Tom Cruise Does Not Deserve ‘Vanilla Sky’s’ Atmospheric Soundtrack

The iconic keyboard intro of "Everything in its Right Place" by Radiohead playing within the first 30 seconds of Vanilla Sky was not at all in my mind for the opening scene of Vanilla Sky, and the soundtrack only got better by the second.

Yesterday, I set sails to bootleg bay to watch the 2001 film "Vanilla Sky" featuring Mr. Scientology himself. The film was launched on my For You Page some weeks ago, with clips synced perfectly to "Drugs You Should Try" by Travis Scott. It was dystopian and eerie, featuring Cruise in a perfectly smooth, emotionless mask posed to be this stalker antagonist. I've only ever known Cruise as the "Dad Film Actor," playing in high-risk, action films like "Jack Reacher" and "Edge of Tomorrow" catered to the male audience over 40, so I knew this psychological thriller was worth a watch.

I haven't even heard Sigur Ros' lyric-free atmospheric ambiences outside of a lowkey playlist I stumbled across on Spotify in a search for Beach House deep tracks. And to have "Svefn-g-englar" playing mid-crisis, my ears almost shed a tear.

By the time we got to "All the Right Friends" by R.E.M. as Cruise's character walked off in a melancholy strut, I, too, threw in the towel of defeat. This high-end trash of Vanilla Sky felt like it was graced with a soundtrack for the ages in an attempt to connect with the 2000s alternative crowd, only to fall shy with a confusing storyline.

And by confusing, I'm not implying the concept of a narrator recounting the past in an attempt to figure out his history is a flawed arc. Movies like "Inception" and "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" (which I'd argue the latter served as inspiration) pull off this complex style well, jumping around in time, often out of order, or with characters still to-be-identified.

I hear through the vine that David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" is just as psychological, but more gay (count me in). It will undoubtedly be my next watch in the genre of depressed protagonists with memory loss, if it meets the build.