That's it. We're giving up. Tom Cruise is actually indestructible. We can't think of anyone else who could do all the ridiculous, audience-alienating things he's done lately and still come out on top.
But Tom Cruise sure as sugar can. Despite basically deciding that the best way to promote movies from now on is to just suspiciously dick around with a young woman and yammer endlessly about the rules invented by a science fiction writer that he now lives his live by until everyone either throws up, backs away quietly or both, Tom Cruise has been named the world's most powerful celebrity by Forbes magazine.
So Forbes magazine thinks that Tom Cruise is the most powerful celebrity on the planet. Who are we to disagree? Over the last year, we've seen Tom Cruise jump off a skyscraper, get an explosive device implanted in his brain, get blown up into a car on a bridge… um, get beaten up by Truman Capote and, um, whatever he did in War Of The Worlds. And if shouting at Dakota Fanning while some heavyhanded commentary about 9/11 plays out in the background doesn't make you all-powerful, we don't know what does.
So, inspired by Tom Cruise's odds-beating rise back to the top of the celebrity pile, like Ruth Badger to his Alan Sugar, we've compiled a step-by-step guide to helping you gather the kind of monumental power that Tom Cruise currently wields:
* Never forget to speak your mind. Most people in this world are happy to just sit by and let events wash over them like dumb cattle, but not you. You're all-powerful Tom Cruise, so if you think that the star of forgotten sitcom Suddenly Susan was wrong to ease her irrational desire to hurl her newborn baby against a wall by taking some medicine, then you'll say so. On TV. Where everyone will hear you.
* That goes double for anyone suggesting that you'll fry the brain of your unborn foetus with a misused sonogram machine. Fuckin' medical officials with their 'statistics'. You're Tom Cruise, damnit!
* Love is the greatest thing in the world. So what if nobody really buys the Parisian proposal or the pregnancy or the movie rumours or that you'll ever get married. The only thing that matters is that everyone sees you kissing a girl the deep bonded love you both share for each other.
* Screw furniture. You're Tom Cruise! Furniture is your bitch!
* You're having a baby? Shut up. No, really. Actually shut up. And pass me that placenta. Placenta is the food of POWER.
* One of your stuntmen burnt his pecker up real bad? Quick, do the piano handstand of power!
Oh, OK. Tom Cruise isn't the most powerful celebrity in the world because any of that. Forbes magazine justified making Tom Cruise the most powerful celebrity in the world by saying:
"He rises back to the top, not after his sofa jumping antics on Oprah, but on the back of his $67m earnings for War Of The Worlds."
Yeah yeah, Forbes – you're just running scared because we're onto the piano handstand trick.
Read more:
Tom Cruise tops star power list – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]
ann marie says
The fact that Forbes magazine feels that Cruise is the world’s most powerful celebrity, is a depressing commentary. He is an adequte, and sometimes a good actor depending on the movie. He is not an actor that I would automatically buy tickets for. Because of his recent publicity stunts, and verbalizing his very strong/sometimes offensive views, I likely will shy away from his future movies.