Psycho. #53

What do you think about fanbases affecting your judgement of a film? I watched a bunch of Mission: Impossible movies recently. They are fun but I was surprised by how ramshackle everything that isn't a stunt is in them. 

This wouldn't usually bother me since it's a dumb dumb action movie and I know what I signed up for but a lot of the online reaction to the movies really seem to invent a compelling narrative and character arc for Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt (especially the most recent ones) that I just don't see evidence of in the actual films, which sours me on the movies a bit. Am I being needlessly contrarian?

Sounds to me as if Tom Cruise’s fanbase — or perhaps a looser fanbase of action films in general (or perhaps an even looser one still, of “films like they used to make ‘em”) — didn’t really affect your judgement of the Mission: Impossible series too much! Of course, the general view, that this is a gosh-darn thrill-a-minute series of movies, gave you something to kick against, so perhaps in that sense you were reacting in a way you might otherwise not have; but you maintained your own opinion of these films throughout, regarding with lucidity all the crappy non-action filler that makes up these movies. Well done!

I do know what you mean though, that sometimes a consensus or a fervour around a film can feel like it’s clouding your critical faculties: you find yourself scouring it for the thing that you’ve heard is in there, rather than exercising your usual discrimination straight off the bat. I found that to be the case relatively recently with Babygirl (2024), the erotic drama by Halina Reijn, starring Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson. Before I get into it, I should say: “Harris Dickinson innocent.” OK, now that’s over, let’s proceed. Going into the film, expecting a properly grown-up and horny consideration of a twisted relationship, I caught myself searching the film’s dialogue, images, performances, for some good scraps to feast on. I doubt that I would have extended that courtesy to the movie without, for instance, all the acclaim I had heard for Kidman’s performance, which of course came garlanded with the usual epithets: gutsy, unflinching, yadda yadda yadda. And yet I could not find very much to enjoy in the film: I tried to appreciate the examination of BDSM I was watching, but I found it, in the end, rather tame and not particularly revelatory of character. Whoop-de-doo, a man dominating a woman! And, what’s this? She’s crawling towards him on the floor?? Ye gods — the audacity! The subversion! I must try that out with my wife, Helen, the next time the kids are away at scout camp!

Babygirl falls somewhere between a rompy good time and a bracing character study, being finally neither. It isn’t, really, a study of anything, as far as I can work out; it certainly has nothing to say about money, class, politics, or work. What we’re left with is the Harris Dickinson dance and the glass of milk, some meme-y stuff that doesn’t quite take off. If I want to see some silly horny nonsense with a ropey approach to money and class, I’ll watch Saltburn (2023), thanks! Babygirl didn’t give me what I wanted, but perhaps I wouldn’t have been so disappointed without those expectations.

How funny — I’ve only just noticed that you asked me about Tom Cruise and I replied with Nicole Kidman! There must be something psychological operating there, a kind of kicking-against; or perhaps it’s just free association. But maybe it’s true of both of them that they are given a rather bigger pass than some actors, because of their iconography. Divorced, daring Kidman means something to us — the narrative of her independence from him, and her becoming a more audacious and committed actor, has a knock-on effect. Tom Cruise has stayed that same Tom Cruise though, and is valued for that: remaining steadfast, an action man, crystallised in time; “the last Hollywood star”. 

In a way, I think your question is maybe more about Tom Cruise than it is about fanbases — not least because I’m not sure if fanbases have all that much to do with the public perception of a film, these days. Who are the actors who even command such a thing as a fanbase? Pedro Pascal, maybe; K-Pop stars; Chalamet. Johnny Depp, of course, who has the worst fans in the whole world, worse even than diehard fans of Jane Austen who misunderstand her work and play Regency dress-up like perverts. I guess there’s a generalised excitement about various internet boyfriends, from Paul Mescal to Andrew Scott, via Josh O’Connor, Harris Dickinson and, I don’t know, some other white young men, some other white young men… Jonathan Bailey! That’s who I was thinking of. But does all of that fandom ever translate into drastically misrepresented films? Oh, I tell you what — typing out “Jonathan Bailey” just reminded me that part of the blame for Wicked (2024) being so overpraised can be laid at the door of the awful Broadway freaks who love the show. Heavens, what a ghastly ordeal that film was! Can’t wait not to see part two when it comes out. 

