Nothing.

Or maybe is permanently divisive long term like an incinerated draft pick.

Typically, I’d be extremely open-minded about the prospects of fading the critics with something like Digger, but the problem here is that it can’t possibly take because I think Tom Cruise is kind of a joke as an actor and I’ve never liked him — even going back to his Risky Business days when given my status as a near peer agewise, I was “supposed to” like him and all but commanded to like him by pop culture and my peers.

Probably says something about me, but I pretty much didn’t and don’t like any of that mid-80s group a handful of years older — can’t stand Andrew McCarthy or Judd Nelson or Rob Lowe (*). I could probably pick the brain and find some I like — as I write, Robert Downey, Jr. turned out ok and I don’t mind him. (**) Some from the “generation” about five years younger I definitely liked, including KB’s favorite thief Winona Ryder.

Cruise is guess was ok in Rain Man, which I loved contemporaneously — but inner circle HOFer Dustin Hoffman totally carried him. Beyond that, I find his oeuvre to be pure dreck, virtually entirely because of his presence.

The Scientology, the try too hard with the press and just general “movies are art and I’m an artist” hustlebunny, the parade of beards (***), and on and on. Yuck.

(*) Even though I was dragged to the theatre to see St. Elmo’s Fire which I secretly hate watched. Awful movie.

(**) Picking mind further, movies I did like a lot from that era, both then and now: After Hours, Hannah and Her Sisters. Certainly others but would have to think harder.

(***) Including de facto Michigander (Toledo) Katie Holmes, another example of that slightly later generation that I definitely liked/like much more than the Cruise generation. Just got the 4K of Go, a better movie in my eyes than any of Cruise’s career-long yuckfest (other than Rain Man, see above).

(Mike K is definitely selling our data, guys)