The Tom Cruise Thriller That “Disappointed” Christopher Nolan Will Soon Bring the Party to a Free Streamer

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Britta DeVore is a Senior Author for Collider who has been known to dabble with Reality News as well.

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When she isn't sitting behind her laptop bringing readers her hot takes on upcoming projects or keeping the dream alive in the Senior News team, Britta can usually be found outside hiking or inside behind her drum set. She currently plays in two bands, Kid Midnight and Watergate, both based in Brooklyn. An obsessive traveler, Britta loves long road trips to the South West and has a soft spot in her heart for canyons, rivers, and forests.

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It may now be considered one of the greatest projects from Stanley Kubrick (which is truly saying something), but at one point, the director’s posthumous release, Eyes Wide Shut, ruffled quite a few feathers in Hollywood and beyond. The Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman-led movie, which also marked the beginning of the end of their real-life marriage, currently holds a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, landing a 76% critics’ approval rating. And yet, even movie maestro Christopher Nolan admits feeling “very, very disappointed” after viewing it for the first time. Read on for more of the Dunkirk director’s comments on that, but if you have yet to see Eyes Wide Shut, mark your calendar for February 2, for when the title will join the lengthy lineup of content over at free streamer Tubi.

In a Vulture article from 2019, Nolan is quoted as saying that he was “so excited to see” the gritty and lust-filled movie, but that he walked out of it feeling “very, very disappointed.” But, with maturity comes understanding. The Odyssey helmer gave it another shot down the road and found something more to sink his teeth into than when he watched it in his younger years. “Watching it with fresh eyes, it plays very differently to a middle-age man than it did to a young man,” he said, “There’s a very real sense in which it is the 2001 of relationship movies.”

It’s true that, compared to movies like the aforementioned 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut feels about as different as they come for Kubrick. After spending so much of his career delivering horror, sci-fi, and war-centered projects, a romantic thriller hardly seems like the obvious next choice. And yet, that’s precisely where Kubrick’s creativity took him when he co-penned the script alongside Frederic Raphael in what serves as an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella, Dream Story. In it, audiences follow Dr. Bill Harford (Cruise) and his wife Alice Harford (Kidman) through an erotic game of cat-and-mouse as they allow their desires to lead them from one potential physical and emotional tryst to the next.

The Potential of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’

Despite some mixed reviews, Eyes Wide Shut still managed to gather quite a draw, earning $162.1 million against its $65 million production budget. Still, many believe that the version that made it to screens isn’t precisely what Kubrick intended, as he died from a heart attack shortly after handing in his final cut to Warner Bros. While it may have been the cut that the notoriously picky director intended, the studio went on to make some post-production shifts, leaving many to wonder what Kubrick would have thought of the final, final product.

Head over to Tubi on February 2 to stream Eyes Wide Shut.