In his strangest and silliest roles, the star at his apex explored the outer limits of his image.
Something was seriously wrong with Tom Cruise’s face.
Would the world still love him if he wasn’t beautiful anymore?
Warner Bros.; Moviestore/Shutterstock
Or would he wind up wandering, alone, the one guy at the orgy not getting any?
Eyes Wide Shutcame out in July 1999.Mission: Impossible 2landed one summer later.
They are not similar movies in any obvious way.
One isStanley Kubrick’s last, least explicable movie, a dreamlike erotic thriller about marital maintenance.
The other is Cruise’s loopiestMission, a longhair fantasia about why viruses are great for stock options.
I love both movies, but neither was adored upon release.
Don’t interpret those numbers as positive feedback, though.
I recall general bafflement atEyes, and a slow-boil resentment atM:I 2’s rap-rock silliness.
And the two films rhyme.
InEyes, Cruise plays Bill Harford, a doctor living well in Manhattan.
One night, a casual stoned chat with his awesome wife (Kidman) takes a strange turn.
He tells her he never worries about her cheating; she tells him maybe he should.
But Ethan’s IMF superiors have a mission for Nyah.
Hidden behind a mask and a cowl, he could be just anyone.
Now everyone won’t stop looking at him.
Masks are also a key part ofM:I 2.
The franchise loves its surprise identities, a latex face torn off to reveal whoever was really someone else.
The first time we see Cruise, he’s actually Ambrosepretendingto be Ethan.
“He doubled you, what two or three times?”
asks the IMF Commander (Anthony Hopkins).
This is a quietly mind-boggling revelation, the kind of thing that drives vast fan theories in other franchises.
(Do different movies feature different Ethans?
Is that why he seems so dour inGhost Protocol?)
AndM:I2honors Woo’s fascination with parallel good-and-evil identities.
Ambrose pretends to be Ethan again later, fooling Nyah away from her moonlight escape.
Of course, it’s not Ethan, but the upside-mood lingers.
Was that dwindling too much for Cruise to bear?
The future was full ofMissions, hyperbolizing Cruise into the stratospheric “living manifestation of destiny.”
Whereas who knows with the Harfords, but some marriages just don’t last.
