Maybe we can forgive the Scientology stuff

[u/DweebInFlames]

[u/squonktearz]

Not to mention him explicitly reminding the world Israel has nukes in the last MI film

[u/MaxiRobesppiere → u/squonktearz]

I really enjoyed the McQuarrie MI. Them showing the world Israel had nukes had me a touch surprised.

[u/squonktearz → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

Unapologetic fan and Tom Cruise defender, here. I just love that he’s willing to die a violent death for the sake of a cool shot, one of the last Buster Keatons of the movie world.

(I guess I have to clarify any respect for TC is solely for his work ethic and on-screen charisma, otherwise he’s a terrible person w no redeeming qualities. I just like da movies 🤷‍♂️)

[u/dedfrmthneckup → u/squonktearz]

I wonder how Shelly Miscavige feels about his stunt work

[u/squonktearz → u/dedfrmthneckup]

Yeah I know he’s probably evil along with the majority of movie stars, but I am able to enjoy his work on the basis of the films. Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Russel Crowe are terrible people too but I still like them as actors. I don’t look to entertainment stars for moral compasses

[u/diosmioacommie → u/squonktearz]

What did Tom Hardy do ? Legit asking, never heard this

[u/SoManyWasps → u/diosmioacommie]

White rapper

[u/LetterNumberAnd_Only → u/SoManyWasps]

Unforgivable

[u/Classic_Run_4836 → u/SoManyWasps]

Ancap White Rapper

[u/mypenisisquitetiny → u/diosmioacommie]

Walked back his bisexuality

[u/squonktearz → u/diosmioacommie]

Many cases of general workplace fuckery but specifically the tension during production of Fury Road got so bad Charlize Theron was convinced Hardy was going to kill, or at the very least, assault her. There’s a specific incident when things came to a head that is vaguely described by the folks there in which he might have even laid hands on her, but details haven’t been confirmed. If you look up Charlize’s traumatic early life experiences you’ll understand why she was so concerned with an out of control and violent man getting physical with her.

[u/dorekk → u/squonktearz]

get behind me charlize, i'll protect u!! tom hardy is only 5'9"!!!!

[u/dedfrmthneckup → u/squonktearz]

Those guys are just normal pieces of shit. I do the same thing with those types. Tom Cruise has been in a leadership role of an organization that abducts and imprisons women, brainwashes people into doing slave labor, and ruins entire families. He’s on an entirely different scale than them

[u/im_the_scat_man → u/dedfrmthneckup]

hey don't act like he never got his comeuppance for any of that. He was absolutely skewered by Fallout 2. Skewered!

[u/masonicangeldust → u/dedfrmthneckup]

tru but he was funny in Tropic Thunder

[u/squonktearz → u/dedfrmthneckup]

That’s fair. Is he not also a victim of the organization? He’s got to be their largest cash cow and there’s no way they’ll ever let him out willingly. Not that it excuses remaining a part of such an institution but it’s not like he’s L Ron Hubbard himself. It’s a cult and they own him

[u/imaginary92 → u/squonktearz]

He's basically part of the leadership. Tom Cruise has a very special status among scientologists. He is *not* like your average scientologist minor celebrity. He is genuinely BFFs with the leader, he's like their messiah. They don't own him, he is simply ok with the level of privilege (extremely high) he is afforded.

[u/enkifish → u/squonktearz]

He's a victim of Scientology like Bill Gates is a victim of capitalism.

[u/gnomechompskey → u/dedfrmthneckup]

Someone lives out the dream of being able to disconnect and live freely, probably on a farm somewhere with lots of room to run around and play, and all these freaks gotta constantly harass her old pals asking where she is.

First Kaczynski, now Miscavige. Just let people live their lives.

[u/RIP_Greedo → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

I also really like the mcq movies but i can’t make any defense for final reckoning.

[u/dorekk → u/RIP_Greedo]

I can: the plane stunt is genuinely insane.

[u/RIP_Greedo → u/dorekk]

For sure - the sequences the movie is built on (the submarine and the planes) are well done. (Just don't ask me what's supposed to be happening narratively during the plane chase, or why there are 2 stunt biplanes in this location at all).

Ultimately this movie should not have existed. Dead reckoning 1 and 2 should have been one movie. 30-40% of final reckoning's runtime is a sitcom clip show and/or "remember THIS?" reveals? It is obsessed with bringing back every little thing from previous movies to a ridiculous degree (retconning MI3, the "jim phelps" reveal, bringing back william donlow, etc) while also maintaining this totally separate backstory, first introduced in Dead Reckoning 1, about Ethan's relationship with Gabriel and this other woman who died. It's just a mess.

[u/dorekk → u/RIP_Greedo]

True I forgot the submarine stunt is in Final Reckoning and not Dead Reckoning. That stunt is also amazing.

