By Look who is in South Korea promoting his latest movie:
Tom Cruise in his latest movie Valkyrie
Tom Cruise says playing an anti-Hitler plotter in his latest movie “Valkyrie” fulfilled a childhood fantasy.
In real life, the American actor says he harbors feelings similar to his German character, who led a failed plot to assasinate the Nazi leader.
“I’ve always wanted to kill Hitler. As a child, I used to wonder why someone didn’t stand up and kill him,” Cruise told reporters in the South Korean capital Sunday.
Studying his character, would-be Hitler assassin Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, Cruise said he “came to greatly admire him.”
“Although the story takes place during the World War II, I found the story ageless,” he said. Making the movie “was a powerful experience that I will never forget.”
Despite early skepticism toward “Valkyrie,” the movie had a solid $21.5 million opening weekend in North America in December and has made a total $77.6 domestically since then, according to the box office tracking Web site Box Office Mojo.
Cruise’s visit to Seoul, where “Valkyrie” opens Thursday, marks a rare promotional stop by Hollywood to South Korea, which traditionally focuses on neighboring Japan as the industry’s main Asian market.
But South Korean movies, until recently the pride of Asian cinema for their ability to fend off American competition, are struggling even at home. Box office results for Seoul up to November 2008 place local films in the top two spots, but Hollywood films accounted for six of the top 10.
“Valkyrie” director Bryan Singer said South Korea was picked as the first Asian country for the movie’s release because it’s “an extraordinary rising market” for both local and international films. [Star Tribune]
Well if Tom Cruise really wants to promote Valkyrie in South Korea, he should stop by one of Seoul’s many Hitler Bars, or better yet star in a commercial promoting the movie dressed in Nazi uniforms with Park Jin-hee. Cruise could even promote the movie in one of the anti-Semitic comic books out there.
12:24 am on January 21st, 2009 1
If Cruise’s star power in the South Korean market allows me to watch this historiccal costume drama in a theater AND perhaps persuade South Koreans to re-evaluate their superficial regard for Nazi symbols, I guess I can forget how the von Stauffenberg family and Germans in general protested his selection for the role, because of Cruise’s wingnutty Scientology views. There’s no irony here. Next, perhaps Cruise can make a film about the Jewish Underground, because von Stauffenberg’s criticism was a conservative one worthy of my anti-Semitic German family: Hitler dishonored the German Army by unleashing the SS. This is turf warfare, not the heights of moral drama. But, at least, South Koreans have a chance to decide now.
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5:22 am on January 21st, 2009 2
a little late
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