IncredibleShrinkingCritic

Pluto was downgraded from planet to tiny ball of ice around the same time Tom Cruise slipped from star to ... cosmic dust? As the universe gets reclassified, it's possible that certain stars will no longer be the center around which all things revolve.

Tom ("You can't fire me; I quit!") Cruise has had one public-relations disaster after another, all of them avoidable if he had just understood that his power came from a slick veneer of unknowability. Cruise needed that aura of mystery because, as we can now see, every time he opens his mouth something distressing drops from it. Mel Gibson merely suffers from garden-variety paranoia and anti-Semitism, but Cruise's brain blips are so weird they're scaring the customers. (Has he chained Suri to the radiator? Is he really going to refuse to take that baby out to the park until someone pays him more for her photo than they did for Shiloh?)

According to Box Office Mojo, Cruise is Hollywood's 5th-ranked star (Harrison Ford is No. 1) by total box-office take. A guy like that should be worth a lot of money to a studio, sure. But Carrie Fisher is No. 13. Why? Because she happened to snag a role in what went on to become a powerfully successful franchise. Doesn't mean she can open a movie today (although I wish she could), and therefore reminds us that "star power" is not a stable, predictable, heavenly body.

Pluto was a planet -- of this we were certain -- and now it's not. Tom Cruise was a guaranteed star, and now Paramount has reclassified him as nothing more than dark matter.