Horrific miscasting of the week - Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher?

[Captaindemotion]

That probably makes me your co-accused!

 

[Starkers]

You honour I've never seen the man before in my life...

 

[Destructor]

The Rock I could see - okay, Reacher is caucasian, but he has a French mother, so it wouldn't be a big stretch to make her French but of mixed race.

Interestingly, The Rock tweeted his congratulations to Cruise about getting the Reacher role, saying that it was a role he would have loved to have gotten.

You and me both, Dwayne.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Cruise talks a bit about the role and acknowledges his apparent unsuitability for it:
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=83511

Firstly, I'm very sensitive to it," Cruise explained from the Pittsburgh set. "This is Lee's book and Lee's character. Him giving me his blessing is what made me do it. If he hadn't then I wouldn't have done it."

The biggest issue with fans has been the height difference between Reacher and Cruise. "Lee told me that the reason he wrote him that size (6'5") is because that was just one element to his character, and that opened the door to me playing him."

"Reacher is such a great character," he added. "He doesn't have a cell phone, he doesn't have email. He's off the grid. He pays for things in cash. People look at things through the prism of the colors of their life but Jack Reacher does things the way we want to sometimes. In that sense he's sort of Dirty Harry, a James Bond, a Josey Wales."



Read more: Tom Cruise on Playing Jack Reacher in One Shot - ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=83511#ixzz1bpArWPWw

 

[Admiral2]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/one-shot-tom-cruise-090000289.html

Regardless of whether you love or hate Cruise, this is horrific miscasting - Reacher is a huge guy with a build like Schwarzenegger and a laconic straight-talking personality that's kind of halfway between a John Wayne character and a Clint Eastwood one. Cruise is totally wrong in both build and screen personality.

I've never read any of the Lee Child novels, but I'm willing to go with you on this because it said he and the director last collaborated on "Valkyrie" and I thought Valkyrie was boring shit.

That was me before. Now that I've actually read a few of the Reacher novels...all I've got to say is I never imagine Reacher as short, gay, squeaky and insane.

And what kills me is that Cruise says he got Lee Child's blessing. I have no reason to doubt that's true, but I can't figure out what the studio would have given Child that would make him completely ignore the character he wrote just to give Tom Cruise another star vehicle.

 

[Aragorn]

What is this complex that anonymous internet posters have with calling Tom Cruise short? He's average height. Scott Caan, Dustin Hoffman and Michael J. Fox are short, but no one ever gets hung up on their height. No one watched Battlestar Galactica and ripped every male on the show who wasn't Tahoma Penikett or Michael Hogan for being short.

It's almost as pathetic as needing Tom Cruise (or Kevin Spacey, or whoever else) to be gay.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ He's short compared to Jack Reacher. And Hoffman and Fox's height are frequently commented on but unlike Cruise, they're not box-office draws these days so they tend not to get mentioned so often. Also, unlike Cruise, they don't play action men.

Caan is hardly a household name compared to either of these three, certainly not a leading man, so again, it's unsurprising that people talk about his height. Having said that, how did he get so short, given the size of his old man?

For all my bitching about it, this is shaping up to be a great cast, from a fine director and writer. Cruise remains a very watchable leading man. And the existence of this film will not cause all of my Reacher books to suddenly combust and burn up. I'd still like to see Reacher played by someone who matches the description of the character in the books, but I'm looking forward to seeing this and judging it on its own merits.

 

[Captaindemotion]

And here's what Lee Child has to say about it all

"To get a film made, you need a name. And the thing you have to bear in mind about Tom Cruise is that he is a great actor, technically he is brilliant." (Another point about Lee Child: I have never known him say a harsh word about anyone – well, maybe Martin Amis, but apart from that.) "If you are looking for someone to play Jack Reacher, do you look for someone with size 15 boots or do you look for the best actor?"
In his previous incarnation as a Granada television producer, Child worked with many greats, including Olivier and Gielgud. "[Cruise] is at the Paul Newman stage. He can't get away with just being young and good-looking any more. He has to mature. He is ready for a transformative performance. This could be the film in which he does that."

Child is not in the least concerned about seeing his novel taken to pieces and stuck back together again as a film. "It's a great screenplay – by Chris McQuarrie" (who wrote The Usual Suspects). "And what you need with a good script is someone around to defend it. But since Chris is also directing it, I don't have to worry about that – I know he will protect it."

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...childs-savage-antihero-on-screen-6252359.html

 

[Captaindemotion]

The first footage from this movie - which may now be called simply Jack Reacher - has aired at Comic-con and gets a good write-up here. A little spoiler-ish, if you haven't read the book (I'm not sure if it all comes from the book either).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report suggests that Cruise's Reacher will have more of a Jason Bourne-esque fighting style. Not really surprising, since the way that the Reacher of the books fights is quite dependent on his stature, which famously wee Tom doesn't have. Having said that, the MI movies have shown that Cruise can handle a good martial arts type fight scene.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/cinemaconnews.php?id=89563