Tom Cruise and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in The Color of Money Image via Buena Vista By Anthony Crislip Published Sep 3, 2026, 12:07 AM EDT Anthony Crislip has always loved movies and television, and has been published in outlets such as SlashFilm and Ultimate Classic Rock. While working as a film programmer or judge at a film festival, he has striven to develop interest in underseen films. He is a particular fan of digging deep into forgotten corners of film history. Sign in to your Collider account Add Us Add on Google Preferred Source Google News Summary Generate a summary of this story Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Listen Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap Given how much Tom Cruise has been embracing his '80s hits with sequels like Top Gun: Maverick and the recently announced Days of Thunder follow-up with Anne Hathaway , one defining movie from earlier in his career has yet to receive that honor: 1986’s pool hustler classic The Color of Money . Much like the original Top Gun and Days of Thunder , The Color of Money captured Cruise at his most rebellious, angsty and purely charismatic. Unlike the other two films, which were directed by Tony Scott , Color of Money had to merely settle for being directed by Martin Scorsese , who was tasked with making an edgier kind of 1980s sports movie in an arena he knew well: smoky urban pool halls, where complex relationships between father and son figures could be hashed out.
The movie itself was already something of a legacy sequel to 1961’s The Hustler , with Paul Newman reprising his role as “Fast Eddie” Felson as an older and theoretically wiser man. In 1986, there wasn’t much precedent for a sequel produced several decades removed from the original, giving audiences a new view on the old character. Much like how Top Gun: Maverick gave the Tom Cruise seal of approval to its cast of younger stars, Cruise was practically anointed by Classic Hollywood with his casting. As if to seriously distance himself from the “Brat Pack” band of ‘80s of upstarts , Cruise jumped into the role and got the chance to act alongside one of the greats, starring in a movie by another one of the greats.
Paul Newman as Eddie playing pool in The Hustler Image via 20th Century Studios Far from the colorful pop-song montage style of ‘80s sports movies, the original Hustler was a quiet and sprawling character study of addiction and tortured masculinity, as exciting as it is tough to watch. It fit nicely into producer and director Robert Rossen ’s collection of morally grey working-class tales, and became one of Paul Newman’s most beloved roles. While the Walter Tevis novel on which it was based had a sequel called The Color of Money , the general narrative wasn’t exactly what Newman had in mind for a new “Fast Eddie” Felson story. That led to him, director Martin Scorsese, and writer Richard Price radically restructuring the narrative, eventually crafting something wholly new under the same title. The biggest thing borrowed from the book was incorporating 9-ball, the pool variation that became thematically tied to the core of the movie.
Legacy sequels weren’t exactly a thing in the ‘80s. Sequels tended to be seen as junky and cheap in general, with rare exceptions like The Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather Part II demonstrating that massive hits deserved to be revisited with seq…