I watched Going Clear this past weekend and I thought it was a fitting wrap-up to the Tom Cruise movie-watching saga I’ve been on for several months. Going Clear, for those of you unfamiliar, is a movie adaptation of a book of the same name which chronicles the lives of members of the Church of Scientology, told mostly through stories from ex-church members.

It plays out both horrifyingly and not-at-all as a surprise. The religion was invented by a severely troubled man who was both looking for an answer to his problems and also for a way to swindle people out of their money without paying taxes. It has evolved into a hugely wealthy mega-church that does no social good at all but is so horrifying to deal with that even the IRS is afraid to take them on. It asks the question, “what constitutes a religion?” but doesn’t answer it. It just tells a compelling and difficult story.

I have a lot of thoughts on the above topic but for the purposes of this post I want to talk about how the movie describes Tom Cruise. Cruise has been involved in Scientology for quite a long time – the documentary doesn’t say when he joined specifically but it does mention that he became friends with Church Head David Miscavige around the time that he was filming Days of Thunder. Miscavige didn’t particularly like Nicole Kidman because she wasn’t a Scientologist and because her dad was vocally against their relationship because of Cruise’s affiliation with Scientology. It describes the role that the organization played in the couple’s breakup, and their involvement in his other romantic relationships.

It’s captivating. But to be brief, it left me wondering if the church of Scientology is responsible for the general public perception that Tom Cruise is arrogant and quite crazy.

The Tom Cruise of the 1980s was a young actor humbly trying to become a movie star by taking roles in any project that would cast him. He starred in multiple movies per year, sometimes in tiny roles. In the 1990s, Tom starred in projects created by the most talented names in cinema. He was clearly motivated by being showcased in front of diverse audiences and being seen doing quality work. He also appeared in 3 movies with his wife, Kidman, with whom he was clearly infatuated.

The Tom Cruise of the 2000s and now the 2010s is clearly a person who has everything. He knows that he is famous and that people will watch anything that he appears in. He also clearly is aware of his image, but as he has aged he has become less relatable and I would imagine that if you spent all of your time in the company of people who gave you anything you wanted and encouraged your every decision that you’d end up being kind of a dick.

I suppose anybody who was as famous as Cruise was in 2000 might have gone off the deep-end a little, and maybe his public perception today tells us more about how our society treats famous people than about Scientologists. But Going Clear made me wonder about that.

Anyway, here are my Top 5 Cruise movies:

1. Eyes Wide Shut – a truly haunting movie and a unique Cruise performance.
2. A Few Good Men – Cruise’s alternate-universe career of only starring in Aaron Sorkin movies would have been epic.
3. Jerry Maguire – The quintessential Cruise, uninhibited and at the high of his powers.
4. Risky Business – Cheesy, youthful, and fun to see Cruise before he was big.
5. Edge of Tomorrow – This is how I hope Cruise ages: playing a bit of a dope and letting other stars share his limelight.
*Honorable Mention: Cruise is great in Magnolia and it’s my favorite movie of all time, but in my opinion it’s not a “Tom Cruise” movie.

And here are my Bottom 5. In case you really want to punish yourself:

1. Far and Away – ugh
2. Born on the Fourth of July – puke
3. Knight and Day – blergh
4. Rock of Ages – He’s miscast and the movie makes me physically ill.
5. Cocktail – he’s actually not terrible in this but the movie is quite bad.

Thank you for reading.