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After a selfish L.A. yuppie learns his estranged father left a fortune to an autistic-savant brother in Ohio that he didn't know existed, he absconds with his brother and sets out across the... Read all After a selfish L.A. yuppie learns his estranged father left a fortune to an autistic-savant brother in Ohio that he didn't know existed, he absconds with his brother and sets out across the country, hoping to gain a larger inheritance. After a selfish L.A. yuppie learns his estranged father left a fortune to an autistic-savant brother in Ohio that he didn't know existed, he absconds with his brother and sets out across the country, hoping to gain a larger inheritance.

• Barry Levinson
• Barry Morrow
• Dustin Hoffman
• Valeria Golino
• 540 User reviews
• 109 Critic reviews
• 65 Metascore
• 27 wins & 25 nominations total

• Raymond Babbitt

• Charlie Babbitt

• (as Jerry Molen)

• John Mooney

• Sally Dibbs
• Small Town Doctor

• Mother at Farm House
• Farm House Kid
• Dr. Bruner's Secretary
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia For in-flight viewing, several airlines deleted the sequence in which Raymond Babbitt reels off statistics on airline accidents, except Qantas. They even promoted one of the movie's writers to first class once when he travelled on their airline.
• Goofs Throughout the movie, several cars are seen tailgating the Buick trying to get into the shot, and their positions vary from scene to scene.

Charlie : Who took this picture?

Raymond : D-A-D.

Charlie : And you lived with us?

Raymond : Yeah, 10962 Beachcrest Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Charlie : When did you leave?

Raymond : January 12, 1965. Very snowy that day. 7.2 inches of snow that day.

Charlie : Just after Mom died.

Raymond : Yeah Mom died January 5, 1965.

Charlie : You remember that day. Was I there? Where was I?

Raymond : You were in the window. You waved to me, "Bye bye Rain Man", "Bye bye."

• Crazy credits Throughout the movie, Raymond is taking pictures. The pictures that he takes are shown as the background for the credits.
• Alternate versions The 1997 DVD and post-1997 VHS prints feature the 1994 United Artists logo as the sole opening logo.
• Connections Edited into 5 Second Movies: Rain Man (2008)
• Soundtracks Iko Iko Written by Rosa Lee Hawkins , Joe Jones , Barbara Ann Hawkins (as Barbara Hawkins), Sharon Jones, Joan Marie Johnson (as John Johnson), Marilyn Jones , and Jessie Thomas Performed by The Belle Stars Courtesy of Stiff Records

User reviews 540

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• Aug 5, 2018
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• What is 'Rain Man' about?
• Is 'Rain Man' based on a book?
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• December 16, 1988 (United States)
• United States
• Người Đàn Ông Trong Mưa
• Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center - 1000 E. Santa Ana Boulevard, Santa Ana, California, USA (train station)
• United Artists
• The Guber-Peters Company
• Star Partners II Ltd.
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $25,000,000 (estimated)
• $172,825,435
• Dec 18, 1988
• $354,825,435

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 13 minutes
• Dolby Stereo
• Dolby Digital

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The Ending Of Rain Man Explained

These days, Tom Cruise is known for his death-defying stunts , as well as his occasional on-and- off-screen antics . Back in the late 1980s, though, he was still establishing himself as one of Hollywood's most charismatic leading men. With 1988's Rain Man, he showed he was capable of being a dramatic lead, ushering in a new phase of his career.

The film, directed by Barry Levinson, tells the story of Charlie Babbitt (Cruise), a greedy young man who kidnaps his older autistic brother Raymond ( Hook 's Dustin Hoffman ) after he learns that their father died and bequeathed his $3 million estate to him. Their dramatic road trip offers moments of levity and high drama, and ultimately helps create a radical change in both brothers.

Rain Man won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Actor for Hoffman. But it's been several decades since it was a pop culture centerpiece, so if you haven't seen it or you can't remember how it ends, you're probably not alone. Let's take a look at what happens at the end of Rain Man — though, of course, be aware there will be spoilers , as we unpack its emotional final act.

In Rain Man, Charlie Babbitt uncovers huge family secrets

At the beginning of Rain Man , Charlie Babbitt is in the middle of a crisis — he's a high-end car salesman who has lenders breathing down his neck, and Lamborghini deliveries being held up by the EPA. His stress only increases when he learns that his father, who he has been estranged from for years, just died. After traveling to Ohio to settle his will and learning his father bequeathed him a classic 1948 Buick Roadmaster, and nothing else, he then discovers that the rest of his estate was entrusted to a patient at a mental institution. It turns out that this patient is the older brother he never knew he had.

Charlie goes out and meets Raymond, who has autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and an incredible gift for recalling information. Charlie, ultimately, removes his brother from the institution. He tells Raymond's doctor Dr. Bruner (Jerry Molen) he plans to gain custody of him — though it's clear he only wants to do so to claim the estate for himself. His plans are immediately disrupted when Charlie refuses to fly back to Raymond's home in Los Angeles and they have to take the Roadmaster on a cross-country journey.

It doesn't take long for Charlie to realize he's in over his head, where his brother's care is concerned. Raymond is prone to panicking, and becomes frustrated when his strict daily schedule is disrupted. However, Charlie also begins to learn more about his brother, and their unexpected bond creates another huge change in his life.

Charlie Babbitt has to make a sacrifice at the end of Rain Man

While Charlie and Raymond struggle to communicate, the younger brother sees some benefit in having his brother along for the ride. They hit up Las Vegas, and Charlie puts Raymond and his ability to rapidly calculate and count cards to work, until they've managed to pay off his debts for the Lamborghinis.

The bigger win for him, however, comes when he begins to let his walls down and open up to his brother in an emotional capacity. He realizes, as Raymond recounts his own memories, that the "Rain Man" he remembers as an imaginary friend from childhood was actually his brother. Their father hid him away in the mental institution, preventing them from growing closer.

By the time they arrive back in Los Angeles, Charlie's hopes for gaining custody of Raymond have more to do with love than with money. However, during a psychological evaluation for Raymond, Charlie realizes that his brother is not fully capable of making his own decisions, and decides that sending his brother back to Dr. Bruner, where he can be cared for properly, is the best thing for him.

The two share a tender moment, where Charlie tells him, truthfully, that he's glad to have him as a brother. He sends him back with Dr. Bruner on the Amtrak train, which he had longed to ride, and promises to visit him soon. While it's a bittersweet ending, it's one that proves both of them came a long way, and that their story is far from over.

By Amy Dawes

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One of the year’s most intriguing film premises – a callow young hustler ( Tom Cruise ) must gain the confidence of his autistic brother ( Dustin Hoffman ) in order to pry away from him an enormous inheritance – is given uneven, slightly off-target treatment in UA’s “Rain Man.”

Casting of Cruise and various other aspects suggest an attempt to broaden audience appeal rather than deepen the story. Even so, pic should do very well as a quality alternative in a holiday box office dominated by comedies.

Hoffman’s character Raymond Babbitt is an autistic savant, a person extremely limited in some mental areas and extremely gifted in others. His younger brother, hard-driving luxury car dealer Charlie Babbitt (Cruise), has his limitations, too – mostly in the areas of kindness and understanding.

Unaware of Raymond’s existence (he’d been institutionalized when Charlie was very young) until his estranged father dies, Charlie is brought up short when he learns the old man’s entire $3 million fortune has been willed to his brother.

After a trip to the East Coast institution where Raymond resides, Charlie shanghais him, without regard for his welfare, into a cross-country trip to L.A., dangling a Dodger game as bait. Meanwhile, he threatens Raymond’s guardian, the bland Dr. Bruner (Jerry Molen), with a custody battle unless he hands over half the fortune.

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Director Barry Levinson (“Diner,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,”) lingers long on the road trip segment, building the relationship between the brothers degree by degree and decorating it with spectacular, if self-conscious, landscapes shot through tinted lenses. Result is lightly engrossing, buoyed here and there by emergence of Raymond’s unique abilities (for example, he can memorize half a telephone book in an evening and also can perform extravagant multiplications in a flash).

Along the way, Charlie, whose talents seem at first confined to barking orders and being inconsiderate, is getting his edges buffed by Raymond’s ingratiating eccentricities and attachment to routine.

Then Charlie learns by phone, in Tucumcari, N.M., that he’s just lost $80,000 in a business deal, and pic’s placid surface erupts in a bombast of music and camera tricks as he takes Raymond to the Las Vegas gaming tables to exploit his mathematical genius. Needless to say, it’s a very successful idea. Raymond even learns a little about women, and in a charming scene with Cruise, learns how to dance.

For most of its longish 140 minutes, “Rain Man” is limited by its subject – it’s about getting to know a guy (Raymond) who can’t respond or change except by the slightest degrees. Road segment often feels hastily, loosely written, with much extraneous screen time. By the last third, pic becomes quite moving as these two very isolated beings discover a common history and deep attachment.

If an actor with more range than Cruise had been cast, pic might have gone over the top in its final scenes. As is, it stops a little short. It’s a mature assignment for Cruise and he’s at his best in the darker scenes. When the executor of the will shields information from him, the actor displays an utterly grim, brickheaded determination that is frightening.

Hoffman achieves an exacting physical characterization of Raymond, from his constant nervous movements to his rigid, hunched shoulders and childish gait. Though he can neither look anyone in the eye nor engage in real conversation, Raymond certainly can be funny, with his well-timed offhand responses to Charlie’s hammering questions. (Cruise: Raymond, am I using you? Hoffman: Yeah.)

Italian actress Valeria Golino strikes just the right chord as Charlie’s sensitive, long-suffering girlfriend.

Though it never builds a great deal of momentum, “Rain Man” does offer some delightful scenes of droll comedy in running gags between the two brothers, built around such daily trivia as maple syrup and boxer shorts.

