Tom Cruise and "The Last Samurai" can also be considered to be part of this formula. "Widescreenings" noted that for Tom Cruise's character Daniel Kaffee in "A Few Good Men", "[screenwriter] Aaron Sorkin interestingly takes the opposite approach of "Top Gun", where Cruise also starred as the protagonist. In "Top Gun", Cruise plays Mitchell who is a 'hot shot' military underachiever who makes mistakes because he is trying to outperform his late father. Where Maverick Mitchell needs to rein in the discipline, Daniel Kaffee needs to let it go, finally see what he can do." Sorkin and director Rob Reiner are praised
Tom Cruise Paula Wagner to form Cruise/Wagner Productions in 1993, and the company has since co-produced several of Cruise's films, the first being "" in 1996 which was also Cruise's first project as a producer. Cruise is noted as having negotiated some of the most lucrative film deals in Hollywood, and was described in 2005 by Hollywood economist Edward Jay Epstein as "one of the most powerful – and richest – forces in Hollywood." Epstein argues that Cruise is one of the few producers (the others being George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer) who are regarded as able to guarantee the