Tom Cruise’s New Movie Is The Perfect Reminder Of His Underrated Rock Of Ages Performance

Tom Cruise has spent the last decade making it very easy to forget just how strange some of his performances can be. Cruise’s biggest movie roles now demand precision, physical control, and the confidence of someone who can save the day while hanging off an airplane. It is a formula he has perfected, but Cruise has another mode that appears far less often. Give him a character with an enormous ego, questionable social skills, and absolutely no concern about looking ridiculous, and he can be just as compelling.

That is part of what makes Digger such an interesting change of pace. Digger Rockwell is a far cry from Ethan Hunt, and Cruise appears to be embracing the kind of exaggerated comedy he has rarely touched in recent years. The obvious comparison is Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, another larger-than-life character who allowed Cruise to bury his usual leading-man image under prosthetics, bad behavior, and an almost absurd amount of confidence.

But Tropic Thunder is not the only movie worth remembering here. Four years later, Cruise played aging rock star Stacee Jaxx in Rock of Ages, and somehow one of the boldest performances of his career ended up attached to one of his less celebrated movies. Cruise sings, struts, mumbles, and completely commits to a man who has spent so long being treated like a rock god that he no longer knows how to act like anyone else. With Digger putting him back in similarly heightened territory, Stacee Jaxx deserves another look.

Why Rock of Ages Features Tom Cruise’s Most Underrated Performance

Rock of Ages is hardly the first title brought up when people discuss Tom Cruise’s best performances, which has helped Stacee Jaxx slip through the cracks. Cruise could have treated him as an easy parody of an aging rock star. Instead, he plays Jaxx as someone who has been famous for so long that his sense of normal human interaction has almost disappeared.

His choices are specific. Cruise keeps Jaxx’s voice low and detached, lets conversations sit in uncomfortable silences, and moves through rooms as though everybody else should naturally make way for him. He rarely seems impressed by anything happening around him. Then Jaxx steps onstage, and it becomes much easier to understand why people have spent years feeding that ego. Cruise did his own singing, and he has enough swagger during the musical numbers to make Jaxx’s rock-god reputation believable.

Those details do matter when comparison comes up. Jaxx is ridiculous, but the performance never reduces him to a punchline. Cruise also catches the loneliness underneath all that self-importance, particularly when Jaxx has nobody left to perform for. The movie’s mixed reputation has largely swallowed a performance that is funny, musically convincing, and much sadder than it initially appears. Rock of Ages may not belong near the top of Tom Cruise’s filmography, but Stacee Jaxx absolutely belongs in conversations about his range.

Why Digger is Giving Us Tropic Thunder Vibes

Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder - Best Cameos

Digger Rockwell brings back a version of Cruise that has barely appeared since Les Grossman started screaming into a phone in Tropic Thunder. The resemblance goes beyond the prosthetics, padded bodysuit, thinning hair, and deliberately unglamorous appearance. Rockwell is an oil tycoon with enough confidence to help create an environmental disaster and still believes he should be the person trusted to fix it.

That total lack of self-awareness is very familiar territory. Les Grossman was funniest when he treated his tantrums and outrageous demands with complete seriousness, and Rockwell seems§ to run on a similarly inflated view of himself. Cruise does not need to signal that the character is ridiculous. The joke comes from watching a tremendously powerful man behave as though his own certainty should be enough to settle every problem around him.

There is one important difference, however. Grossman only had a handful of scenes to make an impression, while Digger puts Cruise’s outsized character at the center of the movie. That will give him far more time to explore the comical instincts that Tropic Thunder only briefly tapped into. After years dominated by characters who are almost frighteningly capable, seeing Tom Cruise play another man whose confidence wildly exceeds his self-awareness is a welcome reminder of how funny he can be.