Knowing that part of my ticket price will almost certainly be donated to the "Church" of Scientology will keep me away.

The idea that my ticket purchase will help restore Tom Cruise's reputation and help him bring more dupes into the "Church" of Scientology will keep me away.

I just couldn't do it. Even if the movie looked good.

My thinking on this is strongly influenced by Patti Smith's new bio - "Just Kids" and how she struggled to find her place in the world of Rock and its slippery slopes. She didn't win it because she
was beautiful and engaging or could shout louder than anyone else. She won it despite poverty deprivation and defeat.

I don't even begrudge T.C.'s success in this latest venture or that it seems that his adoring public
has returned. Any way you look at it it is fragile and will be as long as he is connected to Miscavige.
He needs to dump DM now and dump Scientology before the public finally learns the WHOLE truth.
His public will forgive him for the admission and abandonment but not if he hangs on to the bitter end.

I agree completely.
I might have actually enjoyed this film were it not for Cruise and what he chooses to make himself a poster boy of, and all the subtext it creates, also the way he conflates his on-screen characters with his Scientology superman vanity.

I think that his fans would really want to love him, and Scientology is just totally in the way of that!
If he came clean that would be beyond amazing!

It's getting kind of late though.

I love this quote from Mary Astor. I think it still applies to the entertainment industry.

"There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor Type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor?"

Let's put it in context.

There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Tom Cruise? Get me Tom Cruise. Get me a Tom Cruise Type. Get me a young Tom Cruise. Who's Tom Cruise?

I think if Tom Cruise had not had his career sidelined by his antics and his high profile promotion of $cientology he might be well into stage three of the above and heading into stage four, except I get the impression that Hollywood by and large doesn't want Tom Cruise or a Tom Cruise type or a young Tom Cruise.

I think there's a Tom Cruise differential at play with movies that he is in. I boycott his movies. I know some people who aren't $cientology critics, aren't actively opposed to $cientology and aren't former $cientologists who boycott Tom Cruise's movies. I think that trend is wide spread and it isn't going away no matter how many smiling pictures of him show up or how many awards and citations he manages to get. The Tom Cruise differential is the difference between what a movie would make without him compared to what it makes with him in it. I think in his case now that differential is negative. To put it another way I think that with Tom Cruise in a movie it takes in less money than it would have taken in if he wasn't in it.

Rock of Ages opens this week. I checked the times for it at the local theaters. They are running that movie four times a day on Saturday and Sunday. Movies that are two and three weeks old have more time slots. The theater chain is expecting that movie not to do well. Its rating with Rotten Tomatoes is 42% with 62% of the audience liking it.

Its budget, according to Box Office Mojo, was $75 million. The mental image pictures (MIPs) (another $cientology term) that the public still carries with regard to Tom Cruise still includes ones like this.

As long as Tom Cruise remains involved with $cientology the negative effects of that association will not go away. We'll have another look at the numbers come Monday and see how the movie did over the weekend.

Well so far this movie isnt doing well, so the movie chains were wise...NOT WISE...Where is that Seth kid when we need him?

Don't worry... Tom may be real hot again.

http://www.extratv.com/2012/06/18/tom-c ... un-sequel/

SMurf, I do hope they make that Grossman flick...fantastic character, but not something you build a movie around. Would get real stale real fast. As for Top Gun, that was a fantastic movie in the 80s, the draw to that would definately not be him though.

I remember the buzz for Top Gun. "You gotta see Top Gun." "It's Awesome!" "What a movie!" I finally saw it and (without knowing Tom Cruise was involved in $cientology) my response was "WTF? What could they possibly have been talking about?" Five minutes of F-14 vs F-5 (not a Russian aircraft) action in the beginning and another five minutes at the end with one hundred minutes of self serving and mostly boring "drama" on the ground. My rating for that movie: 3 out of 10. Later on I caught Gene Siskel echoing my opinion. He said something like, "It would have been a far better movie if it had more time in the air and less time on the ground." In my opinion the best thing about Top Gun was Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux.

What are they going to do for a sequel anyway? There's really nothing that "dog fights" any more. The hot aircraft the US has now (F-22 & F-35 A, B and C) are so superior to anything else out there nothing can touch them. The US military no longer uses the term, "air superiority." The term used now is "air dominance." Within that part of the military, in the air, there just isn't anything on which to hang a story.

I fell asleep when I was watching Top Gun in 1998 in my living room. I did not know at that time that Cruise is a Scientologist. The movie was too boring for me, that’s all.

For a long time I knew nothing about Tom’s connection to CoS. But I did not like him as an actor because his acting sucks.

Rain Man is a very good movie because of its storyline and Dustin Hoffman’s performance. Watching Hoffman, who is one of the best American actors, and Cruise side by side made me see Tom’s acting deficiencies even more clearer. Still, at that time I did not know that Tom was moving his ass up the Bridge.

Brad Pitt is a very handsome man whose acting skills are excellent. Tom Cruise is a pretty boy whose acting skills are below average.

Tom Cruise's strategy early on was to get himself involved in movies with top of the line Hollywood actors. He did that: Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Brad Pitt, John Voight. He became a star by association. I should think with that kind of association he would have become a better actor than he is. It looks like he was determined to learn only from L. Ron Hubbard and not anyone else. That's a typical shortcoming for anyone involved in $cientology.

At any rate after the knocks to his career from jumping on the couch, alienating Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields, and doing all his $cientology evangelism, it looks like he has gone back to that strategy. Who he has appeared on screen with since includes Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Despite the exposure to all that monstrous talent his acting continues to be mediocre. He's working on restoring himself to his former stature by his successful action of becoming a star by association. The problem with that is this time he has an albatross called $cientology around his neck.