Yes, the attachment with these men is real. I was 13 when Titanic came out in theaters and you could hear all the young girls in the theater falling in love…there was also Romeo & Juliet before that though. ❤️ And I have to say Magnolia remains my favorite role of Tom’s, probably because I was starting to realize he wasn’t all we made him out to be so playing that character seemed to be a bit of a self aware joke.
I have very little attachment to middle-aged Leo but nothing, and I mean nothing, will *still* fill me with a certain kind of adolescent yearning like the sight of his face circa the mid-late 1990s. I was around 12 when the double whammy of Romeo + Juliet and Titanic was unleashed on the world, and was in loooooooovvvvveeee. It doesn't go away!
I will also defend both of those movies to the *death,* by the way. I've given them both serious rewatches in the last several years to see if they "held up" and I'm even more convinced of their brilliance now.
Though incidentally, the one who caused me to spontaneously go through puberty on the spot à la your experience with Brad Pitt was actually Marlon Brando. My dad showed me Streetcar Named Desire at some point in middle school when I got into theater, and I never recovered. Still haven't. But it wasn't the same kind of crush as I had on Leo, maybe because something about Marlon Brando was too fundamentally adult and MALE to feel accessible.
Ah, thank you for sharing! I love Romeo + Juliet and believe it or not, I only watched it in the last few years. You can defend these films all you want, no judgement here haha.
I know what you mean of Brando. I think there was something inherently aggressive about him and of course, as we've come to know that was true behind the scenes as well.
Yup yup. And also I think it was just so much more explicitly sexual and I was still a bit too young to assimilate it. Like I could imagine Leo as my Dreamboat Boyfriend but I couldn't quite figure out what the hell I wanted from Brando.
And I cried BUCKETS over R+J when I was a tween. Actual buckets. I love that movie so much.
Growing up queer, and also without the language I needed to realize how I was queer, on top of the scarcity of queer media both in general and that I could access at the time, I was spared from this plight. I can tell you with the most extreme certainty that I was worse off from being spared from it as long as I was.
I think what a lot of people don't realize about struggles like this and adjacent to this, is that they can be cashed in as opportunities to trust yourself, and I think the sooner and more frequently one gets to do that, the sooner the body can settle into the fact that all of life is one of those very contradictions waiting to be acknowledged, as you say you've done here. Regrets that couldn't have existed without the related experience; pleasures that we can acknowledge as bad; the very act of creating meaning. It's all contradiction. It's ridiculous and lovely.
Tl;dr, thank you especially for the way you've bookended this one, Sophie. TFS Thursdays are therapeutic, truly.
Delights and insights, as always. Wolfs LOL at least they had the sense to not release it in theaters. My fave quote from the piece, and I'd watch all three of these movies (maybe I'll write one of them)!
"Tom Cruise confronts his own irrelevance as an aging action star."
"Brad Pitt explores masculinity without looking like he stepped off a magazine cover."
"Leo plays a man struggling with commitment and intimacy."
There’s something brutal and beautiful about the way you frame memory as muscle, how these men became emotional ligaments, even as their humanity thinned. Thank you for writing the essay most of us haven’t admitted we needed.
Wait this unlocked a primal memory of watching Brad in Legends of the Fall and feeling all the things. Also IWTV! I loved book Louis but over time I’ve become a Lestat truther, one of Tom’s best roles. I wish he’d play villains and anti-heroes again.
This hit hard considering my work and my own emotional journey with fandom.
I fell into obsession with Leo at 11. It's weird how learning so much about what goes on behind the scenes, publicity, narrative building can change the way you view someone in the present but the past can remain this comforting cocoon of a simpler time. I don't even follow his career anymore, he feels like a parody, regardless of how talented he is. With age, I feel like I catch on to those same guys much faster now. See the fawning and the wheels turning and can pinpoint where it's going. But the people who are attached have to go through that journey for themselves.
I may end up quoting some of this in a parasocial limerence piece I'm working on--I don't think what you've expressed hits that particular definition, but it explains the way that these attachments are real and activate certain emotional repsonses.
First off, there are SO MANY GOOD LINES in this piece from a writing perspective. This reminds me why I love SubStack so much, because I can stumble across writing like this. What a gift!!!!!
