Tom Cruise's latest film, Digger, tanked at the box office on its opening weekend, grossing just £15 million globally. Despite savage remarks from critics, the Hollywood icon should receive praise for taking an artistic gamble.
Critics write off Cruise's career
The response to Digger's disappointing opening has been depressingly predictable, according to a Mirror columnist. After the film's weak debut, critics are already writing the obituary for Cruise's film career.
But this is precisely the sort of gamble movie stars should be taking, the piece argues. Working with visionary director Alejandro González Iñárritu ought to be encouraged in an industry endlessly rummaging through its own back catalogue for something else to reboot.
A departure from the Hollywood formula
Playing a balding, potbellied Texan oil tycoon is quite a departure from Maverick, the dashing fighter pilot who helped make Top Gun one of the biggest films of Cruise's career. The columnist notes they would rather see actors of his calibre taking chances like this than squeezing into leotards for another mind-numbingly tedious superhero film.
Box office takings do not necessarily tell us whether a film was any good. The Shawshank Redemption was a thumping disappointment on its initial release, but its audience grew through video and television until a film cinemagoers had largely overlooked became enormously loved.
Losses in perspective
Digger's rumoured £150 million losses also need putting into perspective. Warner Bros grossed a record-breaking $4.3 billion at the global box office last year, with juggernauts including A Minecraft Movie leading the way. Success on that scale gives a studio room for the occasional creative swing that doesn't connect.
Reducing everything to a number is frustrating, the columnist writes, comparing the film industry's fixation on box office receipts to journalism's focus on page views. An exclusive can involve months of patient reporting and reveal something that matters, yet still be judged through the narrow prism of page views.
None of this means an ambitious film deserves automatic praise, and audiences are entitled to dislike Digger. But if we want major stars to back original filmmaking, we have to allow them the possibility of failure. Otherwise, we deserve every tedious franchise instalment coming our way.