Locations, costumes and tech contributions are good, particularly considering pic was lensed in a rushed nine weeks of location work.

Music by Hans Zimmer is fresh and provocative.

• Production: An MGM/UA Communications release from United Artists of a Guber-Peters Co. production. Executive producers, Peter Guber, Jon Peters. Produced by Mark Johnson. Co-producer, Gerald R. Molen. Directed by Barry Levinson. Screenplay, Ronald Bass, Barry Morrow, based on a story by Morrow.
• Crew: Camera (Deluxe color), John Seale; editor, Stu Linder, music, Hans Zimmer; production design, Ida Random; art direction, William A. Elliott; set decoration, Linda DeScenna; costume design, Bernie Pollack; sound (Do1by), Richard Goodman; associate producers, Gail Mutrux, David McGiffert; assistant director, McGiffert; casting, Louis DiGiaimo. Reviewed at Samuel Goldwyn theater, L.A., Dec. 8, 1988. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 140 MIN. Original review text from 1988.
• With: Raymond Babbitt - Dustin Hoffman Charlie Babbitt - Tom Cruise Susanna - Valeria Golino Dr. Bruner - Jerry Molen John Mooney - Jack Murdock Vem - Michael D. Roberts Lenny - Ralph Seymour Iris - Lucinda Jenney

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Rain Man at 30: damaging stereotype or 'the best thing that happened to autism'?

Barry Levinson’s Oscar-winning smash hit was one of the first on-screen depictions of autism. Three decades on, its legacy is complicated

’Rain Man was the best thing that ever happened to autism,” says psychiatrist Dr Darold Treffert. “No gigantic public education or PR effort could have produced the sensational awareness that Rain Man brought to the national and international radar screen.” Treffert, an expert on autism and savant syndrome, worked on Rain Man as a script consultant, which may explain his view on a film that has become divisive in terms of its impact and influence on perceptions of autism.

When the Oscar-winning screenwriter Barry Morrow had the idea for Rain Man, he had barely heard of the condition . “The word ‘autism’ never appeared in my original screenplay,” he says. “Looking back, Rain Man was never a story about autism. It was a tale of two estranged brothers, their journey and then their fragile redemption.”

Released 30 years ago this week, Rain Man begins when self-centred hustler Charlie Babbitt discovers he has an older brother, Raymond; an institutionalised autistic savant who has inherited all of their father’s $3m fortune. Charlie, bequeathed a 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible, kidnaps Raymond and the pair embark on a road trip. Morrow took inspiration for the plot from his own life: he once kidnapped a man with learning disabilities named Bill Sackter to prevent him from being sent back to an institution. “That’s where basically I got the idea of the kidnapping of Raymond Babbitt.”

Morrow later turned his friendship with Sackter into the Emmy award-winning TV movie Bill , starring Mickey Rooney and Dennis Quaid. Then, in 1984, Morrow had a chance encounter with “megasavant” Kim Peek . “When I met him,” says Morrow, “he knew all the credits of the movies I’d ever worked on, and every sport question I could challenge him with, he answered.” Peek had memorised 12,000 books, often reading two pages simultaneously – one with his left eye, the other with his right. Astounded, Morrow “locked into him”, and the idea for Rain Man was born.

The film’s journey to the screen was arduous, shedding three directors (Martin Brest, Steven Spielberg and Sidney Pollack) before landing on Barry Levinson. Raymond was played by Dustin Hoffman, then 50 and a character actor at the peak of his powers, alongside the Top Gun hotshot Tom Cruise, 25, as Charlie. In his youth, Hoffman had worked at the New York Psychiatric Institute ; for Rain Man he spent a year intensively researching autistic and savant individuals including Temple Grandin, Joseph Sullivan, who had incredible skills with numbers, and savant twins George and Charles.

Morrow recalls a meeting between Peek and Hoffman, and Peek “walking around the room, espousing all these facts … hitting his head and flapping his hands”, with Hoffman walking closely behind, “mirroring him, almost like he’s trying this character on like a coat”. The fit was not quite right, and Hoffman created what Treffert calls a “ composite savant ”, adding autism to the character. Subsequently, Rain Man led many people to assume that everyone with autism possessed incredible savant abilities. In fact, Treffert points out, “only one out of 10 people with autism are savants”, and those with skills akin to Raymond’s are “ exceedingly rare ”.

Rain Man was filmed during the writers’ strike of 1988, and Hoffman estimates 90% of his dialogue came from Princeton football star Kevin Guthrie and his autistic brother Peter, from whom he drew many of Raymond’s mannerisms. Kevin had made a video of his brother’s bedroom for Hoffman, which contains dialogue instantly recognisable from the scene when Charlie invades Raymond’s room at Wallbrook.

Released in December 1988, Rain Man was quickly became a global phenomenon: it was the US’s highest grossing movie of the year and won four Oscars, including best actor for Hoffman, who thanked the individuals that inspired Raymond in his speech. In terms of medical research and funding, “the floodgates opened,” says Morrow. In the years following, rates of prevalence for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as it became known, rose dramatically – today in the US, one in 59 children have ASD. A 2010 study identified a global “changepoint” year for autism: 1988. Could the cause be what Neurotribes author Steve Silberman dubbed “The Rain Man effect”? Treffert agrees with Morrow that “maybe the change in prevalence ... is more than coincidence”, but points to other factors such as changes in diagnostic criteria , early infant screening and a rise in congenital abnormalities overall.

Thirty years on, as the parent of a child with autism, I view the film very differently. I found watching it again unexpectedly moving, as I identified with Charlie’s journey from frustration and bewilderment to understanding. How, I wondered, does the autism community view the movie? “Many say that Rain Man is now damaging to autism awareness, and I see their point,” says the autism advocate Chris Bonnello of Autistic Not Weird , who has Asperger’s syndrome. The film, he believes, “should be regarded as a piece of history now”. When I put this question to Bonnello’s Facebook community , views were mixed. Although some enjoyed Rain Man, many found it “dated” and “inaccurate”. One individual on the spectrum called it “the Apu of autism ... despite not being malicious in its portrayal, it’s still a poor representation and a stereotype.”

Morrow, however, takes exception to the word “stereotype”. “Rain Man was, as far as I know, the first film to portray a lead character with either autism or savant syndrome,” he says. “Perhaps it’s become a stereotype in the eyes of some, but it didn’t start there.” Bonnello says the dilemma is that “no representation of autism is ever going to satisfy everyone, because it’s such a wide spectrum and the people within it are so enormously different to each other, including in how their autism affects them.” Yet the analogy with the Simpsons’ Apu controversy is interesting. Today, there is growing criticism of non-disabled actors “ cripping up ” – but even back in 1988, the New Yorker critic Pauline Kael slated Hoffman’s depiction of Raymond, asking “why the movie people didn’t just have an autistic person play the part”.

Ali Vaux, who is “a late diagnosed autistic who happens actually to be a savant”, says she feels unwelcome in the autism community “largely because of the stigma with this movie”. However, she says: “I’m not certain the people who are so vocally repulsed by Rain Man remember what it was like in 1988. To even suggest that Raymond was a human with basic dignity was a really big deal.” Kevin Guthrie agrees: “That he was someone you could love, you could root for ... that you could be disappointed that he was going back [to Wallbrook], that was something that you didn’t have for autistic people at that time.” Raymond’s return to the institution is considered problematic today, but the “happy ever after” originally envisaged by Morrow would have been “too Hollywood”, says Guthrie. Morrow feels the revised ending was the right one. “It sat there in people’s subconscious like that little grain of sand that irritates, the oyster that creates the pearl.”

The representation of autism on screen is increasing, although Bonnello observes “people have mixed feelings about whether or not the representation is accurate or meaningful”. Since Rain Man, a string of films have featured autistic characters, including Temple Grandin, Mozart and the Whale, My Name Is Khan and Please Stand By. Netflix series Atypical and ABC’s The Good Doctor are popular on the small screen, and a groundbreaking milestone was reached in 2017 with the release of Keep the Change , in which the lead roles were played by actors on the spectrum.

Rain Man’s legacy for autism, it seems, is complex; a mixture of incredibly positive impact and enduring misinterpretation. “One for bad, two for good,” says Raymond, as he boards the train back to Wallbrook. “Bet two for good,” says Charlie.

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Why Tom Cruise Deserves More Credit For His Performance In Rain Man

Dustin hoffman stole the show and deservedly won an oscar, but cruise did much of the heavy lifting..

Tom Cruise has given many memorable performances in a film career spanning four decades. From his breakthrough role as Joel Goodson in 1983’s Risky Business to Frank “T.J.” Mackey in 1999’s Magnolia , not to mention an ever-growing number of turns as a powerhouse action star, the actor’s repertoire is certainly varied and impressive. Having appeared in forty-three films and reaching a level of stardom that most performers wouldn’t even dream of, he’s an actor who can easily be taken for granted. This is especially true of moviegoers who have never known a cinematic world in which Cruise wasn’t a fixture.

Perhaps one of his most underrated performances is that of Charlie Babbitt in Barry Levinson’s 1988 film Rain Man .

The story of a young, crass, yuppie car salesman, who upon his father’s death learns that he has an older brother with autism, was an immediate hit with both critics and audiences. Winning four Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman , as well as achieving major box office success, Rain Man is an undeniable American classic that continues to resonate with viewers thirty-four years later.

Much of the discussion surrounding the film has typically revolved around Hoffman’s performance as Raymond, which, over time, has proven to be one of lasting power in its singularity, consistency and oft-quoted lines of dialogue. Pulling off a seemingly effortless portrayal (although Hoffman reportedly had little confidence in his ability to play the part during the film’s shoot), the actor steals the show by getting the biggest laughs and tugging at our heartstrings on a regular basis. Considering that the character of Raymond has a constricted range of emotion and expression, it truly is a nuanced and memorable performance by one of the greatest actors of his generation.

