ben Affleck can also be added to the list of performers with a multi-decade career with a long filmography of hits in terms of commercial and critical. I'm sure Cruise's career would be a bit more spotty box office wise if he took riskier roles more often like Brad Pitt and Christian Bale instead of his bread-and-butter action fare (outside of Lions for Lambs, he hasn't gone outside of the box much), but why not be an action hero for a few more years while there is gas left in the tank before retiring to roles that will stretch his craft?
Edwin Davies: Tom Hanks is probably my favorite, if only for his work on the sublime Toy Story films, but Cruise feels like a really separate entity from pretty much every name that's been mentioned. Not only was he a huge draw for a long stretch of time, he also maintained a pretty consistent level of quality in the projects he chose, and he almost certainly elevated some of the odder choices he made through the sheer power of his stardom. It's hard to imagine anyone else getting Vanilla Sky or Collateral to $100 million.
Will Smith is the only star who gets close, and his success was over a shorter period of time, and his hits tended to be focused in fewer genres that Cruise's.
Ben Gruchow: Favorite five Tom Cruise films, from most recent to oldest, are: Edge of Tomorrow, Collateral, Minority Report, Magnolia, and the first Mission: Impossible. That fifth-place spot has a number of Cruise entries that are jostling for it, though, and M:I only barely edges them out.
Cruise possesses the ability to elevate whatever he's in, and there are several actors/actresses that possess the same ability in my book; the only two that I can think of who elevate the material to such a degree by being in it are Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie. Angelina Jolie is someone I think actually stands out more for her humanitarian work and contributions than for her filmography, although I usually like-to-love her work films. And Tom Hanks has a tendency more to meet each role on precisely the level it deserves (whether that role is above or below the rest of the material). Cruise, though...looking at his filmography, he's made lesser films, but not one that I can see where he's phoning it in. He gives his all to performances, even if the movie itself is misguided, and I'd argue that his instincts haven't led him to produce a movie that's outright bad yet.
David Mumpower: I have a strange take on this question in that I don't really like Tom Cruise as a person. I think he's probably unwell and possibly insane. I haven't seen Going Clear, and I'm willing to accept he's manipulated by people who use him. I still find him creepy. Despite that statement, whenever I look at his body of work, I am reminded anew of how spectacular he is at picking scripts.
Let's start with Top Gun, which already excludes a couple of films I like. Then, we can skip to a seven-film sequence of A Few Good Men, The Firm, Interview with the Vampire, Mission: Impossible, Jerry Maguire, Eyes Wide Shut, and Magnolia. Not everyone is going to love all of those films but overall, that's an amazing CAREER for 99% of Hollywood. Now, let's skip Mission: Impossible II, whose main purpose is to demonstrate how lovely Thandie Newton is. After that rare miss, Cruise adds the following titles to his resume: Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, The Last Samurai, Collateral, War of the Worlds, and Mission: Impossible III. Which is the better set of films, the first seven I listed or those six? I don't even know, but I *think* the latter.
After that, Cruise makes a couple of interesting films that fell victim to his unpopularity with Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie. After that, he throws out a hilarious redemptive turn in Tropic Thunder, an underrated role in an underrated film, Knight & Day, and probably his best action film ever, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. While I'm not a fan of it, I'd also have a BOP webmaster mad at me if I didn't acknowledge Oblivion, and he follows that up with one of the best films of 2014, Edge of Tomorrow, and one of the best films of 2015, Rogue Nation.
There are actors we've listed who can compete with him on best three films (Damon probably wins that), and five films (Julia Roberts Meryl Streep can both hang there), and maybe even seven films (Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks and George Clooney all compete well up until here), but if we go any deeper than that, it's not even close. I mean, here's my ten favorite Cruise films (in reverse order as Mr. Gruchow did): Edge of Tomorrow, Ghost Protocol, MI3, Collateral, The Last Samurai, Minority Report Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men, The Firm, Top Gun. Some of the movies I've excluded are blockbuster hits that are more than 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Nobody else in the industry EVER can say that.
Like him or not, Tom Cruise is The Man in Hollywood.
Kim Hollis: I'm hard-pressed to pick anyone other than Cruise. Are there actors I like better (as people and whom I just enjoy watching in general)? Certainly. But I effectively grew up with Cruise. He was doing high school movies when I was in high school, and when I think back on it, I don't believe there's another actor with so many films that I've seen in theaters. I think Risky Business was my first R-rated movie in a theater, and I remember the exact location where I saw it.
