Tom Cruise Will Save America from Evil

During an interview for his latest film, Valkyrie, Tom Cruise said that when he was growing up he used to fantasize about killing Adolf Hitler.

When I was a kid, I fantasized about things like avoiding embarrassment, surviving high school, and keeping as anonymous as possible. All, I'm fairly sure, common youthful pursuits.

And unless you grew up in Europe in the thirties and early forties, you most likely were not fantasizing about killing Hitler.

I think it's interesting for two reasons. First of all, if you consider that later in his life, Cruise would actually grow up to play a Nazi officer complicit in the plot to kill Hitler, things get interesting.

Look at it like this. It would be like my growing up to make a movie about a white teenager horribly uncomfortable in his own skin. Basically I would be a middle-aged man trapped in a John Hughes film. Sort of like Breakfast Club meets Big. Totally creepy stuff.

I also find the Cruise admission interesting because it goes fairly far towards defining the breadth of Cruise's madness.

While other kids were masturbating incessantly, stealing candy, watching TV, and eating Toaster Strudel (not me, of course), Cruise was scheming to somehow place himself back in time in order that he might be able to assassinate the leader of the German National Socialist Party before being able to wreak havoc across the world.

Noble pursuits indeed.

I am amazed at the amount of chain afforded this walking husk of an actor, which I can only attribute to his being perceived by many as being handsome (don't see it myself), and charming (again, lost on me).

Beyond those two things I am drawing blanks on Cruise. The guy has proven himself to be completely out of touch what with his strict adherence to a pseudo-religion widely know to be a front for a lucre scheme to fleece pathetic and sadly willing disciples in order to line the coffers and perpetuate the horseshit scam that is Scientology. Many rumors have circulated about his erratic behavior and his controlling antics. Better still, as he has grown more comfortable with his beliefs, he has repeatedly displayed himself to be an utterly goofy loop job.

He isn't without talent, however. He was actually great in Rain Man. He was also quite good in Risky Business (painful though his undies dance may be). Beyond that, he has been decent in a large number of other films.

And then there's his role in Tropic Thunder. Pure genius. That's the Cruise I want to see, not the usual overly-serious dogma pusher, therapy hating lunatic, or finger pointing media critic (unless of course he is the one on the receiving end of fawning attention from Katy Couric, beneath a weeping willow, in the breeze, through a soft filter, in his biking shorts, with his bike, as if they just happened to run into each other, her with a camera crew at the ready).

Yes, despite all our best intentions, some people are just too annoying to handle.

No sane person would argue that Hitler wasn't the epitome of evil in human form. And yet, claiming that killing Hitler was your childhood dream is about as crazy as anything Cruise has done in his roller coaster of goofiness. Hating what Hitler represented, sure, wishing he didn't exist, fair enough, wishing you could kill him yourself? Just plain goofy.

It begs the question, "What's next, Tommy Boy?"