With all of that said, however, it’s easy to forget that such a character and performance, though memorable as they are, would likely not have been enough to carry an entire film on their own. Due to Raymond’s interpersonal limits, as well as his static personality and behavior, he required an anchor, someone to play off of. He needed someone to pitch the ball so that he could hit home runs, so to speak. In the way that a comedic performer often relies on a straight man to serve as a foil for his antics, Raymond wouldn’t have been nearly as compelling, funny or effective without the presence of Charlie.

Tom Cruise’s Charlie lays the foundation for the entire film, and the actor appears in all but one scene. Rain Man kicks off with his character: a fast-talking, greedy, inconsiderate man who lives selfishly and treats those around him with disrespect. After learning of his estranged father’s death and, while understandably bitter due to their fraught relationship and finding himself in financial turmoil, all he can think about is the inheritance he assumes he’s going to get. Instead of receiving his father’s fortune, however, the yuppie is only able to land the old man’s car and rosebushes (he definitely got the rosebushes). The money, he eventually discovers, will go to a brother he didn’t even know existed.

The rest, as they say, is history. Charlie essentially kidnaps Raymond from his group home in the hopes of holding him hostage until some kind of monetary arrangement can be made. After Charlie’s girlfriend leaves him over his treatment of Raymond, the two men embark on a cross-country drive from Ohio to Los Angeles. Forced to remain in close quarters with a man he doesn’t know, and eventually reaching a level of understanding and appreciation for the nuances of a cognitive condition he initially couldn’t comprehend, Charlie develops a brief yet deeply familial bond with his brother. Raymond ultimately returns to his group home and Charlie, no longer caring about any financial gain, vows to maintain a loving relationship with him.

Herein lies one of the key challenges required of Cruise in his role as Charlie Babbitt: he’s a dynamic character who undergoes a level of personal change throughout the film. Of course, the role of Raymond required a carefully crafted set of behaviors rooted in reality (Hoffman met with and studied the behavior of several people with autism and Savant Syndrome), but ultimately his character remains largely the same from beginning to end. Cruise, on the other hand, had to take audiences through the arc of a man who initially presents as one way and closes the film presenting as another. When we meet Charlie, he’s a complete and utter jerk, but by the time the film ends, he’s displaying a level of warmth and compassion that is a complete reversal from the man we first laid eyes on. Ultimately, we not only have to like Charlie to some degree, but furthermore must be convinced that his newfound kindness and generosity are genuine.

Even though Raymond is the title character (sort of?) of the film, Rain Man is a story that largely revolves around Charlie and his own journey of self-discovery. As viewers, we are tethered to him, and he serves as the vessel through which we experience the interactions, conflicts and emotions confronting the characters throughout the narrative. The first time we meet Raymond is Charlie’s first time meeting Raymond. When Raymond speaks and behaves in ways that are baffling and bewildering to us, Charlie is baffled and bewildered. When we arrive at the film’s end and are sad to see Raymond go, Charlie is sad to see Raymond go. Charlie is the viewer and the viewer is Charlie.

Thinking in this way about the performance Cruise gives, including all the heavy lifting he’s responsible for in terms of exposition, catharsis and resolution, it becomes apparent that he was tasked with no easy feat as an actor. In playing the straight man counterpart (although Cruise has his own moments of comedic gold that derive from portraying a man who’s constantly frustrated and ornery) to Raymond’s larger-than-life character, the role of Charlie is, on the surface, somewhat thankless but utterly crucial to the film working as a whole. Without a foundation providing Raymond with the ability to shine as one of cinema’s most singular and memorable characters, Rain Man would be a completely different kind of film altogether.

While he effectively took audiences through a man’s personal transformation, it’s easy to forget that Tom Cruise, in 1988, was still a young and developing actor. He had achieved stardom with films like Risky Business and Top Gun , yes, but Rain Man was the film in which he really began to stretch his performative legs and display an amount of range not previously seen. It was arguably the first film of his career in which the dramatic depth and weight of such a story was largely dependent on his abilities as an actor.

On the heels of his performance as Charlie Babbitt, Cruise would next star as Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone ’s Born on the Fourth of July. For playing Kovic the actor would receive some of his strongest praise to date and the first of three Academy Award nominations. A strong case can be made that with that role, Cruise ascended to the next level of his career. He was no longer just a movie star with good lucks, but also a versatile performer with dramatic heft. Rain Man was the stepping stone needed for him to arrive at that plane and, throughout the 1990s and well into the 2000s, he continued to display a consistent level of artistic growth.

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Barry Levinson on the Making of ‘Rain Man’

By David Rensin

David Rensin

His swept-back salt-and-pepper hair, thin-rimmed specs and nascent love handles and the big Mercedes in the parking lot lend 46-year-old Barry Levinson the aura of an aging playboy surfer. Instead, he’s the man who got an Oscar nomination for writing 1982’s Diner, the coming-of-age-in-Baltimore saga that was also his directorial debut. Since then he’s directed The Natural and Young Sherlock Holmes ; written and directed another Baltimore chapter, Tin Men ; and guided Good Morning, Vietnam to box-office victory. 

His latest film – and first nonperiod piece – is Rain Man . The movie features Tom Cruise as the smooth-talking Charlie Babbitt and Dustin Hoffman (add him to your Best Actor list) as his brother, autistic savant Raymond Babbitt, on a cross-country journey in a 1949 Buick. Long in preproduction, the project had, sequentially, Martin Brest, Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack as directors before Levinson took it on with two weeks’ notice. The result, Dustin Hoffman has said, “was a dream experience.” 

Rain Man  had three directors and six writers before you. What happened? Barry Levinson: Nobody could quite get a handle on it, make a personal connection. 

How were you able to? I start from the point of view of character. This is dangerous, because if the characters don’t really work, then you’re gone. But I liked Raymond and Charlie. Charlie is a salesman. He’s not a bad guy, but he’s hustled and manipulated. Raymond is an autistic. He’s never been out into the real world. Raymond is like something I’ve never quite seen. We’ve seen the retarded person – they’re all sort of descendants of Of Mice and Men in a way, right down to that guy on L.A. Law . But I have never seen a character like Raymond. 

To fully realize these characters, my idea was to ask, cinematically, what happens when Charlie talks to his autistic brother? He can’t sell him, because no matter what he says or how he tries to con him, Raymond wants what he wants. Raymond never initiates a conversation. Raymond never looks at you when he talks. I’ve never seen a character like this one. Many audiences like gizmos, plot things, cops and all that kind of shit, in which I’m not interested. If I can show the autism for what it is and understand it – show the frustration and the humor – if I can make the relationship work with these two guys on the road, then that’s enough for me. 

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Did you, as a writer, do an uncredited polish on the script as well? I worked with [screenwriter] Ron Bass, and we did another draft entirely. Some of the previous scripts had situations where Charlie owed money, and if he didn’t pay it off, the bad guys were gonna come; or there was a motorcycle gang. All kinds of crazy extraneous things that I didn’t know what the hell they had to do with anything. The story is really just between the two of them. 

Why are you always more interested in character than story? A story these days is, somebody steals the cocaine, the guy’s trying to get even, his buddy got killed, and he wants revenge. Nice, but that’s not really a story. That’s some kind of thing that you invent to launch a movie. I don’t give a shit about those kinds of stories. If you talk about Death of a Salesman , saying, “Well, the brother and the two sons are there, and the father is going through a crisis and…,” you wouldn’t say, “What a great story! Gee, we’d better get a treatment of this and develop it.” 

Dustin Hoffman’s reputation precedes him. How do you prepare mentally for a perfectionist? I don’t [ laughs ]. I’m always willing to to listen to anybody. I’m not some kind of a lunatic who says, “Don’t tamper with my vision.” 

How about Tom Cruise? I was impressed with his work. What I gave him is the thing that he hasn’t often had the opportunity to do: work with a full character. His props get stripped away. He doesn’t have a pool cue. Tom is sharp enough to know that he’ll always have movies like Cocktail , but I don’t think he wants to sit still and just keep playing glamour guys. 

Rain Man  has “important picture” written all over it. Do you think about the pressure that puts on you? I don’t even bother. I just hope people respond. For instance, Good Morning, Vietnam is considered a real big commercial movie. But I never saw it that way. In fact, when I originally got involved, which was before Platoon , people I knew said, “Jesus, it’s like a death wish. No Vietnam movie has ever really made any money. And you’re going to do a comedy? And with Robin Williams, who can’t draw anybody into a movie theater? What’s the point?” 

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What’s the toughest thing about the transition from writing to directing? That you’ve got to deal with so many people when you’re a director. It’s unrelenting. You have to shake things up all the time. You gotta say, “Is this the best we can do here?” “Is this all the scene is?” It’s not like when you write and then casually read it over. When I write, everything keeps getting moved around until it begins to feel right. Someone once said to me, “Well, write an outline for the thing.” I said, “I can’t.” I’d be writing an outline until I die. If I’d tried an outline for Diner , I’d never have finished. Get me to the character. When I get to the character, then it makes sense to me. Then I know where it’s going, and then it all opens up. 

And you write fast. Very fast. Once I begin, I’m heading for the end.

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Remembering ‘Rain Man’: The $350 Million Movie That Hollywood Wouldn’t Touch Today

“There wasn’t anything special about it.”

That’s producer Mark Johnson on Rain Man , his sixth collaboration with writer-director Barry Levinson. But Johnson wasn’t quite right. Twenty-five years ago, Rain Man — a talky drama about two very different brothers on a road trip — won the Academy Award for Best Picture and soon became the highest-grossing movie released in 1988.

