Digger’s Box Office Is What Happens When Hollywood Fails To Read the Room

October 2026

 

Digger has bombed at the box office...

Supposedly because it failed to find an audience...

 

Like no one could see that coming...

 

Because exactly who did Hollywood think the audience for this film would be?

 

Certainly not the typical Tom Cruise fan...

 

Because Cruise is best known for films defined by incredible stunts...

Soft patriotism...

Fast cars... and even faster airplanes...

 

That use a lot of fossil fuel...

 

And Hollywood thought his fan base was going to show up for a message movie...

That demonized the men who get the gas for those guzzlers out of the ground...

 

Seriously?

 

And it didn’t help that it was clear from the trailer...

That the villain was going to be a white male who wears cowboy boots...

Has a preacher on standby...

A house filled with hunting trophies...

And that Hollywood shorthand for hick...

A Southern accent...

 

In fact, the entire supporting cast for its Big Oil villain, Digger...

The politicians and generals who help him destroy the world...

Are all overstuffed, bald white men...

 

Again...with Southern accents...

 

Oh... and the only truth teller...

And the only good guy working for Digger...

Is South Asian...

 

Now Digger is a black comedy...

 

But black comedies don’t work...

If all the caricatures are one-sided...

The skewering needs to be even-handed...

Which Digger doesn’t do...

 

But I suspect the pre-Ellison Warner Brothers ...

Thought that Digger would appeal to the same audience that loved One Battle After Another...

Another message movie that won lots of awards... but didn’t turn a profit...

 

So they brought on board a talented director, Alejandro Iñárritu...

Who has made many fine films... Babel, Biutiful...

And Birdman....

Which, like Digger, used the play-within-a-play plot device...

 

And they hired a skilled cast...

Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons...

And the actress of the month... German Sandra Hüller...

Who does an amazingly good American accent...

 

And it looks like Iñárritu was inspired ...

Not just by One Battle After Another...

 

But by Dr. Strangelove...

 

Bomb baby bomb....

 

A couple of Wes Anderson films...

 

And maybe Megalopolis...

 

Because Digger has that Wes Anderson aesthetic...

Where every scene has the unreal feel of a carefully designed stage set ...

 

And Megalopolis...Francis Ford Coppola’s old man’s folly...

Which I think no one saw ...but me

Was filled with references to Roman politics...

Including a character named Cataline...

And was grand, if incoherent, in the scope of its ambition...

 

And Iñárritu seems to have followed suit...

Not just in terms of Digger’s self important existential message ...

 

But the scene set in the European Parliament...

Resembles the Roman Senate...

And so is given a Late Republic feel...

 

Except everyone sitting there is extremely pale... and washed out ...

So, yes... Alejandro... we get the point...

White people are destroying the world...

 

But to his credit... Iñárritu employs both color and close-ups well in Digger...

With John Goodman’s face...

Which looks like a mask melting before your eyes...

As the most striking visual image of the film...

 

But much like Bardo...

Another Iñárritu black comedy...

Digger is painterly...and creative...

But it is another of his films that is stunning visually ...

While the film as a whole fails to fulfill the overarching ambition of its director...

 

But Cruise...

Unrecognizable in prosthetics and a fat suit...

Actually does a serviceable job as Digger...

Which requires him to toggle between playing the climate change villain...

And the actor in a play playing the climate change villain...

 

Who destroys the world...

 

But Iñárritu bungles this plot device...

Because it doesn’t become clear until midway in the film...

That is what is going on...

 

But Cruise, who is aging out of action movies...

Is not going to reset his career with this film...

 

And not just because his previous attempts...

At moving beyond his action film persona...

Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia...

Helped his career about as much as jumping on Oprah’s couch...

 

But because Digger is a message movie that sinks like stone...

 

It is a two-hour climate change rant...

With an apocalyptic ending...

As glaciers melt and the seas rise...

But they do so quickly enough that it has that The Day After Tomorrow feel...

 

And it ends with an expression of rage against Boomers like Digger...

Who are blamed for destroying the planet...

 

As if the younger generation doesn’t love their DoorDash, same-day delivery...

And fast fashion from China...

That crosses an entire ocean on a boat...

To be worn for five minutes...

 

Digger does remind the climate change doomsayers of this hypocrisy...

But this brief moment of truth-telling...

Is presented as a Trumpian rant...

Intended to deflect...

 

From the fact that the world is falling apart...

And, of course, Digger is the cause...  

 

But the real problem with a message movie like Digger...

Is that Americans have very short attention spans...

So you can get caught flat-footed ...

 

And climate change has dropped down a bit on the outrage menu ...

To be replaced by Gaza, gang rapes and gas prices...

 

So if you are going to hang your hat on a two-hour lecture about the evils of fossil fuel...

You are going to need to make a better movie than Digger...

 

Because it takes itself too seriously to be successful as black comedy...

  

And then falls flat because it relies on unflattering tropes...

That the coast elite...

Believe about the rest of the country...

Because they don’t actually know anyone who lives there...

 

But then think those people will pay to see their movie anyway...

 

But they wasted their money hiring an A-list actor...

Whose target audience likes to watch him fly an airplane...

That guzzles gas almost as fast as you can get it out of the ground...

 

So it was no surprise when they didn't show up to see this movie...

 

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