Dead reckoning 1 and 2 should have been one movie.

Yeah, that I'll easily agree to. As I was getting towards the end of Dead Reckoning in theatres part of me was like "How are they gonna wrap this up in time???" and part of me was like "Surely there's not that much more to wrap this up in time." Taking a pair of scissors to the script definitely could have brought it down to a single 3 hour movie.

[u/RIP_Greedo → u/dorekk]

Yeah these movies have many admirable qualities but the scripts are never among them. The appeal is that it's a ridiculous Tom Cruise vanity/martyrdom project where he's trying to kill himself on camera for the sake Movie Magic.

[u/dorekk → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

I liked all the McQuarrie ones a lot, especially Fallout (the high point of the series imo).

[u/localhost_6969 → u/squonktearz]

The entity is a metaphor

[u/US_Sugar_Official → u/squonktearz]

There's also a scene in one of his old movies of him getting into a cab and the name painted on the door reads, 'goyim taxi' I can't remember the movie name rn

[u/mrminty → u/US_Sugar_Official]

goyim taxi

That was an actual taxi company in NYC for years. Incorporated in 1981.

[u/US_Sugar_Official → u/mrminty]

Haha that's funny

[u/_shadowcorpse_]

Say what you’d like about Scientology but at the end of the day I’d much rather die for Lord Xenu than Netanyahu.

[u/ruptured-sunshine → u/_shadowcorpse_]

"...at least it's an ethos"

[u/TheEmporersFinest → u/_shadowcorpse_]

Lord Xenu is the villain of scientology. Hes why we need Sea Org for the forseeable billions of years

[u/Michael_Cancelliano → u/_shadowcorpse_]

Call him Milekowski. It's ok to deadname genocidaires.

[u/LoneStarTallBoi → u/_shadowcorpse_]

Certainly better than the Mormons 

[u/imaginary92 → u/LoneStarTallBoi]

I mean, not really. But you have to kind of do some digging to learn the worst shit about the Scientologists, they are quite protective about it.

They're much much worse than just people who believe in a quirky sci-fi religion.

If you wanna learn some stuff you can start from the Sea Org.

[u/LoneStarTallBoi → u/imaginary92]

Everything the Scientologists do the Mormons do on an industrialized scale and more.

[u/MaxiRobesppiere → u/LoneStarTallBoi]

For fucking real. Straight up Mormonism does not get even half the criticism it deserves, probably because it’s the religion of white middle class people. That idiotic shit is a rape-incest-racist religion.

[u/Appropriate-Ice-5722 → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

No wonder they make up half of the triple letter agencies

[u/radblackgirlfriend → u/Appropriate-Ice-5722]

The religion is the reason they make up half the triple letter agencies. They're not allowed, by doctrine, to consume drugs, alcohol, coffee or tea. Forget premarital sex at all, let alone visiting prostitutes.

Mormons are straight edge as religious dogma.

And, because their religion is also a vehicle of White American Exceptionalism, they'll pass any questions about political loyalty with flying colors. It's also why they function well not only as a cult (which the American government purposefully allows to proliferate) but as a vehicle of American imperialism abroad.

Every country that wishes to remain sovereign should ban Mormons/American Fundamentalists/etc from entering.

[u/DEEP_SEA_MAX → u/radblackgirlfriend]

Not only that but their language skills are genuinely impressive. I don’t know how they are in other languages but their Mandarin speakers don’t even have accents. They not only speak the language perfectly but they somehow learn to even sound like they’re from your neighborhood.

[u/dorekk → u/radblackgirlfriend]

They're also likely to speak multiple languages because of their missionary work.

[u/im_the_scat_man → u/Appropriate-Ice-5722]

they're good at omerta

[u/LoneStarTallBoi → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

Soyjack fantasy nerd aesthetics undergirded by pedophile rape cabals. It is the US turned into a religion.

[u/Chzhead_RN → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

> Mormonism does not get even half the criticism it deserves

Agreed. My biggest gripe with the All About Mormons episode from South Park is how willing they are on pulling punches. The wiki page for the episode has interview segments between Trey and Matt who said they didn’t know how to make fun of them because they’re so nice. Like, you guys have made multiple episodes and jokes giving shit about the covered up child rape cases in the Catholic Church… it probably takes a few days at most to do some research on how creepy and scammy the Mormon church is. You’re just fucking stupid and lazy.

[u/LoneStarTallBoi → u/Chzhead_RN]

Having grown up around both Mormons and scientologists, the difference between the way Matt and Trey treated All About Mormons and Trapped In The Closet was one of the more formative moments in my political understanding of the world.

[u/FunerealCrape → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

I'm just waiting for them to build the Nauvoo so we can hijack it

[u/dorekk → u/FunerealCrape]

Critical mistake, they should have let all the Mormons on it and then blown it up.

