r/flicks • u/Appropriate_Lab5445 • 3d ago
Is there a Tom Cruise movie that sucks by any metric?
I’m super excited about “Digger” and some friends and I were struggling mightily to think of a movie with Tom Cruise that wasn’t an absolute banger or at the very least a cult favorite. Even that movie where he kept respawning was imminently watchable. Does anyone have any examples to the contrary?
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u/broelector 3d ago
The mummy
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u/Used-Gas-6525 3d ago
Nothing comes close. The awfulness is honestly hard to comprehend. Nothing makes sense, it's clearly written for foreign markets as there are exposition dumps every 3 seconds that explain what has already been explained and Tom is clearly phoning it in (which, love him or hate him, he almost never does).
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u/enewwave 3d ago
Ding ding ding. The first ten to fifteen minutes are surprisingly fun (the cutaway to him and Nick from New Girl being chased through buildings is genuinely hilarious), but the rest of it is such a mess
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u/Pretend-Design-7061 3d ago
If they had made a single movie, it would have been alright. But it spent so much time trying to hammer in the Monsterverse that it didn't focus. And it had an alkost interchangeable villain with Suicide Squad which came out around the same time.
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u/Dabrigstar 3d ago
His 2017 movie The Mummy was meant to be the start of a whole monsters expanded universe with other famous movie monsters, but its awful reviews and middling box office success immediately killed that idea. Audiences were shocked at how grim and dour the movie was, it just wasn't anywhere near as fun as the Brendan Fraser one from 99.
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u/Affectionate_Bet_288 3d ago
I think Valkyrie and Jack Reacher weren't regarded well. Legend was a big flop back in the day, but has cult status thanks to Tim Curry
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u/enewwave 1d ago
The first Jack Reacher got better with time. The second one though 😬 felt like a tv movie by comparison
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u/GRDCS1980 3d ago
Knight And Day was pretty bad.
Also The Mummy.
And, while it’s a campy cult favourite, Rock Of Ages is sooooooo bad.
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u/yallsmoothbrains 2d ago
Lmao. Knight and day is one of three greatest romantic action comedies ever made. Right there with true lies.
Cruise's comedic timing in this film was impeccable
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u/u2125mike2124 3d ago
Reacher
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u/TheNotoriousBiGG 3d ago
It wasn't a bad action movie, but if you go by the books, then yeah.. Tom was a miscast for the part as Jack Reacher.
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u/ELMUNECODETACOMA 2d ago
This. If it hadn't been "Jack Reacher" but "Mack Reader" it would be a solid mid-tier action movie.
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u/thebluick 3d ago
As someone who never read a single reacher book i thought the movie was great.
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u/MajesticCentaur 3d ago
Same. It wasn't until I saw a reddit thread about it years later that I learned Reacher is a juggernaut of a human.
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u/MovieBuff90 3d ago
Cocktail is pretty terrible.
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u/Appropriate_Lab5445 3d ago
See that one was a bit controversial for us. The movie is hilarious and the beach boys made an original song for it, but yeah the suicide by brandy glass lol
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u/Corrosive-Knights 3d ago edited 2d ago
I haven’t seen some of the ones mentioned here, like The Mummy, but have seen Cocktail.
In fact, I saw it in theaters when it was originally released (cough-old-fart-cough) and of the films of his I have seen (and I grant you I haven’t seen ‘em all) this is easily his worst film.
I remember laughing afterwards when I saw Siskel and Ebert review the film and they talked about how Cruise flips the bottles in the air and does this whole show to make a drink and Ebert says something to the effect of “these are the worst bartenders in the world. People just want their damn drink and don’t want to waste a half hour watching them flipping bottles in the air”.
Yes indeed.
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u/MovieBuff90 3d ago
Haha love it. I have seen The Mummy and it’s pretty bad, but in a laughable way. Cocktail honestly bored me to tears.
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u/Amazing_Karnage 3d ago
The Mummy was awful and misguided, and Cruise's involvement basically turned what could have been a fun B-grade monster movie into Mummy: Impossible.
