[00:00] Is Digger Tom Cruise's biggest bomb, or the most important film this year that comments on the way this world is changing? Welcome back to New Rockstars, I'm Eric Boss, and this is an explanation of Digger, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu,
[00:13] a film that everyone in teams this weekend is asking, what the fuck is this? I'm gonna answer those questions here in this video, with an analysis and a review of the film. If you are new to the New Rockstars channel, we break down movies and television from the major fandoms,
[00:25] and really any major film or film trend that we're interested in, including weekend analyses of classic films that we love. Please subscribe for some non-pretentious and appreciative film analysis. Digger opens with Digger Rockwell, the buffoonish oil tycoon,
[00:38] waking up as his curtains rise to a picturesque estate outside, rising in a perfect frame designed to look like a proscenium arc of a theatrical stage. That is obviously intentional, as are the thoughts of the stars and the bubbling methane that preceded it.
[00:51] His dying cat, Maggie, defecates and vomits on him in bed as he takes a morning call with one of his employees, Sandy, who reports that the methane gas buried beneath the permafrost in this glacier that they're drilling on has ruptured, causing planes to shoot out from the ice and a massive crack to form.
[01:04] But rather than deal with this directly, Rockwell prioritizes a meeting with a veterinarian for his cast. And in that short amount of time, the full ice shelf breaks off, the size of a major city. Rockwell's advisors, led by Dr. Nirav Ganesh, played by Riz Ahmed,
[01:17] explain how this massive iceberg is headed toward the North Sea, threatening hundreds of millions of lives in coastal areas throughout Europe. This creates a crisis where President Thompson, John Goodman, and his vice president, Eddie, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, and various top military policy advisors idiotically debate how to handle the crisis.
[01:32] It seems to feel like they're lifted directly from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. So what do they do? Do they bomb the shit out of the iceberg? Or do they just wait and see and pray that the winds and ocean currents carry the iceberg south where it will melt naturally?
[01:44] That's what they decide to do in Not At All War in Europe, as Rockwell and President Thompson look out his windows, but then the background set is actually a scale model as a giant set decorator pops up out of a hatch to fix an overturned model tree.
[01:57] Yes, the big twist of this movie, something not at all communicated in the marketing, is that everything we have seen up until this point is actually a theatrical production, a play within the play of this movie. Tom Cruise is actually playing an actor named Curtis Markson
[02:09] who is portraying a fictionalized version of Digger Rockwell who was a real person in this history, a real oil tycoon who doomed the planet with his company's actions leading to an actual environmental crisis that artists in the last few decades of this history
[02:21] produced as a play called Fossil Fools. The rights to that play were bought by the real Digger Rockwell's nephew, Kenny Rockwell, played by Jesse Plemons in this movie, and adapted into this new showy production with high-tech springs and dynamic sets and lighting systems
[02:35] presented to us, the viewer, as an actual movie. So now this film starts to feel like Gonzales Iñárritu's previous film, Birdman, or Charlie Kaufman's adaptation, as we see Curtis trying to get a hold of his daughter who's traveling from Jamaica as a Category 6 hurricane
[02:50] is redirecting flights, and Kane works backstage as the wealthy funder of this play, feeling guilty over his uncle's actions, offering to help track Curtis' daughter. This fossil-full adaptation is directed by Hannah, played by Sophie Wilde, and what we are now seeing is a final technical walkthrough
[03:04] of the production before the audience is brought into the theater later that day. So now, as you're looking at the movie, it's kind of fun to notice the details that have been seen set in Rockwell's mansion, and assistants and other characters come in and out of the side doors that, due to the architecture of this house,
[03:16] could not practically lead to the corridors that seem to be beyond those doors. There are impossible doors, like what you often see in theatrical stage productions. And this also explains the specific costumes and the muted colors and even the makeup that they're playing. This was not done by any film color grading.
[03:30] This was all part of the set design and the costume design and the makeup design to desaturate how these actors and set pieces look to be part of a theatrical farce or satire, the way if you ever go see a production of a Moliere show, they're often wearing makeup that desaturates
[03:43] their faces so now we continue forth with the story of Digger or Fossil Fools knowing that it's a theatrical presented satire with all these world leaders behaving intentionally cringy and buffoonishly to serve a thematic purpose and their staging and movement is all meant to be seen as if we would be in an actual theater Or you know watching like a production of Hamilton on Disney The meta conceit of this film is a convention
[04:03] referred to in theatrical traditions as Brexian, referring to the works of early 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brex, who established a new modern style of theatrical production that would be presentational
[04:15] to the audience, with characters breaking the fourth wall, text and images projected on flats and screens on stage for the audience. using layered, exaggerated performances in costumes and wigs to communicate some overall social or political commentary.
[04:29] Presentational theater was in contrast to the representational theater, the traditional form of theater where the fourth wall is maintained and actors on stage are all playing lifelike, natural characters just living a reality where they are not aware that they are in a play
[04:41] and any social themes intended by the playwright are communicated more subtly through dialogue and plot and staging. Brex fell. Hey, folks, fascist forces are toppling society. There's no goddamn time for subtlety. Wake up! That might be the alarmism and urgency that Gonzalez, Iñárritu, and Tom Cruise deal with this story.
