CRUISE CONTROL

Further to my earlier post : According to the industry and the media Universal's reboot of THE MUMMY is a box-office flop. Generally bad reviews have contributed to predictions that this might mean the early demise of the planned "Dark Universe" franchise.  Whatever the reasons for the failure it seems that everybody is eager to heap the blame on star Tom Cruise citing his "micro-management" of the production. The fact that the film was helmed by a relatively inexperienced director who, reportedly, was rather overwhelmed by the scale of the production seems to have been largely passed over. Cruise is well known to be a control freak when it comes to his films. So why did they hire him? Tom Cruise, in my opinion, is a pretty good actor, but it must never be forgotten that "Tom Cruise" is a product which Cruise, the actor, guards jealously. His reported interference in THE MUMMY has resulted in the film having the highest grossing box-office take of any Tom Cruise film. Tom knows exactly what he is doing and, surely, if you hire him it seem rather unfair to start moaning when he does it. Director Alex Kurtzman had only directed one film, the modest family drama PEOPLE LIKE US, before taking on the multi-million dollar MUMMY, although he has had a long and honourable career as a writer and producer. I'm sure that Tom Cruise will laugh all the way to the bank and, ironically, I suspect that, ultimately, so will Universal. If that happens that will almost certainly be thanks to Tom Cruise.

"I did it my way....."