The latest Tom Cruise vehicle Digger launched in October 2026 and has been all over the news as the year’s most divisive film. It’s an enormous commercial failure, for sure, but as a project it’s not without its merits.
Yes, we’ve seen it. Not many people have. It’s certainly worth a viewing if you want to be part of the Digger debate, but we did generally find it quite tedious going with much of its concepts. HOWEVER! The film already has a dedicated cult following claiming it’s the best film of the year, decade, or whatever. Let us contemplate it all.
There’s Something About Digger
Right, let’s clarify right off that the trailer doesn’t reveal what the film is about. From the above, it seems to be a slapstick rollicking comedy and satire. It kind of is that, but also not.
It begins with oil magnate Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise) colluding with American President Compson (John Goodman) to ensure maximum oil extraction from Alaska and Greenland. This results in a massive environmental catastrophe.
Environmental safety specialist Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) is called in to resolve the situation. He can’t. Meanwhile, Digger’s half-sister and business partner Emma (Sandra Hüller) drunkenly berates Digger about everything.
Jolly good and all that, we’re always happy to see Sandra Hüller, but then the plot twist kicks in. SPOILERS ahead, dear readers.
SPOILERS: What Digger is All About
Alejandro González Iñárritu wrote the screenplay with Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman. Iñárritu is most famous for the films Babel (2006), Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015).
Many of his projects teeter precariously near Pretentious Land. Digger is another example.
What’s really going on in the film is the scenes depicted are all part of an elaborate play called Fossil Fools. Tom Cruise is really an actor called Curtis Markson, who is performing as Digger Rockwell. All the actors are in dress rehearsal ahead of the premiere.
What this means is the scenes you see of the play are interspersed with behind the scenes, “real life” moments where Curtis Markson resolves family issues and/or struggles to comprehend the nature of the play and his purpose.
There’s a 2008 post-modern film called Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufmann that has a very similar premise. It starred Philip Seymour Hoffman. We know it’s revered by some, but we found it stunningly pretentious.
Digger tones down the excessive blurring of fictional/reality boundaries, but we still found the concept much less clever than Iñárritu believes it to be. The narrative builds to the big reveal at the end. The world is a toxic wasteland thanks to the efforts of Digger Rockwell, with the play Fossil Fools acting as a cathartic release for theatregoers to offload their rage.
It’s a decent idea, Tom Cruise gives it his all, and yet there’s just something about it for us where it didn’t resonate. And got a bit annoying. Plus, Sandra Hüller’s talent is wasted with a limited amount of screentime as a drunk and annoying character (but she does look fantabulous with the brunette do).
We genuinely went into the cinema (the lovely Picturehouse in Chester) wanting to love Digger. Plus, we’re glad we saw it in the cinema and supported the project. Full marks for having a go at something different in the mainstream rather than funding yet another superhero movie. Yet, Digger is often loud and annoying.
Everyone is always yelling.
Then there are more behind the scenes moments of earnest refrain, before the yelling commences once again.
We should note, some film buffs are hailing it as the best film of the year and claiming it’s a masterpiece. We can’t agree with that at all and feel it’s pseudointellectuals latching onto a divisive project to try and appear above the situation.
Digger has its fun moments, sure, but overall we found it quite aggravating viewing. Yet that seems to be the point. To be obnoxious and in-your-face. We were intellectually prepared to take that all onboard, but were bored by the end of it all and feel the script should’ve been a hell of a lot less bloated.
Notes on Digger as a Commercial Failure
The most stupid thing about this project is the budget, reportedly as high as $180 million. The amount ranges between $125 million to that higher figure but, either way, even if it was $125 million that’s absurd for an oddball project like this.
Digger still is in cinemas, in limited screenings now in the same month it launched, and has made $46.7 million.
It’s set to lose Warner Bros. around $245 million and will likely go down as one of the biggest Hollywood flops in history. To break even, it needed to make around $300 million worldwide (movie theatres keep around half of ticket sales per film).
Not that the film wasn’t marketed extensively, as it was. Trailers and ads were everywhere for it, but people seem confused about what it is. Its world premiere in London was even attended by Prince William and his wife Catherine.
Now, its failure has seen the western press all over the thing, revelling in the chaos. Amongst the many scathing and self-congratulatory features about, some journalists admit a film of cult classic status is already brewing. Catherine Shoard wrote for The Guardian in The Digger Disaster movie flop:
“There are early signs that the scale of Digger’s disaster may work in its favour. After all, this is no Bardo-ish damp squib, destined to be a footnote in a book no one ever reads. This is a movie whose title is already synonymous with gobsmacking folly. An apparently grassroots lobby is building a compelling case for Digger being a cult classic in the making. Celebrities have put their heads above the parapet to champion it – and not only partisan ones such as Anne Hathaway, set to star with Cruise in the upcoming Days of Thunder sequel, who gave it 10/10 on Letterboxd, or Glen Powell – whom Cruise mentored on Top Gun: Maverick – and who called it ‘pure cinematic joy’.”
We expect it will be hailed as a cult classic. Just not by us.
None of which will make Warner Bros. happy but, you know, maybe make your marketing campaign a great deal clearer next time. Or keep the budget to $10 million for such a distinct project.