Choosing a favorite is awfully hard, as I have different reasons for liking different movies. The aforementioned Risky Business isn't honestly one of his best in quality, but I have an affection for its weird Tangerine Dream score and the final line ("Looks like University of Illinois!"). Jerry Maguire is an absolute delight. I've probably re-watched The Firm and Interview With the Vampire more than any of his other movies. With all that said, I do expect that over time my answer would be Edge of Tomorrow.
Kim Hollis: Vacation, the new reboot for the franchise that has Rusty Griswold as the head of the family, earned just $14.7 million from Friday-to-Sunday and $21 million since debuting on Wednesday. What do you think of this result?
Jason Barney: Vacation is going to end up being a dud, sorta. Summer comedies can perform well at times, but the overall cost of this one, close to $30 million, is interesting considering the opening weekend. It started where it needed to, high in the top 10, and numbers against the budget are pretty good but….
I wonder if the opening weekend will be the peak of the film. Reviews are unkind and I would expect the drops to be pretty significant in the next couple of weeks. This weekend brings four wide releases, so Vacation will get lost in the shuffle pretty quickly.
Ben Gruchow: On the one hand, I'm sort of surprised that the opening is this high...not so much because the movie got a negative critical reception, but because the buzz leading up to release declined/flatlined considerably. I was seeing a three-day landing somewhere around $12 million and the five-day around $17-18.
On the other hand, it's not like the original Vacation got much love critically when it was released, either, and exit polling indicated that the age bracket under 35 responded a good deal more favorably to the movie than the crowd over 35; adding to this, Dumb and Dumber To was released last year with a multi-decade gap between films and the return of two original stars (Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo technically return with this movie), and it managed a $36 million opening. That can't really be used as a comparison figure here because of the Wednesday opening; if we use past Wednesday openings for poorly-reviewed comedies, we're looking at the three-day opening representing somewhere between 22 and 30 percent of the final gross, which would put Vacation somewhere around $50-$65 million for a total domestic gross. I choose to think it'll fall in the low end of that range because I still believe humanity is inherently good because of the audience and review score, but even that's likely enough to justify a sequel with a similar budget.
Ryan Kyle: I'd call this a fair result for a forgettable film given that two-thirds of the $30 million budget has already been recouped in five days. I can't quite recall a marketing campaign that started so great with the CinemaCon buzz that kicked everything off that devolved so quickly into a stinker. The film never tried to connect with the nostalgia of the original, which it needed to do to draw in the older audience and it played too similarly to everything else out there to click with the new audience, who sadly haven't seen the original. Also, the film's quality is a factor given the terrible reviews that definitely had the older audience staying home and rewatching the original. Note to marketing: Don't have your key poster image LITERALLY be your characters covered in human waste.
The cast also lacked a bankable lead star to draw in audiences like Jennifer Aniston in Meet the Millers (this film's obvious comparison) or Melissa McCarthy in Tammy, although Ed Helms and Christina Applegate should remained unscathed. Given the dearth of comedies until the end of September with The Intern and absolutely no R-rated comedies until October with Masterminds (if it even gets released thanks to Relativity's financial situation - the original August date is looking quite prime now), Vacation might have better than expected legs. A final result anywhere between $50-70 million is a reality depending on how next week and the following play out.
Edwin Davies: It's not an unmitigated disaster given that the budget wasn't crazy high, but it has to be a disappointment for the studio, who were probably hoping to revive the Vacation franchise after 18 years.
It's not surprising that the film didn't do all that well. The Vacation franchise peaked with its first two films, then lost a lot of goodwill with one mediocre sequel and a terrible one, so even fans of the original probably weren't that keen for new Griswold adventures, while it's been so long since the last film that the Vacation name means more or less nothing to younger audiences. Without decent name recognition, Vacation just looked like a generic R-rated comedy, and the trailers and the reviews weren't strong enough to establish it as its own entity.
Felix Quinonez: I think given its budget it's fine. Not a disaster, but definitely nothing to brag about. No one will lose their jobs over this but I don't know that it justifies a sequel.
David Mumpower: I understand that this is not a financial disaster by any stretch, but I return to the concept of opportunity cost. The Vacation brand has cachet, and a reboot after this long should reinvigorate and extend the franchise. Instead, it's going to earn about a third of We're the Millers, the most recent Ed Helms comedy. So, a high concept comedy eviscerated one with vast name recognition. That speaks volumes about the quality of Vacation's ads. This endeavor is a total bust.