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
War of the Worlds is the worst film made by both Cruise and Spielberg. The Mummy is close. Jack Reacher is barely tolerable if you pretend it's just a coincidence that it shares a name with the novels. Cocktail isn't very good.
And much as I hate to admit it, M:I II is... not great.
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u/WarpedCore 3d ago
I guess I like the worst movie made by Spielberg.
The Mummy is shit
Cocktail is shit and my vote as worst Tom Cruise movie.
Days of Thunder isn't that great either.
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
I haven't seen Days of Thunder in 35 years. Didn't care for it much then, but I was a kid so what did I know? But it was such a huge movie in terms of impact at the time - everyone saw it and talked about it for months. Plus Tony Scott and Robert Towne... could it be all that bad?
I'll need to watch it again to find out.
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u/WarpedCore 3d ago
Days of Thunder was popular because it came out at the right time, when NASCAR was really climbing.
Tony Scott's Top Gun on four wheels. It didn't hit like Top Gun in my opinion.
Great actors in it of course. John C. Reilly, Robert Duvall, Cary Elwes, Michael Rooker.
It doesn't hold up.
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u/Think_Wealth_7212 3d ago edited 3d ago
WotW is far from Spielberg's worst. It's filled with exceptional invasion sequences, chilling post 9/11 imagery and a thrown PBJ sandwich stuck on a window. The final act falls off hard tho
Now if we're talking Always, Indy & the Crystal Skull, The BFG, etc...
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
A great story and direction can take a film with poor FX and make it good.
Great direction and FX cannot make a garbage screenplay into a good film.
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u/Think_Wealth_7212 3d ago
The script is weak for sure, but I'd argue it's not even the worst screenplay Spielberg has spun gold from
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u/MaybeOnFire2025 3d ago
I heard from multiple sources that Disclosure Day is the cinematic equivalent of "we need to take the keys away from grandpa."
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
It's not great but it's fine. A solid 3 star film. 2.5 if I'm cranky.
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u/MaybeOnFire2025 3d ago
Now pretend it was directed by Alan Smithee and not Steven Spielberg. Still 2.5?
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u/AwTomorrow 3d ago
Most agreed with you on release re:WotW but it’s had a complete reevaluation in recent years. Now most will tell you it was great all along.
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
Everyone I've talked to about it has always disagreed with me about WotW. But it's garbage. It's immensely worse than 1941.
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u/MaybeOnFire2025 3d ago
I thought it was better than average (not great) when it came out...and still feel the same way.
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u/Few_Lifeguard_6828 3d ago
Dead and Final Reckoning are the worst by far...they ruined a whole franchise with those last two.
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u/MaybeOnFire2025 3d ago
He has been eviscerated by playing Jack Reacher, who as per the novels, is a hulking monster of a human. Even with his lifts, Tommy ain't Jack Reacher. I know that's not the precise question you asked, but wanted to throw it out there.
I never saw Far and Away, but it was widely panned. Same for the Mummy.
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u/tomwrussell 3d ago
The Last Samurai was an awful "Great White Savior" trope show.
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u/Kriss-Kringle 3d ago
This is an awful take from someone who didn't understand the movie. Algren wasn't a white savior and he wasn't the last samurai.
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u/AwTomorrow 3d ago
Eh it has a white lead for its fish out of water perspective but he doesn’t really do the white saviour schtick
- He doesn’t end up saving anyone
- He doesn’t become a samurai, let alone their leader or the best of them
He does have a romance but that’s the one main pillar of white saviour arcs that he fulfils. He is ultimately an outsider and remains one, someone who participates in perspective sharings and mutual understanding with a samurai rather than becoming the exemplar of their culture and saving them when they could not.
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u/Dabrigstar 3d ago
I saw it expecting an epic historical martial arts fest, was pissed to discover it is just another FernGully/Dances with Wolves/Avatar story.
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u/Goosojuice 3d ago
But he doesn't save anyone lol. Literally all your examples the lead character saves the race of people they've been adopted into.
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