Quest-en-Scène: Digger Insists Upon Itself
I have a fondness for movies that are undeniably failures. One of my most formative moviegoing experiences was seeing Megalopolis in theaters with two of my close friends in 2024. It was incomprehensible, overstuffed, and unintentionally hilarious, leaving us stunned. We had never seen anything like it before. Overwhelmed with feelings I needed to express, I wrote a review of that movie for the Quest. This kickstarted my love for film criticism and led to the creation of this column. After hearing that Digger, a film with a nearly $300 million budget (if you factor in marketing costs) and Tom Cruise as the figurehead had opened to almost exclusively negative reviews and was actively hemorrhaging money, I was gleeful. Was this the sequel to the Megalopolis disaster that I’ve been longing for?
Digger follows an eccentric elderly oil magnate named Digger Rockwell, played by Tom Cruise. His willful ignorance and capitalistic greed results in his drilling dislodging a massive ice shelf that crashes into the coast of Northern Europe, causing a climate disaster that kills and displaces millions of people. Throughout the film, he is forced to deal with the consequences of his actions for the first time in his life, while also confronting the potential end of the world as he knows it. It is a dense film with a very specific agenda, which, in my opinion, becomes a problem.
Before I get too in the weeds of this confusing, deeply bizarre film, it is important to address the Scientologist elephant in the room. Tom Cruise is fine in this movie. He’s bombastic and over the top, but it’s nothing that I haven’t already seen from him. This film could only be made in this specific form with Cruise, due to his immense star power and industry influence, but his performance itself is nothing special.
Most of the acting in the film is lackluster. Highly skilled actors are either wasted in thankless roles (justice for Sandra Hüller!) or are struggling their way through outlandishly over the top and poorly realized material. The main exception to this rule is Riz Ahmed, who plays a climate scientist who acts as a foil to Rockwell throughout the film. Ahmed’s performance is excellent, a perfect contrast to Cruise’s buffoonery that has some of the funniest scenes of the film.
Digger was made as an indictment of didactic films about climate change that do nothing to promote engagement in real-world action. Films of this sort have grown in popularity in the past 15 years, as climate change worsens and becomes an increasingly desperate issue. One of the most widely discussed films in this group is Don’t Look Up, a 2021 satire film about a group of scientists attempting to warn the disinterested American public about a deadly comet that is set to strike Earth. The film was largely disliked at the time due to its heavy-handed and self-aggrandizing script, despite ultimately having little to say about the issue beyond “climate change is real and we shouldn’t ignore it!” These films are designed to preach to the choir and make filmgoers feel good about their own intelligence. They give the viewer a pat on the back for being able to recognize the issue at hand and allow them to feel superior to those in power who do not, but nothing more. Digger starts out feeling like another one of these films.
The viewer begins the film laughing at the incompetent men destroying the Earth, feeling firmly intellectually above them. “I would never act this way because I understand that climate change is a severe threat,” one might think. However, as the film goes on, it holds a mirror up to the audience, shattering their perceptions. It spits in your face, before saying, “If you understand this, why aren’t you doing anything? Why are you sitting idly by, laughing at these fools, when in actuality you are an equal part of the problem?” It is extremely hostile towards its own audience in a way I’ve never seen before, and honestly found quite refreshing.
That being said, I don’t think this messaging was well executed. It is very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to make a film about the dangers of didactic cinema without making something extremely didactic yourself. This is the trap Digger falls into. The film is laser-focused on its messaging to the point of being absolutely insufferable. Watching Digger felt as if director Alejandro González Iñárritu and Tom Cruise had teamed up to repeatedly slam my face into a brick wall while simultaneously screaming “DO YOU GET IT??” in my ear with megaphones. It lacks any sort of subtlety and, while occasionally funny, it’s ultimately an aggravating and annoying film to watch.
I understand that the film’s point is to be mean-spirited, but it has little going for it beyond hostility. It may not be stroking the viewer’s ego, but the film has a similar one-dimensionality in its messaging. Like, okay, sure, the general public wants to watch entertainment that validates their own beliefs without challenging them to do anything to help the world. Is that not what Digger is doing, preaching to the choir of a cynical audience who is disillusioned with the previous decade of poorly-realized climate films? The whole premise feels hypocritical, which makes the film’s self-righteous sense of importance feel even more obnoxious and unearned.
Unless a miracle happens in the next few weeks, Digger is going to go down in history as one of the biggest box office failures of all time. Additionally, in an almost too ironic twist of fate, it is the final film being released by Warner Bros. before its merger agreement with Paramount consolidates the two film studios. It is currently unclear how this deal will affect Hollywood in the long run, but this new monopoly has the potential to completely devastate the film industry at large. It feels like the end of an era, Digger being the final gasping breath of a type of filmmaking we may never see again. For these reasons, I encourage you to see Digger.
Was my review primarily negative? Sure. Is it a good film? Not really. Either way, it reflects a fascinating moment in the film industry and feels in many ways like the cinematic equivalent of the violin player's song as the Titanic sinks around them. Go see Digger and take part in this cultural moment. I guarantee you’ll have something to say about it, for better or for worse.