“[During the filming] I remember a few crew members came to me after a particularly poignant scene and they said, ‘This film is going to win an Oscar,'” Johnson recalls. “And I said, ‘What? I’m just hoping it goes through the gate.'”

Rain Man ’s gargantuan success erupted from a languescent industry to become one of the most incredible success stories of its era. How did it happen?

The movie’s domination of the American box office would have been believable in the 1970s, when small, personal dramas like Love Story and Kramer vs. Kramer climbed to no. 1 with the same momentum as Star Wars and Jaws . But Rain Man arrived on December 16, 1988, on the heels of Die Hard and Who Framed Roger Rabbit and just before Tim Burton’s Batman and the highly anticipated sequels to Lethal Weapon , Back to the Future , and Ghostbusters . It was a time when Hollywood was just beginning to perfect its blockbuster science. For its part, Rain Man didn’t even manage a no. 1 opening; its $7 million take was topped by the second week of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Twins . Flash forward to hundreds of millions of dollars and an armful of gold statues: Rain Man finally exited the box office top 10 after the weekend of May 26, 1989, as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade seized control of multiplexes. The movie’s final domestic tally: $172.8 million.

No one in their right mind would green-light Rain Man today. Levinson, whose most recent films include the found-footage horror movie The Bay and HBO’s Phil Spector , can’t help but agree. “A movie about people … I’m not sure you would even get distribution,” Levinson says. “And if you had distribution, they would put a toe in the water and hope they got some money back. Break even and call it a day. It’s the nature of the business today.”

At a budget of $25 million, it would fall right into Hollywood’s blind spot: too expensive for a character-driven, “indie-minded” picture and too small-scope to throw money at. (Today’s “safe” prestige bet is more like August: Osage County , a Pulitzer Prize winner with 18 speaking parts primed for A-list stars.) There wasn’t a target demographic for Rain Man , nor a case study that could predict it would become a massive hit. Even the pairing of Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, two of the biggest stars on the planet, would demand a higher concept. Unless Raymond the autistic savant was the key to protecting Earth from time-traveling space monsters, there’s little chance that pairing would be worth the gamble. And yet, Rain Man was green-lit, untouched by the plague that runs rampant through the industry: overthinking.

Levinson and Johnson were fresh-faced guns for hire when they first met on 1977’s High Anxiety . Levinson was one of the four writers who assisted Mel Brooks on set, throwing out performance notes whenever the director was in front of the camera. Johnson, the second assistant director, quickly bonded with Levinson. When the opportunity emerged for Levinson to start writing and directing his own pictures, he chose Johnson to be his producer. A lack of experience and clout wasn’t important; Levinson wanted someone who was going to be around all the time to fight for the movies he wanted to make.

“We did Diner at MGM at a time when they didn’t expect much from Diner ,” Johnson says of their first endeavor. “But all their money was tied up in things like Cannery Row , or there was a Robert Altman women wrestling movie — a couple of things that didn’t pan out. And Diner was a movie that could.”

Originally, the two were set to film a version of Toys , the Robin Williams fantasy-comedy that they eventually made in 1992. It didn’t happen right away. Putting the kibosh on a grittier version of Toys wasn’t a death knell for the project like it might be today; although 20th Century Fox president Sherry Lansing wanted the movie to get made, juggling other projects forced Levinson and Johnson’s debut into turnaround. So they picked up their checks for Toys — Johnson received $75,000 just for developing the movie — and headed to MGM to produce Diner in 1982.

Today’s directors are easily pigeonholed. Make a successful horror movie, make eight more just like it. Knock a stunt-heavy action flick out of the park and prepare for two more installments and a lifetime of knock-offs. It’s the easiest way to turn movies into products. In the early ’80s, when studios were still hungry for great stories and star vehicles, there was greater flexibility. Levinson and Johnson took full advantage: After Diner came the baseball movie The Natural (1984), the F/X-heavy Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), the personal Tin Men (1987), and Good Morning, Vietnam (1987).

Rain Man was already a remnant of the past by the time Levinson stumbled upon it. Written by Barry Morrow (and later rewritten by Ronald Bass), the script throws two vivid characters into the road movie blueprint: Charlie (played by Cruise), a hot-shot car dealer, and his autistic brother, Raymond (played by Hoffman), who demonstrates savant-like observational skills. The film was inspired by Kim Peek, whom Morrow met in 1984 while researching a film on the mentally challenged. Though Peek wasn’t autistic, he did possess a seemingly superhuman memory, and the encounter sent Morrow to work.

Morrow established the film at MGM in the mid-’80s before handing it off to a number of filmmakers for further development ( Gardens of Stone screenwriter Bass was eventually hired to rewrite the script). Scent of a Woman director Martin Brest, Steven Spielberg, and Sydney Pollack all flirted with the project before withdrawing. Johnson credits CAA agent Mike Ovitz (who later became president of Walt Disney Pictures) for keeping the film afloat. Ovitz held tight to the idea of casting Hoffman and Cruise — though early in the script’s life, it was thought that Hoffman would take the Charlie role opposite Bill Murray as Raymond.

When Levinson and Johnson arrived at the project, Rain Man was getting bloated. Dropping Charlie and Raymond on the road together wasn’t enough — there was an inkling to go bigger, to be flashier, to overload.

“Both Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack gave Barry credit for trusting the material,” says Johnson. “There are drafts where a lot more happened. The brothers are chased by a motorcycle gang and Raymond figures out how to put together a motorcycle and they run away. Plot points. Barry said no. ‘This is two schmucks in a car.’ He trusted the duo.”

Rain Man was not a zeitgeist movie, nor was it intrinsically “awards-friendly.” To this day, Johnson says he has never entered a pitch meeting and talked up Oscar potential, though he’s sure it happens. By 1988, MGM just wanted Rain Man in the can and ready for the Christmas season. Levinson rehired Bass, and together they stripped it down to a bare-bones character piece. Or they tried. As Levinson, Johnson, and their crew prepared to shoot Rain Man , the 1988 writers’ strike went into motion. “We had a partial draft,” recalls Levinson. “We didn’t finish it at the time. We were saying, ‘We have to start.’” And so they did. That meant no rewrites, no tinkering during production.

The catastrophe was bittersweet. It’s a completely foreign notion today: Levinson made the movie he wanted to make. With MGM forced to trust the director to finish it, Levinson set out to shoot Rain Man with a road movie framework and an open mind. “The key to the whole movie was that it was shot in continuity. You start seeing certain things, seeing the relationship, and start adding things here and there,” Levinson says. “It starts to click.”

The script originally saw Raymond and Charlie coasting along the highway toward Los Angeles — a straight shot. It dawned on Levinson that the monotony of the road might be … really boring. “Someone said, ‘Well, it’s the fastest way to get to L.A.’ I knew that, but we had to figure something out,” he says. “But what if there’s an accident on the highway? Then he doesn’t need to stay on the highway. And then there are all these statistics about accidents on the highways and he’s disturbed by that. His issues could prevent him from going on the highway. So we got a better look for the movie while reinforcing his behavior.’”

Knowing the script could be continually tweaked on the fly allowed Levinson to approach it like a member of the audience. Questions were always being asked, character motivations considered. Levinson wondered, Why doesn’t Charlie send him back to the institution? and the production was flexible enough to allow for a new scene that showed Raymond as a potential danger to himself (it involved waffles, an oven, and the near-burning-down of a house).

“In many ways, it was the most independent movie that you could possibly make,” says Levinson. “So much of it was being discovered on the road.” According to the director, MGM let the production proceed without interference. Levinson never looked back, either.

After wrapping the film, Johnson wasn’t convinced they had anything resembling a hit on their hands. He recalls watching a rough cut with Levinson and editor Stu Linder. “I thought [there was] a lot of work to be done,” he says.

But prerelease buzz was positive. “I think we were rewarded for the boldness of casting Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman as brothers,” Johnson says. “It was one of those combinations where one and one really adds up to three.”

Talk of star turns and awards prospects created an echo chamber. “I remember going to the British premiere and someone yelled when the lights came up, as Dustin and Tom were walking out of the theater, ‘You both deserve an Oscar!'” Johnson says. “I heard for weeks and weeks that we had it in the bag.”

The struggle of producing modestly budgeted pictures in today’s landscape boils down to marketing dollars. A movie may only cost $30 million, but it takes another $30 million to properly sell it. But according to Johnson, the studios employed the same model in 1988. He estimates that with marketing costs, Rain Man was likely a $50 million investment.

That Rain Man failed to open at no. 1 in America was not a cause for alarm. There were fewer theaters, and they were willing to run films for longer periods of time. The same movies might reside in a theater for several months at a time. Couple that with the way box-office numbers were crunched back then: in Variety and in few other places. No one in Ohio was turning on their local news to see that Rain Man had missed the mark in its opening weekend. Johnson compares the experience to the recent 47 Ronin , a blockbuster whose backstory predestined it to fail, saying the disappointing box-office numbers have been overscrutinized by the media. No one kicked Rain Man to the ground when it opened at no. 2 — the weeks ahead were competition-free (how many people remember DeepStar Six ?). Rain Man took the no. 1 spot after its second week of release and remained there for the entire month of January 1989.

Rain Man effortlessly achieved four-quadrant — the industry term for demographically universal — success, despite mixed reviews. Legendary New Yorker critic Pauline Kael notoriously battered the movie into a bloody pulp, calling it “wet kitsch” and writing of its lead performer, “Dustin Hoffman hump[s] one note on a piano for two hours and eleven minutes.” But Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel praised Hoffman and Cruise with two thumbs up. Rain Man became classic watercooler fodder, raising awareness and curiosity about autism while taking flak for inaccurately portraying the disorder. Still, audiences flocked, including the discarded demographic: women. The Los Angeles Times reported in February 1989 that MGM/UA research studies found that the film’s average audience was 55 percent female and 45 percent male, with two-thirds of the audience over the age of 25. Rain Man was a movie for everyone made for no one in particular.

