Warner Bros.’ last movie ever is for and about you, the globalized general public.
If you’ve read a movie review claiming they didn’t “get” Digger (2026), that critic is doing you a disservice. The five credited writers, including director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, wanted to expose exactly this kind of reaction from such industry “authorities” on art. Digger does this through Tom Cruise—one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars—and a hyper-cynical narrative framework to make you question where Hollywood ends and a genuine critique of our media-obsessed society begins.
If You “Get” What You’re Watching, Digger is Brilliant!
The back-to-back Oscar-winning director Iñárritu originally pitched the idea to Netflix. He also had his star of The Revenant (2015), Leonardo DiCaprio, attached early on. An unexpected snowmelt at the filming location forced him to make an expensive 8,000-mile relocation to Argentina. The event sparked Iñárritu’s fascination with climate change and our absurd underestimation of it. But Netflix and DiCaprio passed on it to pursue Adam McKay’s climate satire, Don’t Look Up.
More than ten years later: Digger. It stars Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell, the world’s most powerful Texas oil tycoon. Desperately, Rockwell tries to prove he is humanity’s last hope before a glacial natural disaster he unleashed wipes out our entire modern way of life. By the time the credits roll, you should get that the movie pokes fun at you—us—the globalized general public. That we will happily accept a comforting, highly theatrical spectacle from the elite over the grim reality of accountability. And we will let them destroy our world while they find a way to profit from controlling the narrative of that destruction.
With That Said, the All-Star Cast is Brilliant!
From oldest to youngest, Digger’s cast brings Iñárritu’s main idea to life with remarkable ease and skill. John Goodman, the oldest among the top-billed at 74, plays President Compson. Though the role required it, Goodman effortlessly delivers the offensive, casual sexism of someone too old and rich to care about political correctedness during a high-stakes emergency meeting. His performance brilliantly leads the film’s pointed sarcasm toward the “good ol’ boy” culture in our political and military leadership.
A military commander brags about his Tomahawk missile, claiming it’s so accurate it could shoot the tits off a Russian ballerina from halfway around the world. The President breaks the tension, warning him to watch his mouth because women are present. The men maniacally laugh, since there are no women—and these men run the world. Another asks where Dr. Ganesh, Rockwell’s government advisor, played by 43-year-old Riz Ahmed, is from. When Ganesh answers “America” and then “Boston,” the real question is about his ethnicity. Like Goodman, Ahmed delivers a sharp, playful performance in this scene and throughout the film.
Ahmed took the role after Malayalam actor Fahadh Faasil dropped out. Producers had asked Faasil to spend three to four months in the United States to work on his American accent, unpaid. Jesse Plemons, 38, stars as Kenny Rockwell, Digger’s nephew. From Breaking Bad to Black Mirror, Plemons chillingly excels at playing characters who hold others’ lives in his cold hands. He brings that convincingly creepy edge to Digger, especially once the plot twist is revealed.
Even the youngest top-billed star, Emma D’Arcy as Lina, shows the same range, straddling comedy and theatricality for sharp social critique. At 34, D’Arcy—best known for House of Dragon—auditioned with a scene from HBO’s Girls, demonstrating her understanding of self-aware satire. Altogether, the cast’s performances reinforce Iñárritu’s main goal: to deconstruct our dangerous cultural obsession with narratives that let us project accountability onto a scapegoat.
The Verdict
Digger is packed with meta-textuality and symbolism. Cruise, now 64, has been a Warner Bros. fixture for decades, and this marks the studio’s final film before its rebrand under Skydance Corporation. Hollywood’s climate is shifting in every sense—business, culture, and even the environment. For those into all types of cool sh*t such as myself, Digger invites comparisons to avant-garde works like Cremaster 2.
Like Cremaster 2, Digger is boldly avant-garde—unapologetically grand, obscure, and pricey. Norman Mailer as Harry Houdini in a hive-like heaven? Both films don’t just play with history and narrative; they showcase what happens when a visionary artist is given free rein. In the end, Iñárritu didn’t just make a movie—it’s a statement about power and spectacle in art itself. Cruise with facial prosthetics, thinning hair, and padding that gives him the belly of an aging oil baron. Even the brilliant animatronic cat. There’s meaning and purpose.
Those who complain it’s too long, or takes too long to get to the point, are the point. Digger is about you, the globalized general public. Actual existential dread becomes cheap catharsis through identifiable scapegoats. People hated HBO’s Girls because of how on-the-nose it was about the gentrification of Brooklyn and tone-deaf prevailing whiteness. Now there’s annual binge rewatches. I see the same for Digger in the future; it will become a cult classic for its artistry that was before its time.