But Tom Cruise has stood the test of time, and he seems to have regained something like a fanbase. In part this is due to Covid, and his efforts to keep film alive at that time — the widespread feeling that he saved cinema when it was imperilled, with the insane box office receipts of Top Gun: Bigger, Dumber and Americker (2022), is not totally wide of the mark. The man keeps making films that people seem to want to see, and his name really does count for something in that. I don’t fully understand it, partly because that isn’t the sort of cinema that I enjoy, partly because I don’t find Tom Cruise an interesting performer (although he’s certainly an interesting figure), and partly because I find his association with Scientology disquieting. The guy is incredibly high up in a dangerous cult that has questions to answer, and yet here he is, grinning in Cannes or prancing about on the roof of BFI IMAX. It does leave a kind of rank taste in the mouth, I think. 

Time was when Tom Cruise was an object of derision. In 2005, a few months after Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch to declare his love for Katie Holmes — a truly terrifying moment in the annals of celebrity — McSweeneys published this piece, titled “A Wedding Toast by Katie Holmes’s Former Best Friend”, in which the writer imagines a young woman completely baffled by her best friend’s marriage to this much older man. Four years later, Bronson Pinchot gave a legendary interview to the AV Club in which, among other things, he looked back on his meeting with Tom Cruise and said that he thought “Tom Cruise was the biggest bore on earth.” Oh go on, here’s another quote, because he absolutely went off: 

"He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, ‘You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?’ I mean, his lingo was larded with the most… There was no basis for it. It was like, ‘It’s a nice day, I’m glad there are no gay people standing here.’ Very, very strange." 

Well! No further questions, your honour. At any rate, around this time, Tom Cruise was (well, to some people at least) kind of a punchline — and I’m fascinated by the fact that since then he has turned his image around, and there is now a kind of flat, uncritical, essentially non-ironic acceptance of exactly the type of stardom that he wishes to project. That Top Gun film was horrid, a really nasty and empty, nationalistic piece of propaganda for the US military, but Tom Cruise was celebrated for his part in it — for being, precisely, that figure, the golden boy from the 80s coming back and getting the team together for one last triumph. His stardom is barely even film-related, in my view: it has more to do with stunts, celebrity, being American, loving cinema, etc. Far be it from me to criticise the BFI, but when they put together a season of Tom Cruise films recently, there wasn’t quite enough cinema to go round. Who on earth wants to see Vanilla Sky (2001) at NFT1 on a Sunday evening? Or Jack Reacher (2012)? If anybody reading this can remember what “American Made” (2017) is without IMDb-ing it, I will personally give you a million pounds. 

In the 80s and 90s Cruise occasionally took a risk and attempted a performance. I don’t love Rain Man (1988), but he’s comfortably the best thing in that hokey, patronising nightmare, giving us a smooth, flashy bastard who eventually discovers feelings, nicely offsetting Dustin Hoffman’s bready self-satisfaction. Cruise works here because he doesn’t get what he wants: the narrative finds him, by the end, changed but not triumphant; rejected; brought down to earth. 

In fact, Cruise’s best roles involve him being, to some degree, an arsehole — because to a large extent, he projects arseholedom. We all see him being a grinning upstart, acting cocky, flashing a shit-eating All-American wink; and the best films show him meet some kind of come-uppance. In his action films, he does kind of the same thing — preening little bastard showing off — but gets away with it, saves the day, and we are all expected to rise in our seats, punch the air and salute, preferably while a parade of planes whooshes overhead. No thank you! I’ll take him being humiliated by a sex cult or a journalist instead. Cruise isn’t humiliated in The Color of Money (1986), exactly, but his showboating upstart gets put in his place, both within the film’s actual story, and outside of it by Paul Newman’s more confident, easygoing stardom. Cruise is interesting there, because we can all see him putting effort in, trying to be likeable, performing with a kind of unsettling hunger. And yet he is viewed with something like disdain, for being so naked and so try-hard. This is a far better use of his persona than the kind of propaganda we’ve had in more recent years, where he jumps out of a helicopter and the world goes, “Wow!” I would watch the hell out of a film where he did that, and someone far cooler, who had lived a little and had some kind of inner life, remarked, “OK, so you jumped out of a helicopter — did it make you happy?”  

And so I do think that, per your question, it’s healthy to have a little scepticism about fanbases generally, and Tom Cruise in particular. There was a trend a few years ago for critics to identify as fans — fans of music, fans of cinema — and while I love the artform, I must agitate for a more critical view. The alternative is a world in which Taylor Swift is considered a very good songwriter. We must be careful! 

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