Rain Man was also a global success, earning more than $182 million in foreign markets (according to Levinson, there was even a dream weekend when the film topped the box office in each country it was playing in, like stars aligning). To this day, the director is somewhat baffled by the universal appeal of Rain Man . During the press tour, he and Hoffman visited Japan and were met with raving fans. “It was huge. Huge ,” he says. “It seemed to capture an emotional quality they were able to relate to.”

“Everyone was talking about it,” says Johnson. “It was unnerving.” The love for Rain Man rippled out of Los Angeles and New York, as did prognostication of the film’s Academy Awards potential. Rain Man dipped to the fourth spot at the box office by February 1989 just as MGM upped its Oscar-themed advertising. On February 15, the day of the nominations announcement, the studio beat the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences to the punch by printing an ad in newspapers touting Rain Man as an Academy Award nominee. The move prompted an investigation of potential foul play, but MGM representatives brushed off the accusations. They knew they had a sure thing.

The 61st Academy Awards aired on March 29, 1989. Rain Man was nominated for eight awards. After a dizzying run, it only hit Johnson that he had an Oscar-nominated film on his hands while sitting in the audience, waiting for the winners to be announced. “I was sitting next to my good friend Robin Williams and he claims my fingers went through the armrest of the chair because I was so nervous,” he says. “I’m sure I was no fun to be around. Everyone said we were going to win, but there was a point where I thought, But what if we don’t? ”

Johnson had little to worry about. Rain Man triumphed, taking home four statuettes: Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture. The following weekend, its 16th in theaters, the movie shot back to no. 1.

Johnson went on to produce a broad range of projects, including the Chronicles of Narnia films, Breaking Bad , Galaxy Quest , and Lance Hammer’s self-distributed drama Ballast . But looking back, he says a studio wouldn’t produce Rain Man today. It wouldn’t play to a broad enough audience , they’d say. The historical data doesn’t support its success.

“I go to pitch movies all the time and they say, ‘We love you, but know we’re not interested in dramas.’ If it won’t travel, if it’s too American, they aren’t interested. You point to a movie — ‘Look at how Argo did!’ — and they’ll [just] say it’s the exception that proves the rule.”

Making Rain Man — through a writer’s strike, and defined by non-commercial subject matter — was not easy. Still, Johnson says it never is.

“A lot of my contemporaries complain that [making movies] is harder than it ever was,” he says. “But I maintain that it’s always been hard. It’s just different.”

Filed Under: Movies , Box office , Oscars , Tom Cruise , Rain Man , Tom Cruise Week

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Tom Cruise stars as an idealistic young wheeler-dealer whose life is changed forever when he discovers he has an autistic savant older brother (Dustin Hoffman, in a Best Actor Oscar-winning performance).

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Rain Man ’s movie-star chemistry holds up better than its depiction of autism

The Popcorn Champs

The Popcorn Champs looks back at the highest grossing movie in America from every year since 1960. In tracing the evolution of blockbuster cinema, maybe we can answer a question Hollywood has been asking itself for more than a century: What do people want to see?

Somebody should’ve been chasing Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. They should’ve accidentally stolen a shipment of heroin from the mob. The FBI should’ve been after them. There should’ve been at least one dramatic car-chase escape. Those action-movie elements were the lingua franca of late-’80s Hollywood filmmaking. The prevailing wisdom was that you needed those things to tell a story, the same way you need beams of green CGI light shooting out of a hole in the sky now.

For years, Rain Man passed from director to director, rewrite to rewrite. Steven Spielberg was going to do it. So was Sydney Pollack. Martin Brest worked on developing it for a long time, and then he went out and made Midnight Run , another road movie about two men bonding while traveling across the backroads of the country together. (Brest jammed pretty much all of those late-’80s storytelling tricks into Midnight Run , and he wound up with a moderate hit that’s also probably better than Rain Man .)

Rain Man ended up in the hands of Barry Levinson, a onetime Mel Brooks protégé who insisted, again and again, that the story needed to just be about the two guys in the car, that it didn’t need all the external motivating factors. Levinson’s instincts worked out well. Opening just before Christmas 1988, Rain Man came in at No. 2 in its first weekend in theaters. (It lost to Twins , another comedy about two mismatched brothers who only learn about each other’s existence as adults and who bond while on a road trip.) But Rain Man built up steam quickly. A few months later, the film dominated at the Oscars—Best Picture, Actor, Director—and earned $172 million at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing movie of 1988.

In some ways, the success of Rain Man doesn’t seem that anomalous. It belongs to a few long-embedded and deeply satisfying American movie traditions: the road movie, the buddy comedy, the tender family drama. It also had stars, at a time when it mattered that a movie had stars. Dustin Hoffman was coming off of the notorious 1987 flop Ishtar , but before then, he’d carved out a reputation as an actor who could turn existential crises into blockbuster cinema, as he’d done with The Graduate and Kramer Vs. Kramer . Hoffman was already a showy actor, and in playing an autistic character , he got to transform himself as vividly as he’d done in Midnight Cowboy, while also flexing the comic timing he’d shown off in Tootsie . The actor worked hard to make sure the movie got made, and in retrospect, it’s easy enough to see why: Hoffman, who won his second Best Actor Oscar for Rain Man , couldn’t have possibly designed a better character for himself.

Meanwhile, Top Gun had just made the young Tom Cruise the biggest star in the world. In those days before he became a vaguely terrifying figurehead for Scientology—and long before he made the baffling transition into becoming the American Jackie Chan—Cruise did a pretty amazing job at maintaining that stardom. He deserves credit for years of interesting choices. He knew how to use his built-in glamour, and he’d printed a whole lot of money doing that in Cocktail , another huge 1988 hit. But while Cruise was a generational contemporary of the ’80s Brat Pack teen-movie stars, he had the vision to link up with filmmaking icons whenever possible. Cruise had followed Top Gun by making The Color Of Money with Martin Scorsese and Paul Newman, a combination that truly sends a message. In the years ahead, that same impulse would lead Cruise to Oliver Stone and Sydney Pollack and Brian De Palma and Stanley Kubrick. Presumably, it also led him to Dustin Hoffman.

Rain Man does fascinating things with Cruise’s strange and intense young handsomeness. The opening scene is genuinely spellbinding. A Lamborghini, suspended from a crane, hovers over the hazy Los Angeles skyline as the Belle Stars’ techno-pop cover of “Iko Iko” skitter-shimmies on the soundtrack. Cruise struts around a shipyard in full yuppie regalia, looking over his fleet of fancy imported sports cars. But within minutes, we learn that this whole image is a fraud. Cruise’s character, Charlie Babbitt, is in over his head. He’s spent all his money importing foreign cars that won’t pass emissions tests, his buyers are pulling out, and he’s desperate enough that he’s thinking about trying to bribe EPA officials. Also, he’s a complete fucking asshole, and you don’t feel bad for him.

When Charlie finds out that his father has died, he barely flinches. But he does react when he learns that his father left him none of his fortune—just a beautiful old Buick convertible and some prizewinning rosebushes. (“Definitely got the rosebushes!,” Charlie explodes, mirroring the verbal tic of the brother he hasn’t even learned of yet.) When Charlie discovers that his institutionalized autistic brother has been left millions, he kidnaps the guy in a fit of pique, dragging him across the country and basically holding him for ransom.

Since autistic people weren’t a hugely visible population in 1988, the movie has doctors telling Charlie—and, by extension, the audience—what that means. Charlie learns that his brother can’t “express his own emotions in a traditional way.” He relies on rituals and routines. Also, he’s a genius-level savant, though Charlie only slowly figures this out.

The savant thing is an issue. There really are autistic people who can perform amazing feats of memory and calculation. Rain Man screenwriter Barry Morrow based the character partially on Kim Peek, who wasn’t autistic but who was capable of incredible mental stunts. (Later on, Morrow gave his screenwriting Oscar to Peek, and Peek brought the statuette along whenever he made personal appearances.) Hoffman interviewed and studied autistic p eople , including Temple Grandin. The portrayal of autism in Rain Man is a whole lot more nuanced and thought-out than most images of disabilities you’ll see in ’80s movies.

And yet there’s still something vaguely disquieting about the sight of Dustin Hoffman, famous movie star, trying autism on for a film. The masterfully grumpy Pauline Kael, who likened Hoffman’s performance to “humping one note on a piano for two hours and 11 minutes,” wondered why an autistic actor couldn’t have played the role. My sister Margaret, who has cerebral palsy and who works as an advocate for people with disabilities, has never seen Rain Man , and she doesn’t believe that actors without disabilities should ever play characters who have them. I see her point. Rain Man invented its own new stereotype, the mysterious and secretly cuddly computer-brained autistic genius. It’s led to a lot of incorrect ideas about how autism works for most people.

I have problems with Rain Man . I have problems with how Charlie only comes to respect and love his brother after learning of the amazing things that his brother can do. I have problems with how they become closest after Charlie uses his brother’s abilities to win a ton of money at blackjack. If Hoffman’s character hadn’t been a savant—if he’d been like the vast majority of autistic people —then Rain Man presumably would’ve played out much differently.

Still, looking back, it’s striking just how little people knew about autism pre- Rain Man . That’s not the movie’s fault; that’s people’s fault. Here, for example, is the way the usually empathetic Roger Ebert begins his Rain Man review : “Is it possible to have a relationship with an autistic person? Is it possible to have a relationship with a cat?” Rain Man starts out with two characters—one that most of the audience presumably can’t understand, and one that’s clearly an unbelievable shitbag. Over the course of its running time, it convinces that same audience to love both of them. That’s a pretty neat trick.

