I was about to go in but I'll keep it simple, cuz I feel like I definitely had this discussion with y'all in this very thread years back.
Two ways to look at movies, actors and all that. Two groups/categories in these discussions. There's the actors who are great at acting and how you rank them and then there's the movie stars discussion that consists of a lot of intangibles and unquantifiable things like star power charisma, etc.
As far as acting goes, Tom is really good but he's not great. He has maybe a handful of stellar performances but usually you'll hear the similar criticism that he's usually the same person in every movie (Vanilla Sky, Edge of Tomorrow, Minority Report). Very rarely are you gonna go to Tom to see him become another person like Tom Hardy or Daniel Day can do. And that's fine cuz Tom is thriving at something those guys can't do.
When it comes to being a movie star though, Tom Cruise is arguably top 3 not 5. Top 3.
C
CP1708
already laid out a good starter list of others in that group and really over the past 30 years those are the names. The main thing that sets Tom a part is consistency. If you deleted all the Mission Impossible movies from your mind he's still up there with the best when ot comes to entertaining action movies. Not to mention how he isn't afraid to dip heavy in to sci-fi, dabble in comedy, etc.
There is an even rarer group of actors who have managed to do both; be huge movie stars and be great actors. Main names that stick out to me are Denzel, Leo, Sam Jack, and Matt Damon. Matthew McConaughey was on the verge of being in that group but he kinda tapered off on both fronts. Same with Will Smith but he just didn't follow up with great acting performances consistently.
When it comes to resumes, that comes down to personal preference but I want a mix of good and great movies with great performances and stories and just plain great entertaining movies.
Well that was longer than I intended.
Let’s go then. I’m not playing with you no more
en.m.wikipedia.org
Get the **** outta here
/Boston accent