Digger (2026)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity's savior before the disaster he's unleashed destroys everything.
87 connections found
View:
87 films that influenced Digger
What critics say influenced Digger
In a performance that melds his cocky motivational speaker from Magnolia with his belligerent, prosthetics-clad studio executive from Tropic Thunder, Cruise plays powerful oil baron Digger Rockwell…
I’ve heard some of my colleagues make comparisons of Digger Rockwell to Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder, but beyond the look, I just didn’t find the performances all that similar.
…or more recently, to 2008’s “Tropic Thunder,” where Cruise played a character like the one he plays here…
You can picture Les Grossman, Cruise’s studio executive from Tropic Thunder, watching the actor’s interpretation and going, “Whoa, whoa, whoa — too fucking much, guy!”
It’s cut from the same cloth as his loathsome Hollywood mogul in Tropic Thunder.
He’s channeling Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder but as an older character with a heavy, fake Southern drawl.
On Andersson, rather than any one film
Digger recalls Roy Andersson’s surreal, freeze-dried environments…
Visual references for the film run the gamut, ranging from Roy Andersson’s absurdist works and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things to compatriot Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men or even the video game Half-Life.
…as well as the bleached expressionism of Roy Andersson…
…think Roy Andersson meets Roland Emmerich…
…the whole Roy Andersson on steroids aesthetic of a pallid movie…
It's exceptionally obvious they're referencing Swedish satire master Roy Andersson and the look & style of his films as part of telling this stage satire.
Director
Wes Anderson
Critics invoke Anderson by name, and compare Digger to 2 of Anderson’s films.
Visuals Themes Characters
On Anderson, rather than any one film
Gassner and Johnson combine the obsessive detail of Wes Anderson with the slap-dash creativity of Michel Gondry…
Digger’s twist will draw comparisons to the work of Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson…
There’s a unique Wes Anderson hangover here and it really adds to the quirky setting of the film.
Think of how Wes Anderson movies always feature people speaking in monotone.
Only Riz Ahmed, as a conflicted scientist who could have bumbled in from a Wes Anderson picture, has any dimension.
Questions of obscene wealth are paired with a profound examination of artistic creation, echoing Babylon (2022) and Asteroid City (2023).
…whether Iñárritu’s all-the-world’s-a-stage conceit is familiar (Asteroid City got there first)…
Wes Anderson’s sublime Asteroid City (2023) recently approached a similar meta-narrative with a wizened melancholy…
His approach to Digger reminds me of Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr. Fox), making unusual scenes seem perfectly normal and inserting black frames abruptly between scenes…
In a performance that melds his cocky motivational speaker from Magnolia…
We still talk about his nasty turn as Frank TJ Mackey in Magnolia, for instance…
Personally, though, I kept thinking more about “Magnolia.”
Cruise’s collaboration with Iñárritu feels like a cross between “Magnolia” (1999) and “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” (2014).
‘Digger’ nos devuelve al Cruise de ‘Magnolia’…
…his Digger Rockwell was closer in spirit to the tragic egotism of Magnolia’s Frank T.J. Mackey, complete with a show-stopping monologue where he paints himself a savior from the ills of the world to which he’s contributing.
It does so with the same verve and invention as One Battle After Another and with the same degree of reverence for source text.
Iñárritu and Lubezki shot “Digger” primarily natively in the horizontal 8-perf VistaVision 35mm film format, the same format Paul Thomas Anderson revived to use for “One Battle After Another.”
Iñárritu shot the movie in VistaVision, a taller format previously used on One Battle After Another, which also means that its image will fill an extra-tall old-fashioned IMAX screen…
It paid off last year big time with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which swept through awards season and the Oscars.
This isn't a Daniel Plainview or a Charles Foster Kane.
Decked out in the cowboy drag he inherited from his wildcatting grandfather—shades of Daniel Plainview…
Advertisement
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Critics invoke Kubrick by name, and compare Digger to 2 of Kubrick’s films.
Visuals
On Kubrick, rather than any one film
Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography and Dennis Gassner’s production design achieve the Kubrickian grandeur Iñárritu clearly intends.
Without the Coens’ sprawling and witty ambition nor Kubrick’s piercing and singular eye…
Scenes and production design that recall works by Kubrick…
…a self-conscious hybrid of Stanley Kubrick and Bertolt Brecht…
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Themes Characters
In other ways it reminds me of the outrageous satire of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick would have loved this movie)…
…going over the top in a way that harks back to Dr Strangelove. The echoes of Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear satire are never far away from the action…
…a rough satirical beast slouching toward Bethlehem, a Southern-fried Dr. Strangelove in dire need of a Terry Southern…
Exaggeration may be a time-honored weapon of satire, but unlike that of such forebears as Dr. Strangelove or Brazil, the parodic energy is never allowed to build.
Hardass Defense Secretary Colonel Fitzgerald (Robert John Burke, basically playing George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove) just wants to bomb the runaway iceberg.
…with the meticulous production design and (seemingly) natural lighting of Barry Lyndon…
If Birdman and Megalopolis shared a child, it might end up something like Digger…
Digger epitomizes the difference between big swing and hubristic folly more than any film since Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis…
…such bloated recent debacles as Francis Coppola’s “Megalopolis”…
…the first real genuine big-screen folly since Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis…
The two recent films that come to mind which, while the majority disliked, I really enjoyed while at the same time despising are “Don’t Look Up” and “Megalopolis.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis was a similar baroque folly, but that film had a superpower that kept it from being a baffling failure: sincerity.
Director
Terry Gilliam
Critics invoke Gilliam by name, and compare Digger to 1 of Gilliam’s films.
Visuals
On Gilliam, rather than any one film
Iñárritu utilizes intricate visuals (Gilliam-esque, even)…
If you’re exposed to the works of David Lynch, Maya Deren, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Terry Gilliam, you’ll be at home in Inarritu’s audacious mess.
Hay algo de Terry Gilliam, Charlie Kaufman e incluso Michel Gondry en esta manera de deformar la realidad hasta hacerla grotesca sin abandonar completamente el mundo reconocible en el que vivimos.
Exaggeration may be a time-honored weapon of satire, but unlike that of such forebears as Dr. Strangelove or Brazil, the parodic energy is never allowed to build.
…think Roy Andersson meets Roland Emmerich, or The Death of Stalin with a Brazil wax…
On Gondry, rather than any one film
Gassner and Johnson combine the obsessive detail of Wes Anderson with the slap-dash creativity of Michel Gondry…
Hay algo de Terry Gilliam, Charlie Kaufman e incluso Michel Gondry en esta manera de deformar la realidad hasta hacerla grotesca sin abandonar completamente el mundo reconocible en el que vivimos.
Advertisement
Cruise's extensive, energetic monologue as Digger makes his case in front of a mysterious court is the film's apex, giving flashes of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men with the propeller of Iñárritu's signature tracking shots.
“You can’t handle the truth,” he rants. OK, he doesn’t paraphrase the Jack Nicholson role in his own “A Few Good Men.”
…fuses A Few Good Men with Les Grossman…
Digger’s rallying speech in a room shot like a courtroom crossed with the Roman Senate recall his "I want the truth" speech from A Few Good Men, only here it’s a few bad men…
In A Few Good Men Colonel Jessep said "you need me on that wall," and Cruise is at least as stentorian when he explains why Digger's audience needs what he gives.
Questions of obscene wealth are paired with a profound examination of artistic creation, echoing Babylon (2022) and Asteroid City (2023).
I was reminded of colossal misfires like Damien Chazelle’s Babylon and David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, bloated movies by directors so drunk on their exalted reputations they forgot there was an audience to consider.
…or Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon”…