When I think of Ben Stiller’s 2008 Tropic Thunder, there are two things that immediately come to mind and it seems like both might be coming back.
The first thing is Robert Downey Jnr in, well, blackface as actor Kirk Lazarus who is a white actor who spends the whole movie as an actor pretending to be black; by today’s standard’s it’s pretty offensive and outlandish, but even then, 17 years ago, that was the point.
Speaking about the role back in 2024, Downey Jnr said: “The language was saying, ‘Hey, this is the reason that we’re doing these things that, in a vacuum, you could pick apart and say are wrong and bad.
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“There used to be an understanding with an audience, and I’m not saying that the audience is no longer understanding — I’m saying that things have gotten very muddied. The spirit that [Ben] Stiller directed and cast and shot ‘Tropic Thunder’ in was, essentially, as a railing against all of these tropes that are not right and [that] had been perpetuated for too long.”
Couldn’t agree more.
The other thing I think of is Tom Cruise as Les Grossman, the grotesque, over-the-top studio exec played by a nearly unrecognisable Tom Cruise.
Les Grossman’s best (NSFW) moments:
Grossman is Cruise having fun; he’s loud, murderous and so aggressively hilarious that he steals the movie from all around him. and he might be coming back.
on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused Podcast, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning director Christopher McQuarrie said he and Cruise really want to make a Grossman movie: “The conversations we’ve had about Les Grossman are so f@#king funny,” McQuarrie said.
“[Cruise and I are] talking about it, we’re having very serious conversations about it, and how best to do it. It ultimately comes down to what that character is.”
McQuarrie said he and Cruise would discuss Les as an escape from Mission: Impossible, pondering what a Grossman movie could be: “We don’t even think about the structure, we play with scenes,” he said.
“Just to be sitting at a breakfast table, not talking about the movie we’re making for a minute, is such decompression. And just riffing with Tom playing Les Grossman at the table, it was one of the real joys of making this movie. It was all the stuff we were doing, planning the future while slugging out the present.”
Now, interestingly, Downey Jnr was asked if he would make a Tropic Thunder sequel, to which he replied: “Alls I’ll say is this, Tom Cruise and I have not yet done a project together and, ah, that’s kind of a ‘yes’.”
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In the age of offence that we live in, where we second-guess everything we say, everything we write, in case someone will take offence or misconstrue your meaning, I think we might just need Cruise as the offensive, agreeable Grossman and Downey Jnr back in blackface to help rebalance the scales of decency or indecency.
Make this movie, I would put real money on it that it would make serious, serious money.
Am I right? Wrong?
Thoughts? I know you have them and I wanna hear ’em all!
Watch: Robert Downey Jnr hints he’s set for a Tropic Thunder 2?
Robert Downey Jr. on a ‘Tropic Thunder’ sequel
“That’s kind of a yes.”
— Emir Han (@RealEmirHan) June 17, 2025
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Source: Variety
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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