Rain Man works, and it works mostly by letting its two leads bump up against each other—sometimes gently, sometimes less so. Ever since Diner , Barry Levinson had shown a gift for the comic rhythms of conversation, for letting scenes play out in their own natural cadences. Rain Main only has a few big dramatic notes, and I don’t like them all that much. The scene where Charlie learns that Raymond used to sing to him as a kid veers a little close to melodrama. But most of the time, the film is just two transcendent movie stars digging into big, showy characters as they pilot a beautiful classic car across American landscapes. It doesn’t need more spectacle than that, dramatic or otherwise.

Cinematographer John Seale, who’d done great work on Witness a couple of years earlier and who remains a hero forever for doing Mad Max: Fury Road and then immediately retiring, makes the old America look impossibly inviting. Levinson pulls some plot jiu jitsu to keep Hoffman and Cruise off of superhighways, on American backroads instead. Seale shoots verdant green farmlands, rolling misty mountains, glimmering neon signs, almost everything in golden-hour light. The scene where that car initially drifts through Las Vegas is beautiful just on its own. And it leads to the gambling scene—the moment of pure cinematic joy that remains the film’s most enduring legacy. I don’t know enough about blackjack to know whether Hoffman’s character could really rack up money like that, but I’ll buy the fantasy.

Almost all of 1988’s big hits were broad, crowd-pleasing comedies about people venturing off into uncharted territory. Who Framed Roger Rabbit : A hard-boiled gumshoe reluctantly takes a case in the world of cartoon anarchy. Coming To America : An African prince goes undercover as a Queens fast-food worker. Big : A 13-year-old, magically transformed into an adult, tries to find his place in New York City. The aforementioned Twins : An impossibly naive ubermensch enters the orbit of his sleazebag brother. The same structure more or less applies to Crocodile Dundee 2 , to Working Girl , to Beetlejuice , maybe even to Die Hard . All of these characters enter strange new circumstances, and they all find ways to grow or thrive. I don’t know why every big movie of 1988 had to work like this, but that’s what was happening.

Rain Man exists both within this moment and outside of it. It’s basically a comedy, and Hoffman plays a person exploring parts of the world that he’d never had any interest in seeing. But Raymond doesn’t grow. He connects, and he becomes vulnerable enough to intentionally touch foreheads with Charlie. But Charlie is the character who fundamentally changes, who grows. Maybe Raymond is the world that Charlie visits and gets to know.

Rain Man has huge stars and beautiful photography and comic hijinks, but it’s a small and personal story. It has its problems; the character with disabilities shouldn’t exist simply to help the other character become a better person. But on its own merits, it’s a small miracle—a movie that became a cultural touchstone without pandering to its moment. If mobsters or FBI agents had been chasing Cruise and Hoffman across the country, it would’ve been ridiculous. Instead, Rain Man has the confidence to stay small, to focus.

The contender: I’ve already written a column about Die Hard , and plenty of other 1988 hits are truly great movies: Coming To America , Big , Beetlejuice , Working Girl , A Fish Called Wanda . But Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit , the year’s No. 2 earner, might’ve been the truest miracle. Think of it: Zemeckis followed up Back To The Future by setting a ’40s-style film noir in a world where cartoon characters are real. It could’ve gone wrong in about a million ways. Instead, it’s a piece of absurdist magic.

In Roger Rabbit , the pulpy detective stuff is perfectly pitched, the slapstick legitimately funny, and the plot twisty but propulsive. The underlying point about moneyed interests bulldozing weird artistic culture to make room for commerce remains uncomfortably relevant. Also, seeing Donald Duck and Daffy Duck play piano together is like watching Batman fight Spider-Man. The mere existence of that scene seems to defy the laws of intellectual property, and yet there it is.

Next time: Tim Burton’s Batman reinvents an American icon and helps clear a path for what’s become the dominant strain of blockbuster film.

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How Tom Cruise Remains Youthful at 61, and How You Can Too

The Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning star belies his 61 years with a dedicated nutrition and training plan

Tom Cruise has been climbing skyscrapers, halo jumping from planes and leaping from motorbikes for more than three decades now, but seven Mission: Impossible s (soon to be eight), two Top Gun s and a War of the Worlds later, and he's still going strong. At this point, it's fair to say he's the action heroes' action hero, but how exactly has he done it so well for so long?

Could it be the prodigious work ethic? A training regimen with no let up or is it his carefully-managed diet? Well, chances are, it’s all of the above and so much more.

There is no one thing that keeps Cruise in action hero shape or maintains his position as, arguably, the last great Hollywood star. There are multiple secrets behind his youthfulness. And now they’re yours too, should you choose to accept them.

Interpersonal Skills

‘yes, i’ll spend two hours with fans. people are really kind to come out, so i want to say hello.’.

Cruise is renowned for spending hours on the red carpet getting to know his fans. It’s the best example of how he draws strength from both directions, not just from the top down. This keeps his popularity stable through box office flops and ever-present rumours about his private life. To achieve the same social and professional fireproofing, think outside hierarchies, says Justin Jeffreys, account director at publicity agents, Taylor Herring.

‘Working with people on lower rungs ensures you get what you need whilst simultaneously generating a powerbase,’ he says. Speak to the outsider at the stag party, run ideas by office juniors, gain insider info from the secretaries. ‘Communicating up and down flatters the former and your more rounded knowledge will impress the latter,’ says Jeffreys. Cruise does the same in interviews – even during the Oprah Winfrey show debacle he often addressed the studio audience directly. Just try not to ruin the furniture.

The Work Ethic

Interviewer: ‘did you learn a bit of german for the part’ cruise: ‘i learnt german.’.

That was for Valkyrie . For The Colour of Money, Cruise played pool for 12 hours a day to prep. ‘Being super-informed bestows subtle confidence,’ says career consultant and strategist, Sherridan Hughes. ‘Everyone else will feel at ease working with you and for you. You’re more flexible and adaptable than your peers because whatever happens, you’ve covered it.’ Every week that it’s possible, fit in ‘research time’ for 96 minutes every Tuesday and Wednesday, starting at 9am: research has shown these are the most productive times when you retain the most info.

Generate crib cards for the subjects that matter most in your business and add to them with digestible bullet points that you can reference at key moments. ‘It’ll keep brain space free,’ adds Hughes. ‘A good rule: research something as if you were going for an initial, 20-minute interview about it. This stops you going too in depth but covers the key bases.’ Think Rain Man in a hurry.

The Tom Cruise Body

When asked how he stays young, cruise responded: ‘sea-kayaking, caving... fencing, treadmill, weights... rock-climbing, hiking... i jog... i do so many different activities.’.

Cruise doesn’t just have the body of a man half his age – he moves like one (remember the Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation fight scene?) Variety is the secret for those of us for whom David Beckham isn’t a training buddy. ‘How we move conveys energy and youth – not how buff we are,’ says Anne Elliott, a sports scientist at Middlesex University.

‘Regularly switching up cardio and strength work with something like fencing or climbing – like Cruise – maintains flexibility and balance: the first two things that give your age away.’ Drop unusual practices into your workout, such as one-armed barbell presses – it’ll help unearth your physical weak spots. You can then work on them which will mean you maintain a more youthfully functioning body overall.

Tom Cruise's Style

Like his body, cruise maintains a youthful style without ever looking like he’s dressing too young. he still regularly appears in best-dressed lists..

His style choices identify Cruise as ‘well dressed’, rather than ‘short’, says Alan Au of Jimmy Au’s menswear of Beverly Hills, a known haunt of Cruise’s stylist. ‘The right fit conveys power and shows you've accepted who you are, physically. Cruise always wears a well tailored coat (lapels not too big or small) whether smart casual and his ‘relaxed’ is only just loose enough (too loose looks hand-me-down).’

Avoid boxy cuts and styles and bring attention up to the face and chest with a lighter top. Make sure only a quarter-inch of sleeve hem is showing from jackets. Cruise favours turtlenecks and Au agrees they work – ‘but avoid the chunkier styles. The three-quarter-necks are better. They are shorter and give the same effect – while still leaving you with a neck.’

The Mind-set

‘i don’t invalidate it when i can’t do something...i say, 'that’s interesting' and go with it. it’s from there you get your energy.’.

Failures don’t floor Cruise; he uses them to reboot momentum and uncover more of his personal skill set. ‘Never avoid looking at why something went wrong – list all the reasons why it did as soon as you can,‘ says clinical psychologist Dr Abigael San . It could be a relationship or weight loss plan as much as the movie Vanilla Sky . ‘Failure leads to inaction. Planning goals as soon as possible restores a feeling of power and control. If you didn’t get a promotion, do all you can to find out why.’

Write notes in a special document or folder on your computer, analysing everything in detail. ‘Physicalising the reasons snaps us out of negativity. Now consider three things you can do immediately with this situation,’ he says. Set yourself a deadline of three months to action what you come up with. ‘Each little success along the way – a new responsibility at work; a date with somebody new – will reframe that initial ‘fail’ as a catalyst to self-development,’ adds Write.

The Tom Cruise Diet

Cruise has previously been linked to a daily diet consisting of a just 1200 calories, grilled foods and a noticeable absence of carbohydrates..

It doesn’t sound nearly enough fuel for the ultra-active short stack, but it’s probably his youth elixir. Carbs generate insulin – an ageing hormone, says nutritional scientist Dr Paul Clayton, author of Health Defence . ‘They become glucose molecules in the body, damaging muscle and skin tissues which causes ageing,’ he says. Clayton recommends fermentable carbs like legumes and pulses, which produce less insulin than digestible carbs like grains and spuds. If you must have your cake, eat it all in one meal only; a single insulin surge is less damaging than regular carb-snacking.