[04:57] Modern Hollywood films, especially comedies, often use absurdist and satirical elements loosely, like Deadpool breaking the fourth wall, for example. But it's rare to see a fully Brexian theatrical performance filmed as a movie. So even if you understand this concept, the satirical performances by the actors,
[05:12] the buffoonish Digger Rockwell as played by Curtis Markson as played by Tom Cruise, the buffoonish President Thompson as played by the actor played by John Goodman, and even the noble Dr. Ganesh, as played by Riz Ahmed, are not designed to be pleasant or even entertaining to a film audience like us.
[05:27] They're meant to offend, to annoy. That's why Brecht wasn't and really isn't for everyone. So as a movie-going experience, this is indeed hard to sit through. I will say, as a lover of the theatrical experience, just because annoyance is the point doesn't mean that we're not allowed to be annoyed.
[05:41] I think it's important for Hollywood to experiment with art house projects like this. Do all these experiments need to be $160 million Tom Cruise productions? No. But will anyone in this industry fund a project for what's this good?
[05:53] And will anyone see it if Tom Cruise doesn't attack his name and pour his soul into it? Also, probably no. But based on the opening week in box office, they might not see it anyway. That doesn't mean it should not have been made, or that there's no virtue to this project.
[06:05] Really a more apt comparison for what Digger is, is Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. A 2012 play written by Ann Washburn. Something I've been obsessed with for the past 14 years. The play is actually set in a future America decades after an unspecified apocalyptic event,
[06:20] with survivors sitting around a campfire as they try to remember the Cape Fear episode of The Simpsons. They misremember it as Mr. Burns being the villain instead of Spike Show Bob as he was in the episode, because in this society, they probably would remember the billionaire in charge of the town's nuclear energy as the villain of the story.
[06:36] So act two of this play is these survivors restaging the Cape Fear episode as an apocryphal myth and allegory and cautionary tale for their current plight. Actually, Washburn choosing to adapt the 1993 Kate Spears Simpsons episode was itself a brilliant choice,
[06:50] because it was a parody of the 1991 Martin Scorsese Kate Spears, which itself was an adaptation of the 1962 LG Thompson Kate Spears, which, hey, Apple TV just remade into a series this year. All of art is ultimately adaptations of adaptations of adaptations of artists trying to take these myths and apply it to the current society.
[07:07] In that play, Mr. Burns is ultimately a story about myths, adaptation, art reflecting life, and the very purpose of pop culture and art in a burning world, just like this Digger movie is. So the rest of the movie plays out as this play within the play.
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[08:28] Rockwell passed it to Emma, played by Sandra Hewler. She partnered with her half-brother to get his money to fund a climate-correcting startup that, we find out in this movie, will not work. Rockwell joins the president and his men to watch in horror as Europe suffers catastrophic flooding and Vice President Eddie pukes.
[08:44] I actually wonder how that would have been pulled off on stage in front of an audience. Rockwell takes Dr. Ganesh along with him on a private jet to address European leaders, but during the flight, there's this great dialogue where Rockwell monologues about the expensive tuna fillets that he eats
[08:56] and feeds mushed up to a dying cat, and how these tuna are bred in a special way by a Japanese expert, leading to the indignant Dr. Ganesh just eating the last piece and savoring it, just for Rockwell to reveal that he has no idea where they get the tuna.
[09:09] Ganesh and Rockwell address the European leaders in one of the film's more riveting scenes, as Rockwell monologues it to fight their protests of the damage done to the global climate. The comforts of the industrialized first world, like overnight shipping, global trade, and the like,
[09:22] are all made possible by oil. And it very much recalls Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko agreed-is-good speech from Oliver Stone's Wall Street. The angry European leaders rage against him, throwing a shoe at him at one point, the way George W. Bush had a shoe chucked at his head.
[09:35] But Rockwell wins a number of them over as they musically chant along with him, and Cruise does this showy kind of dance on a rotating stage. and security continues to tackle people who try to attack them. But when another glacier breaks off of northern Siberia,
[09:47] an even worse crisis emerges because the Russians buried nuclear waste under that permafrost. So now Alaska, Western Canada, and the Pacific Northwest are all facing nuclear fallout. Rockwell and Thompson's plan is to bomb that floating ice shelf
[09:59] into multiple chunks, ignoring Dr. Ganesh's warnings that each chunk will effectively be its own radioactive bomb that's impossible to contain. So here's where the technical run-through of the production breaks down. Curtis can't get over the fact that on Air Force One in this history, the president and vice president would not both be on this aircraft for this mission.
[10:16] But Gonzalez, Iñárritu, and Cruz are making fun of the fact that actors and productions research too much of the history so that they get hung up on historical accuracy and adaptation details while ignoring other hypocritical aspects of what they're even doing.
[10:28] So Curtis and the director Hannah and the cast all argue whether what they're doing is farce, referring to pure comedy from exaggerated performances, or satire, referring to higher art where the exaggeration serves a political purpose. And hilariously to me, this is kind of the debate critics and audiences are now having over what bigger the movie is.
