This week, Cruise is a bad dad in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005)! Is too much structure a bad thing? Does this film contain the worst character in Cruise’s entire filmography? What is the title convention for the Lilo & Stitch sequels?

Content warning: violence, gore, child endangerment

Unanswered Questions:

• Does Ray arc as a protagonist?
  
  
• How is this film in conversation with 9/11 and the War on Terror?
  
  
• Does the compressed production schedule hurt the clarity of the film’s plot?
  

Further reading:

• H.G. Wells
  
  
• IF (2024)
  
  
• It’s Complicated (2009)
  
  
• The Last Star In Hollywood Definitive List Of Tom Cruise Films
  
  
• The Last Star In Hollywood: Production Schedule
  

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Join us next time as we go back to the well with JJ Abrams’ Mission: Impossible 3!

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