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.
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48 films that influenced Digger
What critics say influenced Digger
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Critics invoke Kubrick by name, and compare Digger to 1 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…
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.
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.
Before now, what was the Tom Cruise role that was the least like anything he’d ever played before? Tropic Thunder, I suppose?
It’s cut from the same cloth as his loathsome Hollywood mogul in Tropic Thunder.
He's blustering and boisterous in a way the actor hasn't been onscreen since he played the grotesque Hollywood executive Les Grossman in 2008's Tropic Thunder.
…or more recently, to 2008’s “Tropic Thunder,” where Cruise played a character like the one he plays here.
Director
Wes Anderson
Critics invoke Anderson by name, and compare Digger to 2 of Anderson’s films.
Visuals Characters Plot
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…
Only Riz Ahmed, as a conflicted scientist who could have bumbled in from a Wes Anderson picture, has any dimension.
Digger’s twist will draw comparisons to the work of Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson…
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…
Wes Anderson’s sublime Asteroid City (2023) recently approached a similar meta-narrative with a wizened melancholy and provided one of the more cathartic texts about the intersection between art and devastation, especially in regards to modern blights (Asteroid City is, in this writer’s opinion, still the only good movie about COVID-19).
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…
…think Magnolia and Born On The Fourth of July…
Or his unforgettable performance as Frank TJ Mackey in PT Anderson’s Magnolia?
We still talk about his nasty turn as Frank TJ Mackey in Magnolia, for instance…
…he reminds us he is also the actor who brought life to Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, Magnolia, Rain Man, The Color of Money, The Last Samurai, Risky Business, Eyes Wide Shut and so many more.
This isn't a Daniel Plainview or a Charles Foster Kane.
It paid off last year big time with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which swept through awards season and the Oscars.
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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.
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.
Combine Grossman's over-the-top bravado and elaborate prosthetics with the unhinged aging cowboy energy of the "Rich Texan" character from The Simpsons, and you've got Digger, a man so powerful and self-assured he's convinced he can talk his way out of any situation.
My weary cynicism blinded me to the parallel the “Digger” trailer had to Robin Williams’s 1992 disaster, “Toys.”
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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, another wildly ambitious bid to skewer the chaos of contemporary reality.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Visuals Characters
Things get meta in a way that suggests a hard-left pivot toward Birdman-land.
Tom Cruise delivers an unhinged presence not unlike Michael Keaton's in Birdman.
You can even throw in Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning Birdman which with its theatrical setting has more in common with this one than you might gather from the trailers…
Though Iñárritu mined a fertile vein of sardonic humor in 2014’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), comedy has never been this grandiose director’s forte.
It all naturally evokes Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning Birdman, a film I love but that has proved divisive over the years; those who couldn’t stand that earlier picture should probably consider fleeing any country where Digger is playing.
The Revenant's relentless bloody chaos reflects the savagery of a man’s life, inside and out.
Pretend you’re watching The Revenant, Iñárritu’s glorious, artisanal time machine back to the untamed American frontier, and a documentary about the making of The Revenant superimposed over the picture at the exact same time.
Director/co-writer Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Birdman,” “The Revenant”) does one thing well with “Digger.”
…director Alejandro G. Iñárritu ("Amores Perros," "The Revenant")…
From The Revenant and Birdman which brought him back-to-back Oscars…
Yet, this is all coming from a man who plays the cloying and infuriating final shot of The Revenant(2015) completely straight, and who is mired in a year-long awards campaign for this movie while following his prior movie about the pains of awards campaigning.
Coming after the handsomely crafted but thematically overstuffed existential navel-gazing of the 2022 Netflix feature Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, which was Iñárritu’s answer to Fellini’s Otto e mezzo, Digger furthers the impression that the director is now primarily interested in making films about his own genius for mythmaking…
In many ways, Digger carries the same creative spirit as his last movie, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022).
…something that “Bardo” and “The Revenant,” for all their faults, were able to overcome…
Now, four years after Iñárritu’s previous Netflix film “Bardo,” the filmmaker is back in theaters.
…the director keeps his film far better focused than its more personal predecessor Bardo…