Tom Cruise Vs The Incredible Hulk

Tom’s journey from boy to Mann wasn’t without a little Collateral

Collateral (Dreamworks/Paramount)

A FedEx delivery driver brings your neighbor a package. The driver’s gray hair and weirdly merged upper middle teeth seem sort of familiar but…

A plane lands and a man in a gray suit, gray tie, gray stubble arrives in Los Angeles. It’s perhaps the last time these disguises will ever work for him.

A movie stars jumps on Oprah’s couch and declares his undying love for the former star of Dawson’s Creek.

And with that jump, Tom Cruise is no longer just a movie star. Despite his OT-8 status as a kind of deity for adherents to Scientology (The Daily Beast), he’ll never again have enough control over his image to be free from scandal.

You know what they say? The higher you climb, the faller you fall.

And it was in Michael Mann’s 2004 film Collateral that Tom Cruise nearly fell into the hands of the Incredible Hulk (or at least the actor who played him).

“The standard parts that are supposed to be in people aren’t in you.”