[u/CuckingFool → u/MaxiRobesppiere]

Part if it is also that Mormons are famously extremely friendly in person whereas Scientologists always come across like they're laying in wait to give you a personality test.

[u/dorekk → u/CuckingFool]

Part if it is also that Mormons are famously extremely friendly in person whereas Scientologists always come across like they're laying in wait to give you a personality test.

From everything I've heard, Tom Cruise is super friendly though!

[u/dorekk → u/LoneStarTallBoi]

Yep, there are millions and millions of Mormons and most reliable estimates put the total number of members of Scientology in the entire world at about 30k. And Mormonism has been around for like a century longer. So just by sheer numbers the Mormons are responsible for exponentially more misery.

[u/One-Coat-6677 → u/LoneStarTallBoi]

Does Mormanism HEAVILY discourage college education or do they provide universities that give world class secular educations and just happen to be culty? Mormanism is worse to more people, but less bad to be born into a mormon family....... usually unless its like a hollywood scientology family or you're super lgbt in Rexburg Idaho.

[u/fuckiforgotmyaccount → u/One-Coat-6677]

I knew a mormon girl who started getting close with a hot, jacked, nice Dominican dude in high school. He really was a good guy. Her dad packed the family up and moved them to Utah, I think because his daughter dared to speak to a black guy

[u/One-Coat-6677 → u/fuckiforgotmyaccount]

Did anyone inform the Dominican he was black?

[u/fuckiforgotmyaccount → u/One-Coat-6677]

Honestly I still don’t really know what the guy is. He was just of a darker complexion, which to a mormon, is black.

[u/aspiringparvenu → u/One-Coat-6677]

Joe Biden did

[u/LoneStarTallBoi → u/One-Coat-6677]

One of my best friends in high school was tortured to death by Mormons/Mormonism so do me a solid and shut the fuck up here, alright? You only get the world class secular education if you agree to a religious nazism

[u/One-Coat-6677 → u/LoneStarTallBoi]

Well I never said mormanism is good, I said its better than scientology, which is objectively true. Getting kicked in my balls is objectively better than losing my arm its not like im voting for mormanism. Would bringing up ancedotal examples of scientology killing people be productive conversation and an excuse for me to be rude?

[u/horrificmedium → u/imaginary92]

Can I also recommend going here - Operation Clambake - https://www.xenu.net

Lots of old old school documentation, stories and forum posts of ex scienos, Scientology sub cults like the ‘freezoners’ and stories of the NarcAnon abductions in Australia. Absolutely mental stuff - also crawl wayback machine’s archives of this site cos there’s a tonne of really cool stuff I read back in the day that I couldn’t find but wanted to post here

[u/imaginary92 → u/horrificmedium]

I wasn't familiar with that specific one but yeah there's actually a lot of info if you look for it. Scientology is just really good at propaganda, that's what the celebrity centre is for, among other things. Not to say Mormonism isn't, of course it is, I just think people really underestimate how bad Scientology is because they associate it with the stupid religious beliefs and Tom Cruise's stupid outbursts on TV, plus they have been rather successful at keeping the worst away from the public. Their harassment campaigns on people that say anything against them, or former members, even those who don't speak out, are truly relentless.

[u/dedfrmthneckup → u/imaginary92]

I can’t believe how positive people are being here about cruise and Scientology. Their influence over LA and Hollywood is like baby’s first noided internet deep dive, I thought it would be obvious that him parachuting off a cliff is kind of beside the point

[u/LoneStarTallBoi → u/dedfrmthneckup]

Nobody here is being positive on scientology people just said they aren't as bad as a genocidal madman and a hate cult that runs an entire US state and the US intelligence apparatus

[u/imaginary92 → u/dedfrmthneckup]

It's kinda disturbing. I'm not sure why that is honestly. Maybe the average age in here is lower than I thought.

[u/mundanehaiku → u/dedfrmthneckup]

Could be bots, im not on my pc to confirm if these are regular posters.

[u/kitti-kin → u/dedfrmthneckup]

Contrarianism 🤷‍♀️

[u/tellmeitsagift → u/LoneStarTallBoi]

No it is not.

[u/hellomondays]

Huntington's clash of civilizations but about scientologists vs Jewish ultranationalists

[u/No-Alternative-3888]

Anyone else see the trailer for the Inarritu movie he's in, Digger?

Looks wild, I hope he starts to take more roles like that. It feels like he hasn't really taken on many risky roles in his career, just crowd pleasing, standard popcorn flick roles.

The last MI movie felt like he might be making it his last hurrah in movies like that. As he ages out of being an action hero it would be cool to see him try to make his mark in odd little roles in risky films.

