Tom Cruise has starred in various genres of movies throughout his Hollywood career. Having experienced it all, the actor vowed to never star in another fantasy/adventure movie after his 1985 movie failed hilariously at the box office.
Starring in a movie titled Legend, the movie combined Ridley Scott with Tom Cruise and despite Scott giving every effort that he had, the movie bombed at the box office. Lucky for Cruise since this kind of movie was what inspired him to star in Top Gun a year later which essentially put him on the map of Hollywood.
Tom Cruise’s Will Not Do Another Fantasy Movie Again!
Back in 1985, Ridley Scott created a fantasy world of rainbows, unicorns, and Tom Cruise. The movie, titled Legend was helmed by Cruise in a fantasy role but the movie failed disastrously at the box office.
Recalling the movie in an interview, Cruise admitted that even though the movie failed, he was left feel ing impressed by the amount of work director Ridley Scott put into every scene that he shot. Talking about the huge set pieces, the Top Gun actor recalled the whole experience as “poetic”.
“I mean, I did All The Right Moves, and I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve done the two extremes of high school life. I’ve done that’. In Legend, I’m this magical character, Jack O’ The Green. The sets were huge. Sometimes we would be working on a scene that might last 30 seconds in the film, but it took a week to shoot it. It’s stunning and gorgeous and poetic and most of the time I would be looking at a piece of black tape and having to imagine all of it.”
The actor further continued that even though he had fun in this movie, he will never do anything like this again.
“I’ll never want to do another picture like that again,”
Having a pretty bad experience in the 1985 movie, it turned out to be actually good for the actor since Tom Cruise would go on to star in Top Gun a year later.
Tom Cruise’s Failure Led Him To Star In Top Gun
With director Ridley Scott at the helm of the project, the set pieces and the visuals were obviously amazing for its time. Cruise was left impressed with the magnitude of the film which made him take a step further and be hungry for a film like Top Gun.
“It was exciting, but it made me hungry to do a piece like Top Gun.”
Well, people were indeed lucky as Top Gun went on to earn $357 million at the global box office in 1986. The movie also established Tom Cruise as a proper actor and essentially put him on the map of Hollywood for the rest of his career. The Tom Cruise starrer, Top Gun, is available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.