Amy Nicholson has an interesting, readable article on Tom Cruise's career and the problems with the press he has faced. Nicholson makes a good case that Cruise has been treated unfairly by the press.
I do have a few problems with Nicholson's article, particularly some assertions made on the first page and the scope of her conclusions at the end.
Nicholson's assertion that Cruise was half-forgotten after returning from the lengthy Legend shoot seems like a big exaggeration. He was given a $2 million paycheck to star in one of Paramount's biggest summer movies of 1986 and cast by Scorsese to star opposite Paul Newman. He wasn't half-forgotten. Also, Nicholson's assertion that Cruise taking The Color of Money was a reaction to the box office success of Top Gun doesn't add up. The Color of Money was already in post-production when Top Gun was released. Cruise took Cocktail as a reaction to the success of Top Gun, but Nicholson doesn't mention that dud of a choice (which he followed with Rain Man, establishing an obvious early pattern).
Nicholson's piece regains its bearings to discuss Cruise's treatment by the tabloid press and public at large. She makes very fair and good points about Cruise's so-called behavior being misconstrued by a rush for viral Internet hits (as well as his own PR errors). Unfortunately, I think Nicholson ultimately concludes with a too-simplistic judgment of Cruise's post-meltdown film choices.
Nicholson blames the media hubbub for forcing Cruise to choose bland, action-focused movies rather than making the kind of interesting, prestige choices he had made earlier in his career. It is possible that Cruise, singed by the press, retreated into action star mode. But I suspect that the real problem isn't that Cruise abandoned risky choices, it is that the A-list directors that had once rushed to get into business with Cruise abandoned him.
Steven Spielberg, Cameron Crowe, Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Sydney Pollack, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese...these are the directors that once rushed to work with Cruise. When you look at Cruise's directors since his supposed "meltdown", there are some solid names, but no superstars (J.J. Abrams is a superstar now, but Mission Impossible III was his feature directorial debut). I'd argue that the reason Cruise is making fewer interesting choices is because the supply of interesting choices available to him has dried up. He's in action movie star mode because Hollywood knows he still fills seats and those are the parts available to him within the big budget realm that he has stuck with throughout his career.
Cruise didn't abandon interesting films - at least the type of interesting films he had chosen since the 1980s - they abandoned Cruise. His career was always filled with big-budget prestige films from A-list directors. Now, it needs to be said that Hollywood itself is making fewer of these films. It is by now an old story that so-called "middle class" films are disappearing from studio slates. But when big-name directors are able to get a big budget prestige picture going, it seems more often than not they're choosing Leonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon (I can't leave out current A-list favorite Amy Adams, even if maybe her roles aren't suited for Cruise anyway).
Now, it is possible that Cruise could go out on a limb and find some ultra-low budget films to take some creative chances. But that has never fit in with Cruise's career pattern. One can't blame the press meltdown for Cruise not doing something he never did before the meltdown. Even when he has chosen interesting films, he's always done so within the framework of big-time directors and studio-sized budgets (Magnolia is the closest thing to a low-budget departure for Cruise, but it didn't land him the Academy Award he likely coveted).
Cruise's career choices from the start suggest he has always prioritized remaining a top movie star as much as he has desired recognition for being a great actor. When the "great actor" prestige parts aren't there, all that is left is to be a top movie star, and that's what he has done. There's no evidence of which I am aware, or cited by Nicholson, that Cruise is actively turning down offers from A-list directors so that he can continually opt for big-budget action.
Nicholson makes a great point that the supposed demise of Tom Cruise as a movie star has been far more perception than reality. But when it comes to making the kind of prestige, A-list fare that once made his career, it seems like the big-name directors might have bought into that perception as much, if not more, than the public. Maybe, just maybe, it isn't just about Tom Cruise's choices, but about the range of choices available to him after that PR debacle.
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