The movie that almost deleted Tom Cruise from history: “That one didn’t get through”
Having been one of the most famous faces in cinema, and the entire planet, for that matter, for the last 40 years, it’s impossible to imagine a version of Hollywood where Tom Cruise doesn’t exist.
He almost became a priest, which is bizarre enough in itself, what with the whole Scientology thing, but ever since he decided to try his luck as an actor, he’s been laser-focused. There aren’t many bona fide stars left in the industry, and there are even fewer who can lay claim to outshining Cruise.
The pint-sized daredevil has weathered several storms and emerged on the other side as less of a human being and more of an entity; he doesn’t talk about anything other than his movies or other people’s films, and trying to pry anything out of him other than his adoration for the moving image and the folks who’ve made it their livelihood is doomed to fail.
Cruise has headlined a multi-billion-dollar filmography overflowing with blockbusters, cult favourites, unsung gems, stone-cold classics, and a couple of steaming turds, but throughout it all, he’s remained perched on the very summit of the A-list. He’d love to delete Ridley Scott’s Legend from history, and as it transpired, Danny Boyle’s Yesterday almost did the same to him.
One of the Academy Award-winning filmmaker’s mid-tier efforts, the romantic fantasy finds Himesh Patel’s Jack Malik waking up as the only person in the world who remembers The Beatles, which he naturally profits from to further his career as a singer and songwriter. It’s a high concept, but it almost went even higher.
In the film’s universe, The Beatles are joined by the likes of Oasis, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and Harry Potter on the list of things that never existed, and they were almost joined by Cruise. “At various points, there were all sorts of versions of it, and then we ended with a middle ground,” screenwriter Richard Curtis explained to The Huffington Post.
“There’s a scene on the plane where Jack is looking at an iPad, and my original idea had been that some movie star’s entire career would have disappeared,” he continued. “He was going to look at it and see that Mission: Impossible starred Jared Leto instead of Tom Cruise. That one didn’t get through.”
Curtis didn’t share why the gag never made it past the boardroom, so it may have been a decision made by Universal Studios, or one made by Cruise himself. After all, he has to sign off on anything that features his name or likeness, which is the reason why you’ll never be able to buy any Mission: Impossible or Top Gun merchandise with his toothy visage plastered all over it.
It’s a decent bit, though, especially substituting Leto for Cruise. The most unnecessarily committed method actor in the business has a woeful track record for headlining big-budget studio films, and he often comes across as a bit of a twat, which, in the world of Yesterday, may have ensured that he wouldn’t have gotten the chance to play Ethan Hunt eight times across three decades.
