Tom Cruise opened up on his experiences starring in one of the biggest cinematic flops he’d ever done.
Tom Cruise has starred in several genre films in his long career. But there was one film genre he vowed to stay far away from after a horrible experience.
The movie Tom Cruise would never do again
Tom Cruise | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Cruise doesn’t have too many fantasy adventure films under his belt. He dabbled with the genre in 1986 by starring in the Ridley Scott feature Legend. The movie saw Cruise playing a hero in a fantastical world that was threatened by the evil villain Darkness.
The Scott flick was already showing signs of trouble before hitting theaters. It seemed the feature was facing many delays in production that attracted much attention from the media. But the Mission Impossible star asserted the film’s production problems were being exaggerated.
“That’s been overblown, first of all. The press kind of took that and blew it out of proportion. It’s a movie-movie,” Cruise once said speaking on Interview. “There was a lot of post-production. Ridley [Scott] made a fairy tale, a breakthrough visual film. I think the studio thought the whole piece was a little too romantic. So instead of just releasing it, Ridley said, ‘Okay, let’s go back and rescore it and give it a little harder edge.’ Now it’s ready to go.”
According to an interview Cruise did with Rolling Stone, the film’s set was also caught fire, which further delayed the movie’s release. When it finally debuted in April, it received negative reviews from the majority. It also became one of Cruise’s biggest flops in terms of box office. It was an experience Cruise was adamant that he didn’t want to relive.
“I’ll never want to do another picture like that again,” Cruise said.
Tom Cruise’s ‘Legend’ led to one of his biggest hits
Being that this was the first time Cruise did a film of its kind, the actor sometimes found Legend overwhelming. But he wasn’t completely put off by the experience. He marveled at the film’s set design and visuals. Legend also offered Cruise a nice change of pace from the roles that he was accustomed to doing.
“I mean, I did All The Right Moves, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve done the two extremes of high school life. I’ve done that,’” Cruise said. “In Legend, I’m this magical character, Jack O’ The Green. The sets were huge. Sometimes we would be working on a scene that might last 30 seconds in the film, but it took a week to shoot it. It’s stunning and gorgeous and poetic and most of the time I would be looking at a piece of black tape and having to imagine all of it.”
His Legend experience made the actor want to experiment with another type of film that solidified his A-list status.
“It was exciting, but it made me hungry to do a piece like Top Gun,” Cruise said.
Is ‘Legend’ Tom Cruise’s lowest rated movie?
Cruise’s career may have seen better days with Legend. But despite its less than stellar reputation, the film isn’t close to being one of the actor’s worst efforts according to critics.
Rotten Tomatoes gave Legend a score of 41% based on critic reviews, and a 73% based on audience reviews. The honor of Cruise’s lowest-rated project goes to Cocktail. Cocktail was a comedy drama where Cruise played a bartender trying to start a lucrative marketing career. The film didn’t hit well with critics, whose ratings resulted in a 9% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score was better, but still in rotten territory at 35%.
Tom Cruise Once Named the 1 Movie Flop That He Would Never Do Anything Like Again
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