You know Tom Cruise. The man who is currently hellbent on saving cinema? The man who risks his life and and every time he makes a movie purely for our sheer entertainment? Yeah, that Tom Cruise.
While the man is known for having starred in some of the best spy movies of all time with the Mission Impossible franchise, and basically rebooted movie theaters with Top Gun: Maverick, he didn’t manage to avoid some negative feedback early on in his career.
A fact that seems hard to believe now, since the man who leads the Mission Impossible cast could be considered as one of the best actors of all time, but it’s true.
In order what happened, we have to go back to the fateful year of 1982, when we would be cursed with one of the worst movie sequels of all time: Grease 2. Now, we’re big fans of Grease here at TDF. In fact, we think it’s one of the best musicals ever made. But the sequel? Not so much.
With tacky songs and a lack of chemistry among the cast, Grease 2 is a pale comparison to the fun and energetic movie that came before it. And after all that, it turns out that we might have had a much better movie, since Tom Cruise auditioned to be in it.
However, a Tom Cruise Grease variant was never meant to be, and for the stupidest reason. Allan Carr, a producer of the film, revealed as much when recalling the audition process for the sequel.
“I found this new actor who auditioned in my living room,” Carr explained. “Sang. Danced. And we went to the studio, met the director and one of the executives, and they said ‘Oh, he’s too short to be in the movies or to be a movie star!’ …Tom Cruise. So that’s one of life’s little adventures. It could have been Tom Cruise and Michelle Pfeiffer, which is what I wanted.”
Well, now we’re furious. Although we did eventually witness a Tom Cruise musical role in 2012’s Rock of Ages, we’ll always be left wandering what a Cruise-Pfeiffer Grease movie looked like, and feeling a bitter resentment for the dumb dumb reason it didn’t happen.
You can find out what we thought all about the latest of Cruise’s escapades with our Mission Impossible 7 review, and take a look at our list of his achievements with the best Tom Cruise movies of all time. Plus, take a look at how to watch the Mission Impossible movies in order, and see everything we know about the Mission Impossible 8 release date.
Elsewhere, check out all the new movies coming out this year, and see how often Cruise’s flicks pop up on our list of the best movies of all time. Oh, and while you’re at it, why not take a look at our feature on why the best Mission Impossible movie will always be the Fallout trailer?