The Tom Cruise blockbuster charging up the Netflix charts
He’s been in a few productions that went off the rails for various reasons, but it’s still impossible to tell whether a troubled Tom Cruise movie will sink or swim until it arrives in cinemas.
On one side of the coin, there’s The Mummy, which the star drastically overhauled when he came aboard. Bringing in his own writers and exerting creative control, first-time director Alex Kurtzman was cowed in the presence of the A-list icon, with the end result being an unmitigated disaster that killed an entire shared universe at the very first hurdle.
Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut endured the longest period of principal photography in cinema history but turned out pretty good in the end. It’s arguable whether it constitutes one of the director’s many masterpieces, but at the very least, the psychological thriller’s reputation only seems to be strengthening over time.
Top Gun: Maverick sat on the shelf for years when Cruise refused to pull the trigger on its release until the perfect moment, which couldn’t have gone much better when it became one of the highest-grossing films of all time. From the outside looking in, though, the sci-fi epic Edge of Tomorrow should never have turned out as well as it did.
Director Doug Liman scrapped everything he’d shot on the first day and demanded a complete reshoot, with the opening beach-set sequence set to unfold over two weeks but instead lasting for three months. The script was regularly being rewritten on the fly, Cruise brought in his own people to assist, and extensive reshoots added even more footage, including Jeremy Piven being hired as a character who didn’t even appear in the final cut.
It could have been a disaster waiting to happen, but instead, it was a muscular piece of sci-fi storytelling. It wasn’t massively profitable, but Cruise was as reliable as ever as a cowardly soldier who quickly finds himself getting to grips with being stuck in a time loop that has a habit of killing him in a multitude of inventive ways. The end goal always is the salvation of the human race.
Emily Blunt makes for a formidable sparring partner, and even though there’s been plenty of sequel talk in the ten years since it released, Edge of Tomorrow remains a one-time deal. It’s been growing its fanbase ever since, with Netflix subscribers the latest to get in on the action by propelling the eye-popping alien invasion actioner to fourth place on the most-watched charts in the United States.