Digger (2026)

When I first heard that Tom Cruise was gunning for an Oscar, I had a sneaking suspicion that I would hate whatever vehicle would serve that purpose. I subsequently witnessed ten million trailers for his new film Digger, and each time I saw one, I would hate what I saw even more than the last time. Then early reviews came out, seemingly confirming my suspicions that this was going to be horrendous. Finally, I went to see the movie, and for the first thirty minutes or so, my thought was “this is Minions for people who eat at Michelin Star restaurants.”

Then, all of a sudden, something happened. There was a bit of a plot twist to cap off the first act of the film. Without giving anything away, the reveal involved a miniature tree falling over. That was when I realized that something else was going on here. I sat through the rest of the film, and as it turns out, Digger is a layered, thoughtful film, even if it is quite loud.

Without spoiling all of the details of how it delivers its message, suffice it to say that Digger is a film about climate hypocrisy. In the same way that Dr. Strangelove was an indictment on how international governments handled the nuclear arms race in the Cold War, the primary layer to this film criticizes how both public and private entities, portrayed and indicted as inappropriately intertwined, handle the modern climate crisis. But where Dr. Strangelove primarily criticized authority figures for incompetence (and there is plenty of that here too), the primary criticism of power here is that it lies.

But there are other layers to this film than merely “the President doesn’t care about the environment.” There is a particular sequence where the titular character gives a speech to what is presumably the United Nations about why he lied for so long. In that sequence, director Alejandro G. Inarritu very effectively (if very unsubtly) delivers the thesis statement of another layer of this film: that for all the lying that powerful people do about the climate, the biggest liars are the people who push for climate activism yet engage in the exact behaviors that fuel the climate crisis. This film is not only criticizing presidents and CEOs, but also people unwilling to give up their lifestyle as just as much of a sham.