In many ways, Tom Cruise sees his new movie Valkyrie as redemption for all the berseko weirdness he’s forced on us lately.
Look, OK, we know that technically Lions For Lambs was the movie that was supposed to be Tom Cruise’s redemption from all the berserko weirdness, but nobody watched that so it doesn’t count. Understood?
So instead, Tom Cruise is promoting Valkyrie by continuing his long, painful roadshow of apologies. This time, Tom has dropped in Matt Lauer to say sorry for calling him ‘glib’ during an interview three years ago. Great – maybe soon he’ll apologise for letting us waste our lives watching War Of The Worlds as well.
Tom Cruise has a message for us and, uniquely for Tom Cruise, it doesn’t involve either the phrase ‘Hail Xenu’ or a series of tiny sci-fi madman cackles. We know. Unexpected.
Instead, Tom Cruise’s message is that he’s sorry. No, really. He means it. Yes, he knows he went a little bit off-message a while ago, what with the couch-jumping and the Katie Holmes stuff and the terrifying rants about how stupid Brooke Shields was for taking drugs that stopped her wanting to hurl her baby against a wall, but that’s all in the past.
Even though all of that happened back in 2005, Tom Cruise still feels the need to make amends, and that’s why he’s spent the last couple of years apologising to Brooke Shields for being a weirdo and apologising to Oprah Winfrey for scuffing up her soft furnishings. And now, to complete the set, Tom Cruise has decided to apologise to Matt Lauer.
You’ll remember that in 2005 Tom Cruise reached the pinnacle of his batshit behaviour by being interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today show, turning the interview into a bewilderingly intense diatribe about psychiatric medication and calling Lauer ‘glib’ when he tried to interject.
Well, now Tom Cruise has decided that he’s sorry for that. And that’s because he’s one of the good guys, and not because he’s got that Nazi movie coming out soon that’ll either mark the start of his comeback as a serious actor or bury him forever. People reports:
Cruise… chalked up his passion at the time to “a subject matter that’s important. It’s something that’s been debated in the public, and that’s what it should be.” Yet, he also said, he came across “not as I had intended. In looking at myself, I came across as arrogant. ? I didn’t communicate it in the way I wanted to communicate it. Also, that’s not the way I am. That’s not the person I am.”
It must be a weight off Tom Cruise’s mind to say all that. We know we always feel better after making squirming public apologies for things that everyone knows we still believe in, anyway.
But still, at least Tom Cruise has finally finished apologising for everything he did wrong in 2005. So now he can start apologising for things he did in 2006. And you know what that means? He’s going to visit every single household on earth and, hand on heart, tell us all how terribly sorry he is for getting off with Katie Holmes for like 15 minutes straight at his wedding.
Which is all well and good, but it’s hardly going to bring back our eyesight, is it?