Stabbed in the Back While Crusing Away

By Kanrei

First Britney Spears and now Tom Cruise. Please stop making me defend these people I love to bash. It really hurts. Is he laughing at me?

Sumner Redstone, the CEO of Viacom, the company that owns Paramount, said Paramount was ending its fourteen year relationship with Tom "Jump the Couch" Cruise because "As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal. His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount." As much as I hate Tom Cruise, he deserves a bit more than a personal attack from a company he helped save.

I should start at the beginning. I hate Tom Cruise and always have. I only like a character actor if I enjoy their character and Tom Cruise is an annoying character actor. Oh, I know people love to go on about what a great actor he is, but think about his roles and it becomes clear he is not a great actor, he is a performer with one trick. He is the “cocky, arrogant, best at what he does but doesn’t care about anyone but himself until he learns a valuable lesson about self-sacrifice and single handedly saves the day with a smile and great hair” guy. Every movie he makes is some version of Top Gun and I really did not like Top Gun.

Tom Cruise has recently become a freak show. He and Katie are six months from their own reality show, I guarantee it. Too bad P.T. Barnum missed out on this craze; he would have loved reality television. Tom Cruise could even have a second career. He would be a great addition to P.T. Barnum’s act:

Come see the handsome man who looks normal, but looks are not what they seem! Come shiver in fear as he explains reality to you! Come worship his inner alien and bow before his powers of psychiatry! Gaze in Terror as he leaps from couch to couch in orgasmic glee! He is the Cruise!

This does not change the fact his freak show status has nothing to do with Paramount's decision to dump him in my opinion and, after fourteen years, they owe it to him to not join the daisy chain of pain. They dumped him because his movies are not making the money they thought they would. Mission Impossible 3's $47 million opening weekend was a disappointment. It is a business decision and they have to make it personal, why?

I realize that Hollywood is in a panic right now because of the box office as of late. I realize they are trying hard to find why people are not going to see their products anymore and are looking everywhere except at themselves. They tried blaming Kazza and online piracy, but obviously that is not the problem because Pirates has probably been pirated as much as any other movie (no pun intended), yet still has broken records. The problem therefore must obviously be with the stars then, right? Lindsey Lohan was recently put in her place by a studio executive, publicly as well. It seems her behavior off screen is responsible for her bad movies too. The bad scripts and ideas have nothing to do with it.

Have we gotten so into the tabloid world of throwing shyte at each other that now even executives feel the need? The media has never held back on attacking stars, so maybe the executives are trying to pass their buck of their bad choices on the actors they hired. I mean Dukes of Hazzard was not a good television show, so why did anyone think it would do well as a movie? People are not going to the movies because the movies are really bad right now, it has nothing to do with the off screen behavior of the stars. If so, that is beyond disgusting. What happened to loyalty? Are they really basing their future on a USAToday/Gallup poll where half said they did not like him?

Maybe it is neither Tom's weirdness nor the poor box office that is driving Redstone to publicly destroy one of his biggest stars. Maybe Tom was going to leave him and this beats him to the punch. Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise's partner in his production company told Reuters that leaving Paramount was a dream of their's and they have plans to set up their own company. They will probably do very well. According to Reuters, they released five movies with Paramount during their 14 year partnership which has grossed more than $2 billion.

If Paramount wants to end their ties with Tom Cruise, even if it is because he has become a freak show, they owe it to their 14 years of making money together not to publicly destroy him even further. That is just low.