Tom Cruise has spent his career pushing through doors and then pushing them again. At the Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater, following a screening of Alejandro Iñárritu’s Digger, he summed it up plainly: “OK, the door’s open. Now I want to push it again.”
The 64-year-old actor has faced the music many times before, from the stunts of Mission: Impossible to the prosthetics of Tropic Thunder. But Digger asks for a different kind of leap. In the film, Cruise plays a Texas oil tycoon whose environmental disaster forces him to confront the consequences of his wealth. The reported $125 million budget suggests ambition on par with his own. The film arrives just as Paramount nears its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Tone Problem
Critic Reviews Have Proved Wildly Divisive
Some outlets have delivered savage reviews for the film, among them The Hollywood Reporter. That review’s writer acknowledges the complaints are genuine yet still confesses to finding enjoyment in the experience. Committing this much talent and money to a picture so odd proves refreshing, even when its many component parts fail to work together.
The Mexican filmmaker Iñárritu, who has won four Oscars, spoke frankly about the difficulties involved in the project during a conversation. The production demanded a continuous balancing act between the theatrical presentation and what the camera actually captured. An idea that appeared brilliant while filming often appeared quite different when viewed again the next day.
“We were laughing all day,” Iñárritu said. Then he would watch the dailies: “Oh my God,” he recalled thinking. “This is not working. This is shit.” Adjusting the performance could send it too far in the other direction: “It’s too naturalistic. It’s not so funny.”
The director was speaking about finding the film’s singular tone, not admitting that the final product had fallen short. Still, the story points to how delicate the undertaking was. The performers needed to locate that tone within their own physicality and speech, he explained. “Nothing can be written in tone. It doesn’t exist,” he said.
Cruise’s Micro Decisions
Iñárritu compared the precision of Cruise’s acting to the “micro decisions” he makes during a dangerous stunt, when “one second is the difference between life and death.” On set, the director watched that attention extend to where Cruise placed his hands, when he winked and when he stayed silent. “Every take he’s just present and observing naturally,” he said.
Cruise appeared to thoroughly enjoy the company he was keeping. He kept interrupting to speak warmly about his co-stars, recalling how hard it was to keep from laughing around John Goodman. When speaking of Sandra Hüller, he began with a single word of praise before ending on a run of exclamations of wonder, “What an extraordinary actress,”.
It proved much simpler to measure his energy than his approach to acting. When Cruise delivered a lengthy response about spending years watching people in order to inform his character work, Iñárritu responded with a question of his own: “He keeps the secret. He don’t answer.”
Real Things, Handmade Films
By the end of the conversation, Cruise was making a broader argument about what audiences want. “This film is handmade,” he said. He described stopping on set with his colleagues to look around and appreciate the skill that had gone into the physical world surrounding them. “People want to see real things,” he said. Then, a little later: “People want real things and they want real experiences.”
Cruise did not say a word about artificial intelligence, yet his constant stress on “real things” and “handmade” filmmaking came across as a quiet answer to it. He kept pointing to the worth of the people behind the scenes, their learned abilities and the joy of sharing the task of creation. “It was never handed to any of us,” he stated.
For all his confidence, there was also an acknowledgment that the opportunity to keep doing this depends on people buying tickets. “My hope is always that the films would do enough that I’d have that opportunity to do it again,” Cruise said.
Whether audiences follow him into Digger remains to be seen. For now, he seemed grateful to have made the leap. “It’s not like I don’t have challenges, we don’t have challenges,” he said. “But I really choose to be joyful about creating.”
The cast and crew gathered for a group photo, and then Cruise spent 15 minutes talking with fans who pushed forward to take selfies and exchange a few words with a movie legend. Across four decades in the business, he keeps discovering fresh approaches to staying relevant in an industry full of risk. He obviously enjoys the work.
Key Facts
– Digger carries a reported $125 million production budget
– Cruise is 64, Iñárritu is 63 — near-exact contemporaries
– The film arrives as Paramount nears its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery
– Iñárritu is a four-time Oscar winner
– Cruise has been acting professionally for four decades
Source material: “With ‘Digger,’ Tom Cruise Takes On His Riskiest Business Yet,” The Hollywood Reporter.
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