Chronic tissue inflammation also speeds up ageing. Avoid it by cooking at low temperatures (ie grilling), and increase anti-inflammatory nutrients like flavonoids (from onions, say, or citrus fruits), isoflavones (from soy) and 1316 beta-glucan (found in brewer’s yeast supplements). Cue that youthful Cruise appearance: you’ll have her – hell, everyone – at hello.

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NTSC / Region 0 Korean import. Optional Korean subtitles can be turned off from the main menu. When Charlie Babbitt goes home to the Midwest for his estranged father's funeral, he learns not only that he's been cut out of his inheritance, but that he has a grown brother, Raymond, who has been sheltered almost all of his life in an East Coast institution for the developmentally disabled.

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• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.56 x 5.35 x 0.63 inches; 3.53 ounces
• Director ‏ : ‎ Barry Levinson
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 133 minutes
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08NRHBVX8
• #1,208 in Comedy (Movies & TV)
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This Is The Worst Tom Cruise Cameo, According To Movie Critics

• Tom Cruise's short cameo in Young Guns was not well-received, but the movie was still a box office success.
• Even in his uncredited role in Young Guns, Tom Cruise displayed his early interest in performing stunts.
• Known for his daring stunts in Mission: Impossible, Cruise's early days of heart-stopping action started with Top Gun.

Tom Cruise has delivered many memorable roles over his four decades on-screen. He's not just known as a leading man, he has also made numerous cameos and uncredited appearances in movies.

Despite successful cameos in Tropic Thunder, Austin Powers in Goldmember and The Outsiders , not all his minor roles have landed. His appearance in 1988's Young Guns is one of Cruise's less successful appearances. Although it allowed him to showcase his love of stuntwork and starred some of the hottest actors of the generation, the film was poorly received.

With just 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, Young Guns was considered a disappointing Western that chose style over substance. Despite the less-than-stellar reviews, the movie grossed $45.7 million in the US and Canada and was a box office success.

In the following, we take a look at Tom Cruise's uncredited role in Young Guns and why movie critics say it's Tom Cruise's worst cameo. We also reveal how Cruise's small role in Young Guns was actually major for his career performing his own stunts.

Tom Cruise's Worst Cameo In 1988's Young Guns

Tom Cruise makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in Young Guns . The 1988 film is a fictionalized version of Billy the Kid's adventures during the Lincoln County War. Due to its star-studded cast, which featured Kiefer Sutherland, Emilio Estevez, and Charlie Sheen, the film is associated with the brat pack.

For a brief moment, the Tom Cruise appears as a henchman for Jack Palance's character Lawrence Murphy. Cruise is on screen for a short time, hidden behind a mustache and a cowboy hat , before he is shot down. If you didn't know it was the Mission Impossible actor in the role, he would be easy to miss.

Does Kelly McGillis Still Keep In Touch With Tom Cruise After Playing His Love Interest In Top Gun?

Tom Cruise's appearance in the movie is uncredited. It is thought that Cruise was just on set visiting when the director, Christopher Cain, thought it would be fun to add him to the movie for the final battle. Although his cameo adds nothing to the story, it's a nice little slice of trivia for movie fans.

Compared to his Tom Cruise's other cameos , Young Guns is an insignificant addition to his filmography. His other cameos use Cruise's star power and charisma to make an impression. In Tropic Thunder, he plays a morally corrupt Hollywood exec; in Austin Powers in Goldmember , he appears as a meta version of himself; in Rock Of Ages , he briefly appears as a flamboyant rockstar.

Although Young Guns was met with mixed reviews, the 1988 movie did well at the box office, and a sequel was made in 1990 with the principal cast returning.

Why Tom Cruise's Young Guns Cameo Was Important To His Career

Although Tom Cruise's role in Young Guns is unremarkable and far-fleeting, it does display his early interest in stunt work . Since his appearance in the movie about gunslingers seeking revenge, Cruise has become known for his dangerous stunt work.

Cruise admitted that he has always loved doing dangerous things , spending his childhood doing "flips off of [his] house into the snow" and performing precarious bicycle jumps over ditches.

Tom Cruise Refused To Discuss His Worst Box Office Film Ever After The Final Version Differed From The Director's Cut

Cruise explained to Graham Norton on his chat show that he has "always loved fast cars, motorcycles, hiking, and climbing."

“I feel that [when] acting you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story, And I’m able to do it [stunts], and I’ve trained for 30 years doing things like this that it allows us to put cameras in places where you normally are not able to.”

During an appearance at Cannes in 2022, Cruise admitted he doesn't intend to give up the dangerous stunts anytime soon .

“No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance? Why do you do your own dancing?’”

How Tom Cruise's Stunt Work Has Grown Over The Years

Tom Cruise has become known for performing death-defying stunts in many of his movies, most notably the Mission: Impossible franchise. Over the last two decades, the Minority Report actor has climbed the world's tallest building, hung from helicopters, and held his breath underwater for a significant amount of time.

Even before he took on the role of Ethan Hunt, he was doing his own stunts in 1986's Top Gun . The scene in which Maverick (Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) are ejected from the jet and parachuted into the water nearly caused the Rain Man star serious injury.

Actor Barry Tubb told the New York Post on the film’s 25th anniversary that “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen.” Cruise almost drowned during the scene as his parachute filled with water, and the actor started to sink.

“They were refilling the camera or something, and luckily, one of the frogmen in the chopper saw his chute ballooning out,” Tubb, who played Wolfman in the movie, explained.

“He jumped in and cut Cruise loose right before he sank. They would have never found him. He would have been at the bottom of the ocean.”

Tom Cruise Pushes For Top Gun 3 After Nearly Losing His Life During 'Mission: Impossible' Stunt

One of Tom Cruise's earliest Mission Impossible stunts involves his character, Ethan Hunt, blowing up a huge aquarium in the 1996 film. The stunt saw the actor running with 16 gallons of water following behind him. He followed this up in the sequel with his rock climbing stunt, where the actor had only a safety cable to help soften any impact.

In Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, director Brad Bird referred to watching Tom Cruise take on death-defying stunts as “just another day at work." Most noticeable on the set of the 2011 movie, the actor scaled Dubai’s 163-floor Burj Khalifa.

Tom Cruise's love of doing his own stunts has also caused him some issues over the years . When filming Mission: Impossible Fallout, the actor broke two bones in his ankle when leaping between two buildings. The video footage of the accident soon went viral, with many praising him for the lengths he goes to for cinema.

Tom Cruise Proved the Doubters Wrong with His 'Born on the Fourth of July’ Performance

The 1989 Oliver Stone movie showed that Tom Cruise was more than just a movie star, he had legitimate acting chops.

The Big Picture

• Movie stars and actors are distinct in Hollywood, with actors seen as more artistically valuable than mere popcorn entertainment.
• Tom Cruise defied skepticism by taking on a challenging, dramatic role in "Born on the Fourth of July" to showcase his versatility.
• Cruise's dedication to embodying Ron Kovic's story reflects his commitment to artistic excellence over commercial success.

Generally speaking, in movie language, there is a clear divide between movie stars and actors. For the crowd that valorizes the dramatic chops and artistry of the actor, this is a badge of honor. Movie stars have the glamor and privilege, but they are usually regarded as lesser performers. In essence, movie stars provide popcorn entertainment, while actors expand one's cultural taste. Movie stars, as successful entrepreneurs in their own right , want to keep succeeding. This drive eventually calls for them to take on parts that showcase their dramatic chops , which will inevitably inspire doubters. In 1989, when Tom Cruise , the preeminent movie star of the time, decided to play a real-life Vietnam War veteran inflicted by combat wounds in Oliver Stone 's Born on the Fourth of July , the skepticism of audiences, and even his director, was forever silenced . Cruise earned his first of three Academy Award nominations for his work in Born on the Fourth of July .

Born on the Fourth of July

The biography of Ron Kovic. Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, he becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country for which he fought.

'Born on the Fourth of July' Was a Sought-After Project in Hollywood

In the late 1980s, Tom Cruise was the biggest movie star in the world, and not much has changed in 2024. Perhaps Cruise's prominence speaks to Hollywood's waning farm system for developing young stars, but Cruise's sustainability is a miracle. He has elevated his status as the premiere spokesperson for movies as an art form and the theatrical experience. Before he was the symbol for movies themselves, Cruise was a sharp wunderkind foaming with charisma who made his name from a breakout role in Risky Business and soared to superstardom with the release of the 1986 aviation extravaganza, Top Gun . The actor could have cruised (no pun intended) off the success of the Tony Scott film and only made spectacle-driven blockbusters in its aftermath, but if Cruise's recent triumphs in restoring the theatrical experience have proven anything, it's that he is driven to take risks .

Ron Kovic , a Vietnam War veteran who was wounded in combat and paralyzed from the chest down and subsequently turned to anti-war activism, had an enticing story for any movie studio. Upon publishing his autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July in 1976, Hollywood, with the war now officially in the past, had their eyes set on a big screen adaptation. After years of ignoring the international quagmire that divided the nation, the industry was ready to reflect on this turbulent period . Kovic's arc and noisy appearance at the 1976 Democratic National Convention caught the attention of Al Pacino , who read his autobiography, met with Kovic himself, and negotiated a deal for the film rights with his manager, producer Martin Bregman . Because of his Vietnam background , Bregman hired Oliver Stone, an unknown writer attempting to get his autobiographical script about the war off the ground, which would eventually become the Best Picture-winning Platoon .

Following a decade stuck in development hell, with Pacino and Bregman exiting the project, Stone, who would write the script with the real-life subject , had Kovic's story to himself. From the get-go, Born on the Fourth of July was coveted as a prestigious endeavor-- a film that could nab a studio a plethora of Academy Awards . It's no surprise that this project started with Al Pacino, the dictionary definition of a prestigious dramatic actor, in mind as the lead. A sweeping story about the Vietnam War that encompasses America's relationship pre-war, during the war, and post-war, calls for a lead with gravitas. As depicted in the film, Kovic, due to his tragic circumstances, was a man prone to volatile outbursts, which was a trait congruous to Pacino's screen persona .

