Having been sitting on the shelf for close to three years, Top Gun: Maverick exploded out of the blocks at the box office to reaffirm Tom Cruise‘s status as the undisputed biggest movie star of a generation, going on to comfortably become the highest-grossing release of 2022 so far.
At the time of writing, Joseph Kosinski’s airborne sequel has rustled up almost $1.2 billion at the box office, and is almost certain to wind up as one of the 20 top-earning films in the history of cinema by the time it closes out its theatrical run. After a four-year absence from our screens, Cruise’s star power remains undimmed, but Mickey Rourke doesn’t care.
The actor, who isn’t exactly near the top of any high-profile casting lists these days, recently took aim at Cruise during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, and his comments don’t appear to hold much water.
“That doesn’t mean sh*t to me. [Tom Cruise has] been doing the same part for 35 effing years. I got no respect for that. I don’t care about money or power. I care about…when I when I watch Al Pacino or Christopher Walken working, or De Niro’s early work and Richard Harris and Ray Winstone, that’s the kind of actor I want to be like. A lot of guys that tried to stretch as actors. I think he’s irrelevant.”
There you have it, folks, the star of such luminary recent titles as The Commando, War Hunt, and The Palace (remember those?) thinks Tom Cruise is irrelevant. Based on the numbers, though, everyone else would disagree.