After Rock of Ages didn’t perform as well as anticipated at the box office, Tom Cruise still seems aware that the big bucks more often roll in when sticking to his go-to genre: action.
Last year’s  Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol bought him back to the top of the A-list and now he’ll be appearing in a whole slew of action films, one of which is All You Need is Kill.
Based on the Japanese sci-fi graphic novel of the same name, All You Need is Kill also stars Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton and Charlotte Riley and has just scored an official release date of March 14, 2014.
The film will be directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) with a script from Dante Harper (Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters).
Production on the film has begun today and Warner Bros. just released an official plot synopsis, which reads as follows:
The story unfolds in a near future in which a hive-like alien race, called Mimics, have hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, shredding great cities to rubble and leaving millions of human casualties in their wake. No army in the world can match the speed, brutality or seeming prescience of the weaponized Mimic fighters or their telepathic commanders. But now the world’s armies have joined forces for a last stand offensive against the alien horde, with no second chances.
Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously demoted and then dropped—untrained and ill-equipped—into what amounts to little more than a suicide mission. Cage is killed within minutes, managing to take an Alpha down with him. But, impossibly, he awakens back at the beginning of the same hellish day, and is forced to fight and die again…and again. Direct physical contact with the alien has thrown him into a time loop—dooming him to live out the same brutal combat over and over.
But with each pass, Cage becomes tougher, smarter, and able to engage the Mimics with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Blunt), who has lain waste to more Mimics than anyone on Earth. As Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated battle becomes an opportunity to find the key to annihilating the alien invaders and saving the Earth.
Cruise can next be seen on the big screen in the December release of Jack Reacher, Joseph Kosinski’s sci-fi thriller Oblivion, which is set for 2013, and in a handful of other projects which include (possibly) a reboot of Van Helsing. The actor may also make his return as Maverick in Top Gun 2, though the death of director Tony Scott has left that project up in the air as well.
From the looks of it, Tom Cruise isn’t slowing down anytime soon and past rumors of his professional demise seem greatly exaggerated. Personally, I enjoy seeing Cruise in sci-fi/action roles and I’m looking forward to all of the actor’s upcoming projects.
What do you think? Is Cruise past his prime or is he still a viable action star?