[10:45] But then Kenny Rockwell interrupts to say, this doesn't matter. All they're trying to do is give the audience's pain to see this play some relief from their polluted world and a place to vent their anger at his uncle. That's really the best he and these artists can do now that the world is broken.
[10:59] Retell the myth to help society vent their rage and properly villainize the perpetrators. So now the film jumps ahead to the premiere performance in front of an audience, the final act of the play, as Digger Rockwell is now living with his family and inner circle on one of his oil platforms, losing his mind.
[11:14] His food supply has been raided, and really all that's left is the frozen corpse of President Thompson. So Digger climbs up on the railing outside, and with the audience cursing him, he jumps into the sea and drowns himself. As the movie goes on, we see more and more of the actual mechanisms of the theatrical performance,
[11:28] and I gotta say, it's all pretty well designed and really cool. But you do feel this falseness, and it's all being funded by the direct financial heir of that destruction. So the final minutes of this movie show Curtis and the rest of the cast congratulating each other with the crew,
[11:42] Curtis reuniting with his wife and daughter and taking a curtain call bow but then we hear a loud tone and the PA announced level four telling the indoor crowd of the polluted air quality outside So now they just routinely strap on gas masks some have fancy high masks from a company
[11:59] called Bungs, and head out into the polluted, flooded, dystopian midtown Manhattan as unhoused people wade through the canals, picking up rubbish, protesters throw stuff at the uncaring police who are armed to the teeth, and drones patrol the smoggy skies, mirroring the perfectly
[12:13] the unclouded starry sky that we opened this movie with. There are no more birds, only drones. And now, creepily, as the credits of this movie properly roll for us, we hear another chime and level four for us, the audience,
[12:27] leaving whatever theater we watch this movie in to head out into whatever air quality we're walking in and outside. Oof. That's why in my social media post reviewing this movie, I ended it by saying people would leave the theater breathless. Oh, I'm oh so clever.
[12:40] I admire Gonzalez, Inari, too, and Tom Cruise for making a bold arthouse movie like this and using their power in Hollywood to get Warner Brothers to make it for an insane $160 million budget, despite the $125 million they say it cost.
[12:52] And to shoot it with one of our greatest cinematographers, Emmanuel Lubezki, in the Best Division film format to showcase the writing and detail of this theater set so that we, the audience, can see how a future heir from the billions profited from destroying the world
[13:04] would try to overfund the myth of how the world ended. So, yes, it is okay to love this movie, but it's also okay to find it a deeply annoying vanity project with its head up its own ass, with a bummer message, delivered somewhat clumsily by filmmakers who don't fully understand the balance and nuances of Brechtian theater tradition and how to translate that to a Hollywood audience.
[13:24] I admire this film, though. I applaud Tom Cruise and Gonzalo Sinoritu and Lubezki and the whole cast for even attempting a project like this. I hope it encourages other filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, like Ryan Coogler, like Danny Gromlov to make their versions of this kind of project.
[13:37] And I think everyone should watch it, because I think there is something beautiful about this movie being the final Warner Brothers film ever made. Now that the Paramount acquisition of Warner Brothers has been approved by a judge, and the company is now part of David Ellison's Skydance conglomerate,
[13:52] evidenced by that very creepy reel that he posted on Friday, claiming a whole bunch of Christopher Nolan movies that he had nothing to do with. You may have also seen that the studio heads who greenlit this movie, Mike DeLuca and Pam Addy, the ones who all sorts of big swings on incredible movies like Sinners and One Battle After Another,
[14:06] are leaving the company. Digger is the last Warner Brothers film to not have Skydance and David Ellison's names on the credits. While Tom Cruise is chugging with David Ellison, can we not see Jesse Plemons' character, Kenny Rockwell, as the well-meaning and trust-fund heir
[14:19] investing heavily in bloated art to make up for the elders of his family ruining the world? I mean, are we supposed to hate everyone involved here? No, we did not make this video just to curry favor with Tom Cruise. I've never met the guy, and I don't think he cares that much about YouTubers like me.
[14:32] And we do not need to be added to his holiday mailing list of cakes from Doan's Bakery. We already bought our own for the office this week and we tried it. It's like a fine piece of cake. The Tom Cruise cake. It's got a chunk of something
[14:44] in it, a chunk of white chocolate. I mean, it's crazy. You go, a little sip, a little sip with it. It's really good. This is a cake. You know what,
[14:56] Tom Cruise? Call me. Please subscribe and check out our other analyses of films you love or maybe don't love and are just trying to understand. That's just a link to one of our members Paolo Bianca for supporting us at the executive producer level.
[15:08] And you can join New Rockstars as a member, too. Or you can get bonus podcasts on Supercast by clicking the link in the description below or going to nrunderground.supercast.com. Big thanks to studio tech Brian Kim, New Rockstars editors Joshua Stephen Hurd,
[15:20] and Abby Greal, and all of our supporting editors for their work on this video. Follow me at bbbox and hit that subscribe button. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
[15:35] Thank you.