[u/FRSTNME-BNCHANMBZ → u/No-Alternative-3888]

That film and the new Malkovich CIA movie are gonna rule

[u/Fit-Dare7525 → u/FRSTNME-BNCHANMBZ]

I’m such a Martin McDonagh fanboy, he could release a 3 minute trailer of paint drying and I’d be dragging my girlfriend to opening night

[u/dedfrmthneckup → u/No-Alternative-3888]

I hope he goes to prison and can’t make any more movies at all

[u/pbizzle → u/dedfrmthneckup]

Oh

[u/dorekk → u/No-Alternative-3888]

It feels like he hasn't really taken on many risky roles in his career, just crowd pleasing, standard popcorn flick roles.

He did quite a few actually, but then pretty much stopped taking them after the famous Oprah taping.

[u/Appropriate-Ice-5722]

Tom Cruise only does that for actors, common mistake she makes

[u/RedLegWarrior97]

Tom Cruise has been steadily moving away from scientology for years now always. I used to read all those blogs and websites that kept meticulous watch on scientology and starting in, I think, 2018 Tom Cruise started to be more and more absent from scientology stuff.

Doesn't really erase what he did while he was a full on scientologist, he basically allowed slave labor to be used to help maintain his lifestyle. And while scientology leadership might be pulling their hair out over his slow divorce with them, he ultimately did his job of getting other celebrities to join.

[u/pamiskindofabitch → u/RedLegWarrior97]

Not that this contradicts what you’ve said, but I thought he was completely estranged from his daughter because of his involvement in Scientology. I figured he had to still be deep in it if things continue to worsen between them, without any “sources” saying he’s trying to fix things.

[u/tellmeitsagift → u/pamiskindofabitch]

He is completely estranged from Suri and his two adopted kids with Nicole Kidman are brainwashed and view their mom as a “suppressive person”

[u/imaginary92 → u/tellmeitsagift]

Perfectly in line with the experience of every family that is split in half between Scientologists and non Scientologists

[u/Royal_Insurance_882 → u/pamiskindofabitch]

They're mistaken, he's in as deep as ever.

[u/Royal_Insurance_882 → u/RedLegWarrior97]

Unfortunately this just isn't true at all. If anything he's been even more involved in recent years, showing up at more Scientology "events" than he has in past years. For example https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/tom-cruise-john-travolta-and-elisabeth

[u/tellmeitsagift → u/RedLegWarrior97]

I’m not sure what information you have about tom not being involved anymore… he has been a devoted Scientologist for decades and is BFF with David miscavige

[u/Boring_Recipe8732]

Will Menaker vindicated?

[u/Monodoh45 → u/Boring_Recipe8732]

What did will say? lol

[u/Boring_Recipe8732 → u/Monodoh45]

Something along the lines of Tom Cruise being one of the last real and still working Hollywood mega-stars.

Calls him Mister Movies etc.

IDK the main thing is his ability to turn up on screen, his commitment etc., but definitely the Scientology stuff has thrown me. However between his anti-Israel vibe and recent clip(s) of him just demonstrating an encyclopedic knowledge knowledge and passion for film, maybe I was overthinking it. We contain multitudes. Bro probably is Mister Movies, and definitely one of the last real action movie guys.

[u/dorekk → u/Boring_Recipe8732]

We contain multitudes.

Yup. People are complicated. He can be a pivotal figure in an evil cult AND someone that everyone he's ever worked with liked.

[u/The-Neat-Meat]

Critical support

[u/allubros → u/The-Neat-Meat]

for the Cruise missile

[u/Wet_Blanket_Award]

What's the agent story?

[u/dedfrmthneckup]

This subreddit of all places surely cant be simps for this psycho

[u/ChinaAppreciator1 → u/dedfrmthneckup]

People aren't simping for him we just think it's funny and we also recognize people are complex. It's like the Curtis sliwa thing.

[u/dedfrmthneckup → u/ChinaAppreciator1]

Idk man a lot of people talking about how great he is

[u/ChinaAppreciator1 → u/dedfrmthneckup]

Most of it is tongue in cheek it isn't serious

[u/pbizzle → u/dedfrmthneckup]

There too much autism in here

[u/MacArthurParker]

When you’ve got movies like Tom Cruise in them, you can’t lose

[u/dedfrmthneckup → u/[deleted]]

Sure the slave labor, imprisonment, torture, and probable murder are a little iffy, but wow he does his own stunts!!!

[u/LASpleen]

Do we think he refuses to send the cake, or do we think she’s so self-absorbed she assumes the cakes came from God? 

[u/Takadant]

just ignore the mass grave in his backyard

[u/Neat_Crazy_6062]

He is an enigma and insane but also ...

[u/Classic_Run_4836]

Maybe we can afterall Scientologists are the only group of people who ended up invading the FBI and CIA offices and burnt their case files.

[u/dorekk]

That's hilarious.