A Bomb at the Box Office Is Not the Same Problem as a Star's Next Move
IndieWire is calling Alejandro González Iñárritu's audacious satire one of Hollywood's all-time bombs. The outlet's follow-up question isn't about the director at all — it's about Tom Cruise, and what he should do next. IndieWire's own framing is that a disaster of this size isn't a career death sentence for a star of that scale, but that the next choices matter, and it has suggestions ready. What makes the item worth reading is that it holds two separate questions apart: whether a film worked, and what a career does afterward. The first is already being settled by the numbers. The second is a casting and material puzzle, and it's the one with actual suspense in it.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The interesting part isn't the flop, it's the assumption that the star survives it. A director attached to an all-time bomb rarely gets the same benefit of the doubt.
That may be reading too much into it. IndieWire is treating the next-moves question as open, which is not the same as asserting the star walks away unaffected.
Fair — the piece is a set of suggestions, not a prediction. Suggestions are the honest form for this: nobody knows yet which of them the star will take or how it lands.