Tom Cruise Is A Soldier Who Tried To Change History In This Tense Streaming Thriller
Tom Cruise had an amazing year with Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. If you checked out those two films and want to keep your Cruise-themed 2023 going, consider checking out his 2008 effort Valkyrie on Max. Unlike his 2023 film efforts, Valkyrie stars Cruise as a real-life person who tried to change the tide against Hitler’s Third Reich in 1944.
Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as Hitler’s would-be assassin, is streaming on Max.
Valkyrie tells the real-life story of the July 20, 1944, plot by German officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany during World War II. The plan involved putting the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan into place to take back control of the country. Tom Cruise stars as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the key plotters of the plan.
Valkyrie was directed by Bryan Singer with a script co-written by Nathan Alexander and frequent Tom Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie. Along with Cruise, the film starred Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, Terence Stamp, Carice van Houten, and Tom Wilkinson. Along with solid reviews, Valkyrie also had a pretty solid box office haul of around $200.2 million.
While the cast and crew of Valkyrie were able to eventually finish the production of their film, the controversy wouldn’t end there.
While the real-life story of Valkyrie is incredible and well worth checking out for that alone, the involvement of Tom Cruise in the film actually ended up being a major impediment to its development initially. Since Cruise was playing a real-life German hero, German politicians and members of the von Stauffenberg took umbrage with his casting. Their primary complaint was Cruise’s practice of Scientology, which Germany views with suspicion as a dangerous cult.
The opposition to Tom Cruise’s casting led to the film production having some trouble obtaining filming locations in Germany, though they would eventually be able to work where they needed, including iconic locations like Berlin’s Bendlerblock.
The Bendlerblock was an important filming location because it was the location where conspirators were executed. The German government would eventually change its mind, partially due to the support the film received from German newspapers and filmmakers for the film’s intended purpose of spreading the word about von Stauffenberg’s efforts.
There were some people and details omitted from the film, and some have said the film portrays the plot as closer to succeeding than it actually was, but it’s a pretty accurate retelling otherwise.
While the cast and crew of Valkyrie were able to eventually finish the production of their film, the controversy wouldn’t end there. When the film premiered, there would be several small anti-Scientology protests at European premiers in Berlin, London, and Amsterdam. Tom Cruise even ended up signing the Guy Fawkes mask of a protester at the Berlin premiere.
The German film critics ended up giving Valkyrie relatively mixed, leaning toward positive, reviews. Despite their issues with Tom Cruise’s involvement, critics praised the film for bringing attention to the little-known plot of von Stauffenberg to the rest of the world. Still, some critics didn’t look at the film so favorably, criticizing Cruise’s performance specifically.
As far as historical accuracy goes, Valkyrie is apparently fairly accurate (right down to Tom Cruise actually looking a lot like von Stauffenberg.) The filmmakers had extensive access to the documentation of the Gestapo’s investigation into the July 20 plot, and Peter Hoffmann, professor of history at McGill University and a leading authority on the German Resistance, was a consultant for the filmmakers.
There were some people and details omitted from the film, and some have said the film portrays the plot as closer to succeeding than it actually was, but it’s a pretty accurate retelling otherwise.
It’s not too often that we see Tom Cruise portraying real-life people, and it doesn’t look like the actor will be returning to that well anytime soon. Cruise’s next big film will be the sequel to this year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two is expected to come out on June 28, 2024, with Christopher McQuarrie returning to direct and Cruise returning as Ethan Hunt.
Along with Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two will also star Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Simon Pegg, Shea Whigham, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, and Esai Morales. After Cruise finishes his latest impossible mission as Ethan Hunt, he is set to do his most insane stunt yet when he and director Doug Liman head to literal space to shoot their upcoming untitled film. There’s no solid release date for Cruise’s space film yet, so you can check out his much more grounded film Valkyrie on Max in the meantime.
