The Hollywood Foreign Press Association really screwed over Tom Cruise. Despite Top Gun: Maverick getting nominated for the Best (Drama) Motion Picture at the Golden Globes, Tom Cruise was unceremoniously snubbed a Best (Drama) Actor in a Motion Picture nomination.
This is a snubbing of the highest order.
How is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association really going to tell us that they won’t nominate Tom Cruise, one of the last true movie stars in the world, in one of his most iconic and best roles for a movie that should win the Best Picture (Drama) award? I mean, no offense to any of the nominees in the category, but none of their movies even come close to matching the success of Top Gun: Maverick.
Top Gun: Maverick currently sits on Rotten Tomatoes with a 96% Certified Fresh Critic score, a 99% audience score, made over $1.4 BILLION in the box office, and is still being shown in theaters today despite coming out May 27th.
Now, I know a great performance from an actor does not necessarily mean that their movie was critically or generally seen as a success, but that kind of acclaim and adoration has to count for something in considering if the lead star of that said movie deserves to be nominated for an award.
Plus, it wasn’t like Tom Cruise had one of his worst performances. He was great in his reprisal of Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the iconic star that has inspired thousands of kids across the generations from the original Top Gun to the sequel into becoming avaitors.
Again, the size of an audience is not a necessary factor in nomination validity, but I find it extremely disrespectful to have snubbed one of Hollywood’s iconic stars in favor of actors from movies that will never even be thought of again after this award season.
Now, again, I love Brian Fraiser and Hugh Jackman as actors as they have played some of my favorite characters of all-time (Jackman: Wolverine, Frazier: Rick O’ Connell) and have tremendous amount of respect for them and the other nominees (Austin Butler, Jeremy Pope, Bill Nighy), but the movies they started in are forgettable at best.
(Paramount Pictures-Top Gun: Maverick-Official Trailer)
Besides Butler’s Elvis movie, has anyone really heard of Jackman’s The Son, Pope’s The Inspection, Frasers’ The Whale, or Nighy’s Living? Those four movies should have been nominated for the Worst Title Category for how unoriginally they sound, which, in my humble opinion, should weigh in on if they are nominated for the Best Actor award.
I’m sorry, but if have two actors in which one of them puts in an A+ performance in a terrible movie, and the other puts in an A- performance in an all-time classic, blockbuster movie, I’m picking the A- actor to get the Best Actor award.
It’s just common sense (which is something these award boards/bodies usually leave at home) to want to watch an actor giving a great performance in a great movie over one with a slightly better performance in a drastically worse movie.
Maybe that’s controversial, but I’m sure a lot of people agree with me.
Actors are meant transform the character given to them from just words on a page into a beloved/respected member of an equally loved motion picture. That’s how you get an all-time great movie like Top Gun: Maverick.
When the actor is only able to achieve one half of that scenario, you get movies like The Son or Living. Boring, soleless husks of motion picture art that are only briefly elevated by a great performance.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Paramount Pictures) (Top Gun: Maverick | NEW Official Trailer (2022 Movie) – Tom Cruise – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Paramount Pictures) (Top Gun: Maverick | NEW Official Trailer (2022 Movie) – Tom Cruise – YouTube)
