10 Incredible Movie Parodies Nobody Noticed

James Mangold's Tom Cruise-starring spy action-comedy Knight and Day came and went in the blink of an eye in 2010, receiving mixed reviews and failing to break out at the box office.

Yet what so many failed to clock upon its original release is that Cruise - who had significant creative input on the project - fashioned it as a sly parody of himself and especially his own work on the Mission: Impossible franchise.

For starters the action sequences are absurd, most famously a fast-paced motorcycle ride through the running of the bulls in Spain - a sequence that's as outrageous as anything we've seen Cruise do in the Mission: Impossible films.

And Cruise's protagonist, deranged secret agent Roy Miller, feels like both an unhinged riff on Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt and also his public perception at the time, where much of the media vilified him as a "kook."

Yet many simply dismissed Knight and Day as a tonally jarring mess, rather than a daring attempt to do something different with the four quadrant action blockbuster.