American to find him.
Penniless, Shannon and Joseph are cast out into the street in the dead of winter. They break into a house to get food and the homeowner shoots her. Joseph takes her to the suitor’s house so that she can be cared for, then he disappears, thinking he has done the best thing for her under the circumstances.
Eventually, Joseph gets a job working on a railroad. One day he sees a wagon train on its way to Oklahoma for the land rush and he joins it. At the camp, he spots Shannon, who is there with her family and suitor.
“I wondered if I’d ever see you here,” she said. “I suspected that I might.” She is cool toward him at first, hiding her anger over his disappearance. She says, “Time takes care of everything, doesn’t it, Joseph?”
“Everything’s worked out as it should have,” he says. “Don’t you agree?”
Shannon nods affirmatively, then tells him good luck with his dreams. Of course, they meet again at the end, when they together claim the land they have wanted so much since their arrival in America.
When Far and Away was released in May 1992, during Memorial Day weekend, it took in an encouraging $13 million from more than fifteen hundred screens, but that was far less than Universal Pictures expected (by contrast, Alien 3 took in $23 million the previous weekend and Lethal Weapon 3 took in $27 million).
Critics were decidely less than enthusiastic about the lumbering epic. Hal Hinson of the Washington Post wrote: “ Far and Away is such a doddering, bloated bit of corn, and its characters and situation so obviously hackneyed, that we can’t give in to the story and allow ourselves to be swept away . . . Cruise has never seemed more lightweight; his job is to embody the virtues of a larger-than-life Hollywood movie star, and yet he has never appeared more inadequate to the task.”
Writing in the Chicago Sun Times , Roger Ebert praised the photography and then noted: "Are audiences thought not capable of seeing great pictures and listening to great dialogue at the same time? Are they so impatient they have to be thrown boxing scenes instead of character scenes? Is there any purpose to this movie other than visual spectacle?”
After it became apparent that the movie was not going to do well (it ended up grossing only $58 million in the United States) Ron Howard did a series of interviews to explain the movie. “Old-fashioned was what I had in mind,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer . “These are the kinds of movies that made me want to become a director, this style of storytelling. How the West Was Won, The Quiet Man—it’s a certain style of motion picture experience.”
Nicole and Tom were not much help promoting the film. For some reason, they had decided prior to the movie’s release not to do any joint interviews. Tom had been antagonistic toward the press for several years—often requiring reporters to sign restrictive contracts before he would talk to them—but Nicole always had a more realistic view toward publicity. She did interviews for Far and Away , only not with Tom in the room. “I knew it would be . . . difficult . . . for my career, when we decided to get married,” she explained to W magazine. “But I figured, God, you fall in love with somebody and get married once, properly. I’m not going to do it again.”
Ironically, the biggest disappointment of Far and Away was not a lagging box office; it was the less-than-enthusiastic way in which fans reacted to Tom and Nicole together on screen. Some people said it was because Tom’s female fans resented Nicole sharing the spotlight with him. Others pointed to the tepid on-screen chemistry between the two actors and suggested that perhaps they should keep their careers separate.
~ ~ ~
After Far and Away , Nicole expressed regret that she and Tom had teamed up on screen again so soon after Days of Thunder. Asked about those regrets by Movieline , she said: “I regretted the
Penniless, Shannon and Joseph are cast out into the street in the dead of winter. They break into a house to get food and the homeowner shoots her. Joseph takes her to the suitor’s house so that she can be cared for, then he disappears, thinking he has done the best thing for her under the circumstances.
Eventually, Joseph gets a job working on a railroad. One day he sees a wagon train on its way to Oklahoma for the land rush and he joins it. At the camp, he spots Shannon, who is there with her family and suitor.
“I wondered if I’d ever see you here,” she said. “I suspected that I might.” She is cool toward him at first, hiding her anger over his disappearance. She says, “Time takes care of everything, doesn’t it, Joseph?”
“Everything’s worked out as it should have,” he says. “Don’t you agree?”
Shannon nods affirmatively, then tells him good luck with his dreams. Of course, they meet again at the end, when they together claim the land they have wanted so much since their arrival in America.
When Far and Away was released in May 1992, during Memorial Day weekend, it took in an encouraging $13 million from more than fifteen hundred screens, but that was far less than Universal Pictures expected (by contrast, Alien 3 took in $23 million the previous weekend and Lethal Weapon 3 took in $27 million).
Critics were decidely less than enthusiastic about the lumbering epic. Hal Hinson of the Washington Post wrote: “ Far and Away is such a doddering, bloated bit of corn, and its characters and situation so obviously hackneyed, that we can’t give in to the story and allow ourselves to be swept away . . . Cruise has never seemed more lightweight; his job is to embody the virtues of a larger-than-life Hollywood movie star, and yet he has never appeared more inadequate to the task.”
Writing in the Chicago Sun Times , Roger Ebert praised the photography and then noted: "Are audiences thought not capable of seeing great pictures and listening to great dialogue at the same time? Are they so impatient they have to be thrown boxing scenes instead of character scenes? Is there any purpose to this movie other than visual spectacle?”
After it became apparent that the movie was not going to do well (it ended up grossing only $58 million in the United States) Ron Howard did a series of interviews to explain the movie. “Old-fashioned was what I had in mind,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer . “These are the kinds of movies that made me want to become a director, this style of storytelling. How the West Was Won, The Quiet Man—it’s a certain style of motion picture experience.”
Nicole and Tom were not much help promoting the film. For some reason, they had decided prior to the movie’s release not to do any joint interviews. Tom had been antagonistic toward the press for several years—often requiring reporters to sign restrictive contracts before he would talk to them—but Nicole always had a more realistic view toward publicity. She did interviews for Far and Away , only not with Tom in the room. “I knew it would be . . . difficult . . . for my career, when we decided to get married,” she explained to W magazine. “But I figured, God, you fall in love with somebody and get married once, properly. I’m not going to do it again.”
Ironically, the biggest disappointment of Far and Away was not a lagging box office; it was the less-than-enthusiastic way in which fans reacted to Tom and Nicole together on screen. Some people said it was because Tom’s female fans resented Nicole sharing the spotlight with him. Others pointed to the tepid on-screen chemistry between the two actors and suggested that perhaps they should keep their careers separate.
~ ~ ~
After Far and Away , Nicole expressed regret that she and Tom had teamed up on screen again so soon after Days of Thunder. Asked about those regrets by Movieline , she said: “I regretted the
Similar Books