Secondly, this is so not a unique experience, and god what a comfort that is to know. I was the same way with Shia LaBeouf. Loved him since Even Stevens, adored (and still adore!) the movie "Holes," truly thought Shia was the acting god's gift to mankind and movie lovers. I defended him for years and years, until his latest allegations with FKA Twigs. That abuse, on the heels of "Honey Boy" (a film explicitly about his childhood abuse and how he's done the work to heal from it), was like a switch. I was done defending him. The love went away. But I do think the reason I held on for so long and viewed him so positively was because it was some form of 'first love.' And we all know how hard it is to stop feeling some sort of affection for our first love. It sounds so silly when I'm typing this out, and you basically said the same thing just 189732x more eloquently, but I just felt the need to leave a comment and say: YOUR FEELINGS ARE SO VALID!!!!
Great piece. I left Final Reckoning thinking again, “Will we ever have movie stars again?” He’s crazy but, Tom Cruise is a MOVIE STAR. ⭐️ Thank god we have George, growing up accordingly. I was the same as you, unable to see the appeal as a girl, desperately thirsty for him now. 😂
I find it interesting that you critiqued the way wealth is presented in Materialists but are excited to see Brad Pitt in F1. A movie that cost $200 million about a sport where being obscenely wealthy is almost a requirement for entry. I think a lot of film reviewers On Here need to have a reckoning with why they reserve the highest level of critique for a female, POC filmmaker but look the other way when it comes to their favourite white dudes
I think you've misunderstood both my critique of Materialists and this entire essay. I critiqued Materialists for its specific thematic failures around class consciousness and economic anxiety - not for existing within capitalism. By your logic, no one could critique a film's message unless they opted out of the entire industry. That's not film criticism, that's performative purity politics.
More importantly, this essay IS the reckoning you're claiming I need to have. I'm trying to examine my parasocial attachments, acknowledging their problematic aspects, and wrestling with how to move forward more consciously. Accusing me of 'looking the other way' when the entire piece is about confronting these blind spots suggests you either didn't read it or completely missed the point.
Your concern about supporting diverse filmmakers is valid, but demanding ideological consistency between critiquing one film's themes and my entire viewing habits is absurd. I can think Materialists has a terrible message about love and economics while still existing as a film consumer.
Yes, the attachment with these men is real. I was 13 when Titanic came out in theaters and you could hear all the young girls in the theater falling in love…there was also Romeo & Juliet before that though. ❤️ And I have to say Magnolia remains my favorite role of Tom’s, probably because I was starting to realize he wasn’t all we made him out to be so playing that character seemed to be a bit of a self aware joke.
MAGNOLIA!!!
I have very little attachment to middle-aged Leo but nothing, and I mean nothing, will *still* fill me with a certain kind of adolescent yearning like the sight of his face circa the mid-late 1990s. I was around 12 when the double whammy of Romeo + Juliet and Titanic was unleashed on the world, and was in loooooooovvvvveeee. It doesn't go away!
I will also defend both of those movies to the *death,* by the way. I've given them both serious rewatches in the last several years to see if they "held up" and I'm even more convinced of their brilliance now.
Though incidentally, the one who caused me to spontaneously go through puberty on the spot à la your experience with Brad Pitt was actually Marlon Brando. My dad showed me Streetcar Named Desire at some point in middle school when I got into theater, and I never recovered. Still haven't. But it wasn't the same kind of crush as I had on Leo, maybe because something about Marlon Brando was too fundamentally adult and MALE to feel accessible.
Ah, thank you for sharing! I love Romeo + Juliet and believe it or not, I only watched it in the last few years. You can defend these films all you want, no judgement here haha.
I know what you mean of Brando. I think there was something inherently aggressive about him and of course, as we've come to know that was true behind the scenes as well.
Yup yup. And also I think it was just so much more explicitly sexual and I was still a bit too young to assimilate it. Like I could imagine Leo as my Dreamboat Boyfriend but I couldn't quite figure out what the hell I wanted from Brando.
And I cried BUCKETS over R+J when I was a tween. Actual buckets. I love that movie so much.
Growing up queer, and also without the language I needed to realize how I was queer, on top of the scarcity of queer media both in general and that I could access at the time, I was spared from this plight. I can tell you with the most extreme certainty that I was worse off from being spared from it as long as I was.
I think what a lot of people don't realize about struggles like this and adjacent to this, is that they can be cashed in as opportunities to trust yourself, and I think the sooner and more frequently one gets to do that, the sooner the body can settle into the fact that all of life is one of those very contradictions waiting to be acknowledged, as you say you've done here. Regrets that couldn't have existed without the related experience; pleasures that we can acknowledge as bad; the very act of creating meaning. It's all contradiction. It's ridiculous and lovely.
