van der graaf

Tom Hanks is one of the most annoying human beings in existence.

banthafett

Neither.

Hanks is just annoying, with his big loud mouth. He is the white version of SLJ, very loud. All I see is Hanks, I never see a character.

Cruise, well I never like him back in the day, before all the bad mouthing started. Always seemed like a prick.

I always found both of these two, to be so full of themselves.

I think there are alot of people like me who feel the same way about Hanks. I think he is trying to change that, because, well he isnt that popular anymore and his movies pretty much bomb. He's tweeting or whatever, pics of him with drunk guys and shit like that this year before Cloud Atlas and it seemed he was trying to pose as a regular joe. And of course it didnt help, bombed. Just acting like the whores who "release" "stolen" nude pics, right before a movie comes out.

I believe the only movies of these two fools, I have in my collection are. The Toy Story Movies, and Collateral (thats because Chev Fucking Chelios is in it) and Legend.

BrewCrew

I actually like both but went with Cruise because I still look forward to his movies but not really Hanks anymore.

Nick Martin

Unless Tom Cruise is chasing down some Chinese Shit in Collateral, I'm still not seeing it. You almost had me at Chelios though.

Mattflix

Hanks is the better actor, but Cruise is in more movies that I actually enjoy.

Hanks generally goes for safer roles in mainstream movies. You can tell he tried to spread his wings a bit with Saving Private Ryan (his only movie I really rewatch at this point) and Road to Perdition, but those felt somewhat forced like he was trying to break out of the nice guy image a bit. And I love the Toy Story series but it's only voice acting and most of the magic is Pixar's doing.


Most of Cruise's work falls into "I'M AWESOME!!!!" characters, but he's got a few that shine through. Minority Report is underrated, the first Mission Impossible is a stylish action flick, and again Magnolia is his perfect moment.


Rain Man is Cruise trying to be Hanks.

bluetoast

Except at that point in his career, Hanks was in things like Big and Dragnet.

Charlie Goose

This thread is fascinating, I never realized there was so much anti-Hanks feelings around, I thought he was universally beloved.

asianxcore

Cruise

JumpCutz

Far from it.

He's been an average actor in some terrible movies over the course of his career. He's brilliant in about two films....and his Oscar winning work in Forrest Gump is downright cringe worthy.

GatorDeb

I'm also surprised at the Hanks hate. I always thought he was considered a "good guy" in Hollywood... out of the tabloids, no fights, no scandals, some good movies, etc.

Mattflix

Forrest Gump is a movie that was initially loved but over the years has had a lot of resentment built up against it. Mainly the then-new effects that carried the film now don't feel so special, and also because the movie beat both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption for the Best Picture Oscar.

Hanks is fine really, but he's just so vanilla. He comes off as a plain, nice guy, but in movies we want something a little more interesting. In trying to be a mainstream major household-name actor, he's had to make the safest choices possible for his movies.

Ash Ketchum

When I saw THE TERMINAL, a young man at the screening was going on about how Tom Hanks is the Jimmy Stewart of his generation. All I could think was, "If you can't tell the difference between Tom Hanks and Jimmy Stewart, there's no hope for you." Even when he was a light leading man, Stewart had a manic, obsessive side. (Check him out in the filibuster scene from MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON.) And when he decided to go all out in that direction, he blew audiences away (see WINCHESTER '73 and his other Anthony Mann westerns). Hanks has never done anything in that class. With SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Hanks stepped into Gregory Peck territory (think TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH), but he was only dabbling. (I never thought Peck had much range either, btw.) If I had to compare Hanks to anyone in old Hollywood, I think of Van Johnson and Dennis O'Keefe, light leading men who occasionally had more dramatic roles. Hanks has just had more opportunity to appear in Oscar-winning films than those two did. Granted, Hanks is arguably a better actor than Johnson and O'Keefe, so he managed to be a bigger star than either of them. I wonder if there's a more apt counterpart for Hanks in Golden Age Hollywood, someone on the spectrum between Jimmy Stewart at the high end and Van Johnson at the other.

I've always likened Cruise to Tyrone Power, a handsome leading man who was often in swashbucklers, but occasionally went dark, as in NIGHTMARE ALLEY and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, although, truth to tell, I never found him all that convincing in such roles. I would argue that Cruise is a better actor than Power and showed us in COLLATERAL that he could go dark and make us believe it.

hasslein

I don't think there is an actor more vanilla than Tom Cruise.

ken_572002

Hanks. I watched (and enjoyed) many more of his films than Cruise.

The Green Mile
Saving Private Ryan
The Polar Express
Apollo 13

Terminal

Hanks. Both are talented, but Hanks is just so much more talented than Cruise is. Cruise has some good movies to his title, but Hanks is much more appealing and can on many occasions be brilliant.

Mattflix

Can we talk about that spastic sprinting that Cruise seems to do is all of his movies? Like his mind thinks his body can run faster than is actually can.