Tom Cruise has spent four decades as one of the most reliably bankable stars in Hollywood, a performer whose name on a poster usually signals a certain kind of crowd-pleasing spectacle. His latest project, however, is generating a very different kind of noise. Digger, a climate change satire directed by Oscar-winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu, arrived on Rotten Tomatoes this week with a 52 percent rating — a near-perfect split that reflects how sharply critics have divided over what they just watched.
According to Breitbart, there is almost no middle ground in the reviews. The London Evening Standard handed the film five stars and called it “audacious, risky, terrific fun.” The Boston Globe went the other direction entirely, giving it zero stars and labeling it the worst movie of Cruise’s career — a distinction that carries weight when the same filmography includes 2017’s The Mummy.
A War of Words Between Raves and Pans
The negative reviews have been unusually blunt. The Globe and Mail described the film as a work “so convinced of its own brilliance that it cannot see it is in fact the most banal variety of idiot: loud, ugly and forever oblivious to its own shortcomings.” The same review accused Iñárritu of endless scheming and dismissed him as “a cinematic charlatan who should have been buried by Hollywood two or three movies ago.”
The Hollywood Reporter was similarly unsparing, calling Digger a “climate crisis satire so smug and bombastic it makes Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up seem almost innocuous.” The trade outlet framed the film as the product of “two outsize egos” working without anyone to restrain their most self-indulgent impulses, and predicted that mainstream audiences would struggle to sit through what it described as a “bludgeoning ordeal.”
Those comparisons to Don’t Look Up are telling. McKay’s 2021 Netflix satire about a comet hurtling toward Earth drew similarly polarized reactions, with defenders praising its urgency and detractors finding it preachy. Digger appears to have inherited that same argument, only amplified by the involvement of two of the most decorated names in the industry.
The Case From the Film’s Defenders
Not everyone walked away frustrated. Deadline praised Iñárritu as “one of the most original and fascinating filmmakers working today” and argued that Digger represents a type of movie that rarely gets made at this scale anymore. In Deadline’s view, the film is “an ambitious satire that entertains, takes chances, sparks arguments, but is thrillingly alive as cinema designed to make us look at ourselves, hopefully wake up before it is too late, and ask the question: ‘What the hell are we doing?'”
That framing places the film in a long tradition of big swing satires that divide audiences on contact. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove is the reference point some critics have reached for, though such comparisons tend to set expectations sky-high. Whether Digger earns them is precisely what the reviews are fighting about.
Box Office Math Looks Complicated
The commercial picture may prove just as contested as the critical one. Digger is tracking for a domestic opening between $9 million and $19 million, according to Breitbart — a wide range that itself suggests uncertainty about who this movie is for. Against a production budget of at least $120 million, those numbers would put the film in difficult territory unless international audiences and word of mouth carry it further than the domestic opening implies.
For Cruise, the stakes are unusual. He has spent the past several years anchored to the Mission: Impossible franchise, where the formula is dependable and the returns enormous. A $120 million-plus satire with a 52 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is a different kind of bet entirely — one that trades the safety of a known brand for the possibility of something riskier and more polarizing.
Iñárritu, for his part, has never been a director who chases consensus. His films have frequently been described as ambitious, demanding, and occasionally maddening. Birdman and The Revenant both won him Oscars for Best Director, but they also drew their share of skeptics. Digger appears to be operating in that same register, inviting strong reactions from every direction.
What the Split Actually Means
A 52 percent score is not a death sentence. Some films have overcome middling critical reception to find audiences, particularly when a major star and a provocative premise are involved. But the intensity of the language on both sides — “terrific fun” on one end, “loud, ugly” on the other — suggests that Digger is not the sort of movie that fades quietly into the background.
What remains to be seen is whether audiences side with the five-star camp or the zero-star camp, or whether they simply stay home. The opening weekend numbers will offer the first real signal. Until then, the argument over Digger is likely to keep running — which, if nothing else, may be exactly what a film about climate complacency was designed to provoke.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2026/09/30/digger-the-tom-cruise-climate-change-satire-divides-critics/