The Non-Risky Business: How Tom Cruise Neutered Himself to Remain a Hollywood Staple

In his 2005 book The Game, author and journalist for Rolling Stone magazine Neil Strauss discusses the week he interviewed Tom Cruise for a magazine cover story. Strauss had just written an article for The New York Times about the underground community of Pick Up Artists (it's also the basis for The Game) which piqued Cruise's interests, and asked to spend time with the author. As Strauss writes in this book, "Tom Cruise was the perfect specimen. He was the [Alpha Male of the Group] that... everyone in the seduction community had been trying to emulate. He had a natural ability to remain dominant, physically and mentally, in any social situation without seeming to exert any effort... Nearly everyone in the community had studied his films to learn body language and regularly used terminology from Top Gun in the field."

This is the persona of Tom Cruise. By almost all accounts, Tom Cruise is the absolute best. As Strauss writes, "He was the first person I'd met since joining the seduction community who didn't let me down." The person who walks in a room and allows his charisma to brighten it. You don't know what "it" is but you're 100% sure Tom Cruise has it. He is the epitome of a movie star. Tom Cruise is Maverick from Top Gun. He is Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible franchise. He is Cole Trickle from Days of Thunder.

Part of the reason Tom Cruise wanted to sit down with Neil Strauss for the aforementioned interview was because Strauss's New York Times article mentions a fellow Pick Up Artist who claims to be the basis for Frank T.J. Mackey. Mackey is the seduction artist played by Cruise in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 magnum opus Magnolia. Mackey's first lines uttered in the movie, in a close up shot of Cruise speaking to a crowded seminar filled with desperate men, are, "Respect the cock and tame the cunt." Magnolia came out in the same year as Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, a film where Kubrick seemingly wanted to fuck with the real life marriage of Cruise and his then-wife Nicole Kidman while Cruise spends most of the movie in an orgy in the middle of a mansion. Tom Cruise willingly starred in films that would seem to destroy his Good Boy Persona. Who wants to see their charming leading man act like an Incel on a 4-chan subreddit or sneaking around during a sex party?

The 14 Best Films of 2014

Only about 6 weeks ago I posted my list of the 10 Best Films of 2014 with the caveat that I had not seen many films (especially many Oscar contenders). I openly admitted that the first few films on that list (mainly Veronica Mars, Wish I Was Here, and Fury) would not make my true Best of 2014 List. I still stand by those selections as films you should eventually see one day, but I was correct in that they did not make my final list. I have seen a considerable amount of films over the past few weeks and many of them are worthy on making my final year-end list.

In the end, I think 2014 ended up being a pretty good year for films. We had quality prestige Oscar-worthy films, classic summer Blockbusters, and delightful Indies. We still haven't had that Holy Shit Movie since The Social Network (only Drive comes close) and we certainly didn't get that film in 2014. But the fact that I needed to expand this list beyond 10 films should tell you something about how good and deep 2014 ended up being for movies.

Similar to my 14 Best T.V. Shows of 2014 list, the number of films in relation to the year may seem gimmicky, but I assure you the number of films I will choose to discuss mainly relates to the quality of good films there are to discuss. Before I write a post like this, I type up all of the films I plan to write about into my iPhone. I initially only wanted to do a Top 10 list, but I had considerable trouble narrowing down the list into only 10. I`could choose to leave off films I discussed in my initial Best-Of Year End list, but not only would that be a disservice to certain films, I use these posts as reference points in later years. Eventually, I was able to pair down my list to 13 solid and worthy candidates- none of which I wanted to leave off of my list. I did add a 14th film because "The Top 13 Films of 2014" doesn't flow quite as nicely, but like I said, all of these films are worthy of being considered the best of the best.

Why Edge Of Tomorrow Deserved A Best Picture Oscar Nomination

First things first, Edge of Tomorrow is a really, really good film. Despite how dumb you thought the trailer looked or title sounded, Doug Liman’s action version of Groundhog’s Day was a smart and enjoyable film. You look past the initial set up of why the day resets and you focus on the plot and story at hand, and you get a movie that leaves you on the edge of your seat. Sure it’s a summer blockbuster, but it’s a smart, funny, and well-crafted summer blockbuster. I thought the film was so good I put it in my top 10 films of 2014, and I wasn't the only one. The master of pretentiousness Wesley Morris had Edge of Tomorrow as his 6^th best film of last year. Edgar Wright, Collider, and The Washington Post all also had Edge of Tomorrow in their top 10 with many more praising the film but having it just miss the cut. The film has a 71 on Metacritic and a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Moral of the story: Edge of Tomorrow is just an excellent movie that you should watch if you haven’t already. If you have, then watch it again.

The real question boils down to this: Why does a film like Edge of Tomorrow deserve the prestigious Academy Award nomination? On first blush this answer is simple: action flicks like Edge of Tomorrow just are not good enough to be lumped in with the highfalutin flicks like Foxcatcher or Selma. These films are true works of art and a film like Edge of Tomorrow is just beneath them. That may be how The Academy views action films in general, but this is a result of institutionalism rather than judging the best from the best. When you actually look behind that reasoning you see there’s nothing there. Good is good no matter what the genre is and there is absolutely no reason you can’t compare a film like Edge of Tomorrow or Guardians of the Galaxy to a film like American Sniper or The Grand Budapest Hotel. If a film truly is one of the 8 -10 best films of the year, then it deserves a nomination for Best Picture.

Top 10 Films of 2014

I've come to realize that I absolutely hate doing year-end movie lists at the very end of the year. While I do watch an unnecessary amount of films, I tend to really finish watching all of the "good" films as the Academy Awards draw near. That's a good solid two months of film watching, and films worth putting on lists like these, that I miss out on the first time around. One of my favorite films of 2013 was Nebraska (currently streaming on Netflix *wink wink*). I didn't have a chance to watch the film in 2013, so I left it off of my initial list. I am confident that I will do the same this year, especially considering I need to see films like Whiplash, Birdman, and Boyhood. I'll post my "true" best of 2014 list some time in late February or early March, but for now, here is my list of the Top 10 Films of 2014.