{"id":689911,"date":"2026-07-13T20:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T20:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/689911\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T20:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T20:27:11","slug":"digger-five-things-weve-learned-about-tom-cruises-new-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/689911\/","title":{"rendered":"Digger: Five Things We’ve Learned About Tom Cruise’s New Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been something of a veil of secrecy surrounding Digger<\/a>, Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s eagerly-awaited collaboration with Tom Cruise. A veil that has somewhat lifted, thanks to the debut of the brand new trailer for the film<\/a>, which opens in October. It\u2019s now online for your viewing pleasure, but Empire was lucky enough to attend a trailer event screening on the WB lot in Burbank last week (where, for one day only, a giant shovel, much like the one Digger wields in the movie, was plonked), where not only did we get to see the trailer a few days early, but Cruise himself attended for a post-trailer Q&A. He\u2019s still not giving away too much, but this is what we\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n

\"Digger\"
\n1) It might be the new Dr. Strangelove<\/p>\n

From the off, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s movie has been billed as \u2018a comedy of catastrophic proportions\u2019. Which is an unusual move for the Mexican filmmaker, who tends towards heavy dramas. If there are laughs in his work, they\u2019re of the pitch-black kind found in the likes of Birdman<\/a> or The Revenant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Digger, though, is much more overtly comedic, with actual gags, a grotesque cat, and an amped-up, borderline absurd visual style. Its basic storyline, in which Cruise\u2019s oil man \u2018Digger\u2019 Rockwell is tasked with averting a global environmental catastrophe that he seems to have inadvertently started with a frack too far, also invites comparisons with Stanley Kubrick\u2019s Dr. Strangelove<\/a>. This could be the rare movie that not only can withstand those comparisons, but might just surpass them.<\/p>\n

\"Digger\"
\n2) Tom Cruise is not Tom Cruise<\/p>\n

Cruise has been in Maverick<\/a> and Mission: Impossible<\/a> mode for the past few years, and been very recognisably Tom Cruise. On a surface level Cruise here is also trying to save the world, much like Ethan Hunt, but Ethan Hunt isn\u2019t given to talking about the size of his dick. Digger is a very different kettle of fish. \u201cDigger is charming,\u201d said Inarritu in a pre-recorded introduction (he\u2019s currently finishing the film in London). \u201cHe’s funny. He’s impossible not to watch. Like all the most dangerous people, he makes you want to agree with him.\u201d As Digger himself says in the trailer, \u2018the story is yet to be told\u2019.<\/p>\n

Here, Cruise is also buried under makeup (and, it seems, a fat suit) to play the larger-than-life Digger, an old-school Texan who shoots from the hip, and looks not unlike NCIS\u2019 Mark Harmon. In the Q&A, Cruise talked about locking into the character\u2019s look and voice, with the teeth particularly important. \u201cLet\u2019s fuckin\u2019 go!\u201d he laughed, slipping into his Digger voice. \u201cAlejandro shows me, he\u2019s like, \u2018I want you to look like this,\u2019\u201d recalled Cruise. \u201cI\u2019m thinking, \u2018This guy\u2019s got fucking balls.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen Cruise step outside his innate Cruiseness before, of course \u2014 he\u2019s dabbled with prosthetics in the likes of Interview With The Vampire<\/a> and as studio boss Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder<\/a>. But this is a step beyond those, with Cruise promising a character unlike anything he\u2019s played before. More gross man, if you will. \u201cThere’s nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, \u2018Let\u2019s do this!\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Digger\"
\n3) This has been long in the works<\/p>\n

Cruise first discovered the work of I\u00f1\u00e1rritu when he saw Amores Perros<\/a> back in 2001, and became evangelical about it. \u201cYou could feel the powerful human voice of someone who was incredibly skilled at what they were doing,\u201d he said. They met about a decade later, and then Inarritu came to Cruise about seven years ago with the idea for Digger. \u201cWe both knew that throughout our journeys,\u201d said I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, \u201cwe had never done anything even close to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

4) The rest of the cast is pretty decent<\/p>\n

As well as Cruise, who presumably will dominate the film as its title character, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu has assembled a cast including Riz Ahmed, in permanently harassed mode as someone who appears to be assigned to Digger\u2019s side; Sandra Huller, who can be seen dancing with Cruise in the trailer; Michael Stuhlbarg; Jesse Plemons and, as the perhaps perma-befuddled President of the United States of America, John Goodman, giving serious Coen brothers vibes. In one scene, the President \u2014 who appears to be about to nuke a gigantic glacier which might have become unmoored thanks to Digger\u2019s digging \u2014 falls into a catatonic state and has to be slapped back into life. \u201cThey\u2019re exceptional,\u201d says Cruise. \u201cAlejandro understands music, and that\u2019s the universal language we\u2019re all finding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Digger\"
\n5) It was shot on VistaVision<\/p>\n

The movie marks the latest collaboration between I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and his multiple-Oscar-winning DP, Emmanuel \u2018Chivo\u2019 Lubezki, who might hoover up another one of the little gold guys for his work here, shooting under controlled conditions and, what\u2019s more, on VistaVision too. \u201cWe shot on VistaVision, because cinema deserves scale,\u201d teased Inarritu. \u201cWe used a 1954-designed camera, and for the first time ever Chivo and I were allowed to mount on some new crazy wide vintage Leica lenses designed specifically for our film.\u201d In the Q&A, Cruise, ever the cinephile, talked about the excitement of shooting on VistaVision. \u201cJust loading a camera in VistaVision, the sound of that film going through, I was like, \u2018Just everyone quiet for a second. Let’s just hear it going through.\u2019 It’s a beautiful thing. I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Digger comes to cinemas on October 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s been something of a veil of secrecy surrounding Digger, Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s eagerly-awaited collaboration with Tom Cruise.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-689911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}