The Sydney Morning Herald
· collected 2026-10-09 · by Karl Quinn, Nell Geraets
The film "Digger," directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, has become a significant box office failure despite starring Tom Cruise. In Australia, it opened on 335 screens and earned only $791,368 over its first weekend, placing eighth overall, which is unusually low for a major release featuring an A-list actor like Cruise. Comparatively, Brad Pitt's film "Heart of the Beast" made nearly twice that amount during its second week. Critics and audiences largely blame the movie’s breaking of the fourth wall as well as its depiction of characters and themes related to climate change for its poor reception.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-09,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
This article references major plot points in the film Digger, which is currently in cinemas.
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which → reference → cinemas
After just a week in cinemas, Digger is well on its way to setting the kind of benchmark no film aspires to.
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film → set → benchmark
In a year when cinema finally appears to be regaining some of its mojo thanks to a string of hits such as The Odyssey and the latest all-conquering Spider-Man offering, the climate-change satire from Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu is a reminder that there’s still room for monumental flops.
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satire → appear → flops
In Australia, the film opened on 335 screens and took just $791,368 over the weekend, finishing in eighth place.
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film → open → place
By way of comparison, Brad Pitt’s Heart of the Beast played on 336 screens and took almost twice as much ($1.511 million) to finish third in its second outing.
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Heart → play → outing
It’s the same story elsewhere, too.
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It → ’ → ?
In the US, Digger opened to about $US7.5 million ($10.7 million), a dismal result for a movie with a production budget reported to be somewhere between $US125 million and $US180 million.
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Digger → open → budget
Already it is predicted that it will be one of the biggest financial disasters in the business in decades.
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it → predict → decades
There are many reasons audiences and critics have failed to warm to this tale of global warming.
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audiences → be → warming
But one of the key points of contention is the way the film breaks the fourth wall.
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film → break → wall
For two of our Culture writers, this is actually the point at which they diverge in their response to the film – Nell Geraets finding this the point at which it tips into disaster, and Karl Quinn believing it is the point at which the film finally comes good.
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film → diverge → which
Here, they debate the pros and cons of that fault line.
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they → debate → line
The first 20 minutes of Digger surprised me – not because of how bad it was, but because of how much I actually enjoyed it.
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I → surprise → it
While most people bristled at Cruise’s bombastic depiction of the wealthy oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, I was smiling ear-to-ear.
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I → bristle → ear
Cruise throws all inhibition out the window, his enjoyment practically oozing off the screen.
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enjoyment → throw → screen
Finally, this all-American action hero, known best as Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible franchise, is playing a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad guy – one who sports a potbelly, bald spot and creepy cocaine fingernail.
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who → know → potbelly
Before you start grumbling, I’m aware he rocked a bald patch in Tropic Thunder too.
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he → start → Thunder
By the time he whipped out the ridiculously fake dying cat in a diaper, I was convinced.
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I → whip → diaper
The blatantly misogynistic jokes from John Goodman’s US president and a vomiting episode from his useless government cronies simply convinced me further.
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jokes → vomit → me
I’ve always enjoyed balls-to-the-wall self-aware stupidity on-screen (think Zoolander and Burn After Reading), and this is certainly that.
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this → enjoy → Reading
We’re meant to despise these over-privileged characters – the vastly underqualified leaders we’re expected to trust in the face of climate catastrophe – and boy, do we.
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we → mean → catastrophe
I kept wanting to like the Tropic Thunder-ishness of Cruise’s performance, but I struggled to tally his OTT acting style with Iñárritu’s clear intention to say something about a Very Serious Topic.
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I → keep → Topic
Things got a little better as Goodman entered the fray – OK, we’re clearly in the realm of farce – and the wide-angle lenses, washed out palette and general sense of something being a little
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something → get → farce
I couldn’t fault Cruise for effort – I mean, he really is the hardest working man in showbiz (sorry, James Brown) – but he’s not a natural comedian.
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he → fault → showbiz
In Tropic Thunder, he was surrounded by genuinely funny people; here, he’s doing most of the work, and you can really sense the effort.
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you → surround → effort
And that’s not funny at all.
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that → ’ → ?
But every gag in Digger has a deeply sinister undertone – it’s about the planet’s impending doom, after all – and I thought Cruise mastered that.
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Cruise → have → that
There’s already something a little sinister about Cruise anyway (maybe it’s the Scientology of it all), so every time he cracked a joke or pulled a face, my laughter was paired with shivers down the spine.
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laughter → ’ → spine
For me, the film’s true crime lies in its meta narrative.
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crime → lie → narrative
Iñárritu can’t seem to get enough of it, first with Birdman, then Bardo and now Digger – could we just remain grounded in one reality for a change?
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we → seem → change
While Cruise and Goodman admire the intentionally garish set beyond a window, a tree falls, and a giant man appears from the ground to reposition it.
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man → admire → it
Everything halts.
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Everything → halt → ?
It was at this point that my entire experience flipped on its head, as I realised this wasn’t a movie; it was a movie of a play, fiction within fiction.
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it → flip → fiction
Such an abrasive tonal shift rattled me, to the point that I practically mourned the over-the-top character farce I’d been enjoying up until the damn tree.
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I → rattle → tree
The film lost all momentum, trapping us inside a stuffy backstage area with a stifled actor instead of roaming freely within Digger’s wild, gaudy universe – a universe in which we were free to ridicule and laugh at the characters.
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we → lose → characters
Despite the obvious symbolism of a tree being knocked over by a human hand, this wasn’t the key transition moment for me.
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this → knock → me
But it started to unlock the movie’s central conceit, which is foreshadowed from almost the first moment, when we see Digger wake up in his bed in front of a massive window with a frame that makes the lush nature scene beyond look like a painting.
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scene → start → painting
It says something about the fetishisation of nature as a thing to be framed, curated, tamed and owned.
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It → say → thing
Sure, it’s symbolism galore.
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it → ’ → ?
But this film was ultimately marketed as a “comedy of catastrophic proportions”.
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film → market → proportions
…and 25 more, not listed.
The Aporia