Tl;dr, thank you especially for the way you've bookended this one, Sophie. TFS Thursdays are therapeutic, truly.
Delights and insights, as always. Wolfs LOL at least they had the sense to not release it in theaters. My fave quote from the piece, and I'd watch all three of these movies (maybe I'll write one of them)!
"Tom Cruise confronts his own irrelevance as an aging action star."
"Brad Pitt explores masculinity without looking like he stepped off a magazine cover."
"Leo plays a man struggling with commitment and intimacy."
Thank you so much for picking your favorite quotes from the piece 🥹
There’s something brutal and beautiful about the way you frame memory as muscle, how these men became emotional ligaments, even as their humanity thinned. Thank you for writing the essay most of us haven’t admitted we needed.
Wait this unlocked a primal memory of watching Brad in Legends of the Fall and feeling all the things. Also IWTV! I loved book Louis but over time I’ve become a Lestat truther, one of Tom’s best roles. I wish he’d play villains and anti-heroes again.
So many core memories 😭
This hit hard considering my work and my own emotional journey with fandom.
I fell into obsession with Leo at 11. It's weird how learning so much about what goes on behind the scenes, publicity, narrative building can change the way you view someone in the present but the past can remain this comforting cocoon of a simpler time. I don't even follow his career anymore, he feels like a parody, regardless of how talented he is. With age, I feel like I catch on to those same guys much faster now. See the fawning and the wheels turning and can pinpoint where it's going. But the people who are attached have to go through that journey for themselves.
I may end up quoting some of this in a parasocial limerence piece I'm working on--I don't think what you've expressed hits that particular definition, but it explains the way that these attachments are real and activate certain emotional repsonses.
There's a movie I fantasize about where Tom Cruise confronts his own irrelevance as an aging action star.
fwiw top gun maverick digs into this.
First off, there are SO MANY GOOD LINES in this piece from a writing perspective. This reminds me why I love SubStack so much, because I can stumble across writing like this. What a gift!!!!!
Secondly, this is so not a unique experience, and god what a comfort that is to know. I was the same way with Shia LaBeouf. Loved him since Even Stevens, adored (and still adore!) the movie "Holes," truly thought Shia was the acting god's gift to mankind and movie lovers. I defended him for years and years, until his latest allegations with FKA Twigs. That abuse, on the heels of "Honey Boy" (a film explicitly about his childhood abuse and how he's done the work to heal from it), was like a switch. I was done defending him. The love went away. But I do think the reason I held on for so long and viewed him so positively was because it was some form of 'first love.' And we all know how hard it is to stop feeling some sort of affection for our first love. It sounds so silly when I'm typing this out, and you basically said the same thing just 189732x more eloquently, but I just felt the need to leave a comment and say: YOUR FEELINGS ARE SO VALID!!!!
Great piece. I left Final Reckoning thinking again, “Will we ever have movie stars again?” He’s crazy but, Tom Cruise is a MOVIE STAR. ⭐️ Thank god we have George, growing up accordingly. I was the same as you, unable to see the appeal as a girl, desperately thirsty for him now. 😂
I find it interesting that you critiqued the way wealth is presented in Materialists but are excited to see Brad Pitt in F1. A movie that cost $200 million about a sport where being obscenely wealthy is almost a requirement for entry. I think a lot of film reviewers On Here need to have a reckoning with why they reserve the highest level of critique for a female, POC filmmaker but look the other way when it comes to their favourite white dudes
I think you've misunderstood both my critique of Materialists and this entire essay. I critiqued Materialists for its specific thematic failures around class consciousness and economic anxiety - not for existing within capitalism. By your logic, no one could critique a film's message unless they opted out of the entire industry. That's not film criticism, that's performative purity politics.
More importantly, this essay IS the reckoning you're claiming I need to have. I'm trying to examine my parasocial attachments, acknowledging their problematic aspects, and wrestling with how to move forward more consciously. Accusing me of 'looking the other way' when the entire piece is about confronting these blind spots suggests you either didn't read it or completely missed the point.
Your concern about supporting diverse filmmakers is valid, but demanding ideological consistency between critiquing one film's themes and my entire viewing habits is absurd. I can think Materialists has a terrible message about love and economics while still existing as a film consumer.