Let’s make something very clear right up front: Tom Cruise is a more important, and better, movie star than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Period. Full stop. But a piece of film news was announced this week that genuinely shocked me, and it has me thinking about what Cruise could learn from Johnson right now.
Word came out that Dwayne Johnson is set to play MMA fighter Mark Kerr in a biopic called “The Smashing Machine.” On the surface, that may not seem like that big of a stretch: Johnson, of course, transitioned from the world of professional wrestling into becoming an actor, so the notion of him playing a professional athlete may not raise any eyebrows. The surprising part is the creative team: Benny Safdie, one half of the brother duo behind films like “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems,” is directing for A24, one of the most interesting companies in the film industry right now.
To some, that’s just another run of the mill casting story. But for those paying closer attention to Johnson’s career trajectory, it marks a huge shift in the types of decisions he’s made over the past decade or so. For years, Johnson has worked with a tiny group of recurring filmmakers (Brad Peyton, Rawson Marshall Thurber, and Jaume Collet-Serra among them) on what can best be described as “safe” blockbusters: Projects like “Skyscraper,” “Rampage,” “Jungle Cruise,” “Red Notice,” and “Black Adam.” These movies don’t feel like they represent much (if any) creative risk. On paper, they’re big crowd-pleasers, but in execution, they’ve sanded down anything that might make them interesting. They seem primarily designed to keep the Dwayne Johnson movie star machine chugging along, as opposed to being primarily interested in telling compelling stories.
“The Smashing Machine” looks to break that trend, which is the most exciting move Johnson could conceivably make. I honestly didn’t think he had it in him.
Tom Cruise should take a page from Dwayne Johnson’s playbook
Cruise’s movies have been much better over that same amount of time, to be sure, but he seems to have shared a similar mentality with Johnson in terms of the types of decisions he was making. In the past ten years, Cruise has worked with familiar faces — Joseph Kosinski, Doug Liman, Christopher McQuarrie — and churned out some highly entertaining but creatively limited movies. “Edge of Tomorrow” is a big exception, but “The Mummy,” “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” and several “Mission: Impossible” sequels all feel like Cruise’s version of staying in one specific lane.
Will we ever see Tom Cruise return to being an actor over “just” an action star? That remains to be seen, but if Dwayne Johnson, a guy who seemed perfectly content to spend the rest of his career managing his tequila empire and churning out forgettable action dreck, is preparing to roll the dice and work with one of the Safdie brothers on an A24 movie, then anything is possible. Your move, Mr. Cruise.
I spoke more about this with /Film editor BJ Colangelo on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:
We also touched on the new trailers for “Dune: Part Two” and “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” as well as the news that Ryan Gosling has been replaced in Universal’s upcoming “Wolf Man” movie, and more.
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