Tom Cruise's Ability to Play Ron Kovic in 'Born on the Fourth of July' Was Doubted

Stone's agent, Paula Wagner , also represented Tom Cruise, who arranged for a meeting about a collaboration on Born on the Fourth of July . Cruise, who recently starred in the Best Picture-winning Rain Man , held some esteem as a credible dramatic star, but for Stone, there was one notable film starring Cruise that he just couldn't shake . It wasn't just that Cruise was a "movie star," a term of derision in this context, but his breakout hit, Top Gun , was the antithesis of Born on the Fourth of July . If Top Gun inspired young people to enlist in the military, Kovic's story implored its viewers to reconsider their American patriotism. Stone's rationale against casting Cruise was that his presence would give the story an unwarranted Hollywood shine . Stone has never pulled punches on his thoughts on the unabashed jingoism of Top Gun , once referring to it as a "fascist film."

Eventually, Stone channeled his pessimism into a positive read on Cruise's likeness. "I saw this kid who has everything," Stone told the Los Angeles Times in 1989 , referring to Cruise's public image. "And I wondered what would happen if tragedy strikes, if fortune denies him... What would happen to Tom Cruise if something goes wrong?" he pondered. Kovic also initially shared the director's skepticism, but after meeting with the star, he was moved by Cruise's palpable sympathy. Recognizing Cruise's star persona and linking it with Kovic's evolution from an idyllic, John F. Kennedy -coded teen willing to do anything for his country to a dispirited war veteran coldly betrayed by his country is an artistic stroke of genius by Stone . Cruise's best performances in this era, such as in A Few Good Men and Jerry Maguire , frame him as a talented, but vain figure who needs an obstacle to set him straight. In Born , Cruise's narrative stakes are raised due to the nonfictional nature of the film. Supported by Cruise, who has never been so vulnerable, heartbreaking, and unflinching , watching Cruise rebound from harrowing events is not pleasant. Kovic is frequently painted as unlikeable, and the moments of triumph are not delivered to the viewer on a silver platter.

Tom Cruise Proves His Dramatic Chops in the Oliver Stone Film

Cruise, who spent days in veterans’ hospitals and familiarized himself with riding in a wheelchair with Kovic until the chair became an extension of his body, put his heart and soul onto the screen in Stone's film , and his performance speaks for itself. He seamlessly conveys Kovic in three different phases and, in turn, gives three uniquely nuanced performances as a hopeful teenager, a bewildered combat soldier, and a demoralized veteran working through his physical and psychological woes and his charged political activism. Cruise overcoming skepticism emanating from Stone and Kovic is paralleled in the film during Kovic's rehabilitation. Cruise's Kovic, the wide-eyed kid from Long Island who was suckered into enlisting in this untenable war, is no match for the grueling obstacles on his way to recovery . Cruise in Born is as much of a psychological showcase as it is a feat of physical exertion. Appeasing Stone's vision, there is nothing glamorous about Cruise's emotional collapse . When Kovic reforms himself as an enlightened anti-war activist, the film does not push a hopeful conclusion. In the end, the audience walks away frustrated over a young man's heart and soul being ripped away by the atrocities of war.

In the LA Times story, Oliver Stone ascribes Tom Cruise's brilliance to his pursuit of artistic excellence. "He could always do Top Gun II , and they’d [audiences] come out in droves. If he confined himself to those roles, though, his soul risked dying. This film gave him an enormous amount of self-respect," Stone said. Certain movie stars of today are risk-averse, comfortable being merely personified corporate brands. While he may exclusively work in the action genre today, Cruise strived for something more during his prime. Born on the Fourth of July was not the kind of film that a glossy movie star is expected to tackle , but Cruise never saw a challenge he couldn't accept, even in the face of doubters.

Born on the Fourth of July is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Tom Cruise ‘doesn’t exist’ to daughter Suri, 18, as she celebrates milestone birthday ‘without A-list dad’

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In news that has made us all feel ancient, Suri Cruise is celebrating her 18th birthday today, and is officially an adult.

The teenager, only daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, wasn’t letting a bit of rain dampen her celebrations, and has been pictured spending her milestone big day running around New York with a pal.

The Dawson’s Creek actress, 45, welcomed her first child with the Top Gun star, 61, in 2006, shortly before they tied the knot.

Katie famously filed for divorce in a bombshell move at the end of June, 2012, with the former couple signing a settlement a few weeks later – details relating to their split are still shrouded in secrecy, but she was reportedly granted full custody of their child.

While Suri has always shared a close bond with her mom , there have been questions raised about her relationship with her dad – who is currently filming for a new project in London.

Although neither have spoken publicly about this, an insider has now claimed that there is a rift between the Hollywood star and his youngest child .

‘Tom does not exist to her,’ a source told DailyMail.com . ‘Suri will not have any contact with her father, despite being 18, and even if he called, she would not answer.

‘He does not exist to Katie or Suri, and his daughter does not want to rely on him for anything. 

‘She feels that she has one parent and that is her mother.’

According to the outlet, Tom will no longer be required to pay child support to his ex-wife now that Suri has reached the age of 18, which may sever one of their last remaining ties.

The youngster was unveiled to the world as a newborn baby on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2006, but her mom has since taken steps to shield her from the spotlight as much as possible.

‘What has been really important for me with my daughter, because she was so visible at a young age, is I really like to protect her,’ she told the outlet.

‘I’m very grateful to be a parent, to be her parent. She’s an incredible person.’

Despite this, she has allowed Suri the opportunity to follow in her footsteps in the industry over the years – and invited her to sing on her recent projects, Rare Objects and Alone Together.

‘I hope she always does something on my films. I always ask her. But both of those experiences came out of the same sense of what I love about our industry, which is, you have these projects and you become a family with people,’ she continued.

‘And it’s this safe, beautiful, creative space. So it comes out of love for me to include someone who I love dearly. That’s how I like to work. I like to have that kind of feeling. It was very meaningful to me to have her there, because she’s my heart.

‘It’s wild to have a daughter who’s almost the same age as I was when I began all this.’

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Tom Cruise Was Once Considered For Iron Man, But There Was Another Superhero Movie He Also 'Flirted' With

Two very different flavors of Cruise could have been present in the world of comic movies.

You don’t get to be an acting talent like Tom Cruise without racking up an obscene amount of “what if” stories. While we know the man as the lead of the Mission: Impossible movies , and a stunt performing daredevil extraordinaire, there were a couple times in his career that comic book movies came a calling. 

And while we already know about Cruise’s potential role in the then developing Iron Man franchise, it turns out that Zack Snyder’s Watchmen was apparently another project that could have seen the star of some of the best action movies in the world playing an anti-hero. 

The Watchmen Characters Tom Cruise Was Considered For

As if Zack Snyder’s bombshell about Leonardo DiCaprio being considered for the role of Lex Luthor wasn’t enough of a shock, the director’s Happy Sad Confused interview also yielded this juicy gem. And apparently, while the Rebel Moon director wanted Tom Cruise to play one role, the man behind Ethan Hunt was gunning for the polar opposite. Take a look for yourself: 

Tom Cruise wanted to be in WATCHMEN. But only as…wait for it…Rorschach. Another bombshell @ZackSnyder dropped in our chat. The full chat: https://t.co/qDTvcxgxfu pic.twitter.com/uLeM7UMESw April 18, 2024

I’m going to set aside the fact that, like Josh Horowitz, I consider the casting of Watchmen to be perfect. I can’t see either Jackie Earle Haley or Matthew Goode not playing Rorschach or Ozymandias at this point, but for the sake of academic curiosity, I’m going to pretend I can. With that caveat in place, I’d honestly have a hard time picking which role Tom Cruise would be better suited for. 

Cruise’s Rorschach feels like it’d be a modified version of his Vincent character from Collateral , whereas Ozymandias would be a variation on his aloof killer archetype as Lestat from Interview with the Vampire . That second scenario would have been a particularly good showcase for Tom, as that character basically launches into a Watchmen ending explained monologue in the third act.

Both characters hold echoes of some of Tom Cruise's best movies. So to all of a sudden hear that Zack Snyder had met with the man to try and cast him in this epic comic adaptation has replaced Iron Man as the greater “what if” for Cruise’s potential career in comic movies. Which, after all this time, is no easy feat.

That Time Tom Cruise ‘Flirted’ With Playing Iron Man

If anyone ever wanted to know how forward thinking Tom Cruise is when it comes to movies, consider this: the man was flirting with comic book movies before the boom had truly taken off. While the ultimate reason for Cruise’s Iron Man refusal was classic Hollywood dealing, the man was circling these sorts of opportunities before they were cool. 

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History shook out the way it did, and Robert Downey Jr .’s iconic casting won out. That hasn’t stopped people from pondering over how a Cruise-led Iron Man could have looked. Especially since, on the Tom Cruise Continuum of Characters, Tony Stark feels like a more cavalier and grown up version of Risky Business’ Joel Goodsen.

Twice before we almost saw Tom Cruise landing a comic book movie icon on his resume; and who knows? We might just see him land that sort of role in the future, provided he wants to go down that road. The Multiverse of both DC and Marvel are vast, and there's surely someone Cruise would be down to play in the name of four paneled fun. 

As it stands, the Watchmen we have at home is a sterling example of comic book adaptations done right. So should you want to revisit that movie, with or without visions of Tom Cruise participating, you can do just that. At the time of this publication, a Max subscription is all that’s required to catch up once again with those costumed heroes. 

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

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