I don’t like Tom Cruise

I know, join the club. (Is there one? A Tom Cruise anti-fan club?)

I have liked him in just about every film I’ve seen him in. “Top Gun”, “The Color of Money”, “Rain Man”, “A Few Good Men”, “The Firm”, “Interview with the Vampire”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, “Minority Report”, “Oblivion”, and “Edge of Tomorrow”.

I did not like him in “Magnolia” or “Vanilla Sky”, where he played arrogant, entitled assholes. I think by then I knew (or had heard the gossip) that he was personally arrogant and entitled and needed to stand on an apple box in every shot. This led me to see many of his subsequent films as nothing more than vehicles to keep him on the screen. This includes the entire “Mission Impossible” and “Jack Reacher” franchises, which I have not seen, and “The Last Samurai”, “Collateral”, and “Valkyrie”, which I did see and which were kind of meh. For those last three, it was like an entire production budget and film production were assembled for the sole purpose of stroking his ego.

This feeling about him has kept me from watching many of his films, which may in fact be great films, but which star Tom Cruise.

It’s irrational, but I don’t really carry around a lot of guilt about it.