Tom Cruise’s latest efforts in Digger tanked on opening weekend, but despite savage remarks, the Hollywood icon should receive praise
Tom Cruise can hang off a plane in true action man style and everyone applauds his courage. But take an artistic risk with a film that veers from the Hollywood formula and suddenly saving his career becomes his next Mission: Impossible.
The response to Digger’s disappointing opening has been depressingly predictable. After grossing just £15million globally in its opening weekend, critics are already writing the obituary for Cruise’s film career.
But surely this is precisely the sort of gamble we should want our movie stars to be taking. Working with a visionary director like Alejandro González Iñárritu ought to be encouraged in an industry endlessly rummaging through its own back catalogue for something else to reboot.
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I’d still rather see actors of his calibre taking chances like this than squeezing into leotards for another mind-numbingly tedious superhero film.
Oh to be a fly on the wall of his agent’s office when this one was pitched. Playing a balding, potbellied Texan oil tycoon is quite a departure from Maverick, the dashing fighter pilot who helped make Top Gun one of the biggest films of Cruise’s career.
And since when did box office takings tell us whether a film was any good? The Shawshank Redemption was a thumping disappointment on its initial release. Its audience grew through video and television until a film cinemagoers had largely overlooked became enormously loved. People simply caught up.
Cruise’s own career should make us wary of wishing him back into a comfortable box. He was electric in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia in 1999, playing Frank T.J. Mackey, a swaggering, misogynistic motivational speaker. It remains one of his most memorable performances and earned him an Oscar nomination.
Digger’s rumoured £150million losses also need putting into perspective. Warner Bros grossed a record-breaking $4.3billion at the global box office last year, with juggernauts including A Minecraft Movie leading the way. Success on that scale gives a studio room for the occasional creative swing that doesn’t connect.
Still, I understand why Hollywood’s money men may still be having kittens. But reducing everything to a number is frustrating. Take my own profession, which has the same problem.
An exclusive can involve months of patient reporting and reveal something that matters, yet still be judged through the narrow prism of page views. The number may tell you how many people clicked but it cannot tell you everything the story was worth. Box office receipts have the same limitation.
None of this means an ambitious film deserves automatic praise, and audiences are entitled to dislike Digger.
But if we want major stars to back original filmmaking, we have to allow them the possibility of failure. Otherwise, we deserve every tedious franchise instalment coming our way.
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