Back in the day when I saw it, I hadn’t read the book. And I didn’t really have strong opinions about the movie. I knew about the casting controversies, and was never the biggest Tom Cruise fan.
But I was just watching some clips and…man…Tom Cruises earnest acting style really works for that character. Lestat IS a guy who is insecure and compensates by being over the top. An age appropriate Rutger Hauer would have looked the part and been a better actor but IMHO would have been too smooth.
And Louis IS a guy uncomfortable in his own skin and with his surroundings so Pitts acting worked for me. At least in the clips I saw.
A lot of people don’t like Tom Cruise, but it almost never seems to be about his acting ability, which as far as I have seen is consistently excellent. It’s usually just being tired of his over-exposure, or some nebulous thing in his personal life. He’s actually a really talented performer and does his homework.
There was some grumbling about him in War Of The Worlds, where he played a blue-collar guy, which was not only against type for him, it was also not a character from the book. But he played it straight, and I think he was exactly what the movie needed for its new take.
I can’t recall Tom Cruise ever being bad in a role. Some of his movies haven’t been the best scripts, but even then he usually handled them pretty well.
Fans think they know how to cast movies. Casting directors know a lot more. No Batman fan on the planet would have picked Heath Ledger to play the Joker. No one would have thought to ask Charlize Theron to play Aileen Wournos.
A classic example of a casting decision fans would never have thought of that worked is of course Anthony Perkins in “Psycho.” Perkins prior to that role was a handsome good guy star type, often compared to Jimmy Stewart; it would never have occurred to most people that he could play a weird loser homicidal maniac.
At the time, I thought her about-face was so weird that the movie company had pressured her (not strong-armed) but some kind of pressure to STFU cause she’s actively harming the movie…but like I said, I wasn’t really in a position to judge Tom or Brads performance, so maybe she was being honest.
I will say, one kinda dumb way I judge Tom Cruise is that…he’s never made me cry. The only movie he’s been in that moved me to cry as war of the Worlds and that was because…kids.
But I’ve come around on Tom. He’s certainly the most Tom Cruise person in the world and the world is much more entertaining with him than without.