Tom Cruise takes an unexpected break from his usual high-octane routine in Digger, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s provocative new film. This time, there are no signature leaps, sprints, or aerial stunts. Cruise portrays Digger Rockwell, an obscenely wealthy oil tycoon whose relentless pursuit of fossil fuels helps trigger a worldwide environmental disaster. The story follows the futile attempts to contain the destruction and examines the consequences of Digger’s determined exploitation of the planet. The result is an occasionally bewildering but strikingly ambitious film—one whose sheer nerve makes it difficult to dismiss.
Audiences, however, have not appeared eager to wrestle with the questions Digger raises. The film struggled at the box office during its opening weekend, while many viewers who did see it seemed unsure what to make of it—not merely Cruise’s transformation beneath heavy prosthetics and aging makeup. A major source of that confusion is a central idea the marketing campaign kept almost completely hidden. That kind of secrecy is increasingly unusual in Hollywood, where trailers routinely reveal a film’s biggest moments to attract attention.
The movie contains several major developments that critics have understandably avoided spelling out. Now that Digger has reached theaters, those turns can be examined directly. Spoilers follow.
**Spoilers for Digger, now in theaters**
Digger’s First Twist: Who Is Tom Cruise Playing in Digger?
The first major surprise arrives roughly 40 minutes in. After the film introduces Digger, his extravagant estate, and the catastrophe caused by his Greenland oil operation, the world on screen suddenly fractures. A malfunctioning prop exposes the truth: what we have been watching is not reality, but an elaborate technical rehearsal for a stage production titled Fossil Fools. Cruise is actually playing Curtis Markson, a celebrated actor portraying Digger in the play. Curtis is already questioning whether his deliberately exaggerated performance has gone too far when he learns that his daughter’s flight has been delayed by severe weather and that no one can immediately locate her. Once the interruption ends, the cast resumes rehearsing, and the film returns to the astonishingly elaborate production unfolding inside the play.
Within Fossil Fools, the Greenland incident floods cities across Europe and kills vast numbers of people. Digger acknowledges his role, but refuses to accept sole responsibility. In a lengthy address, he argues that the world’s appetite for oil—and the comfort and convenience it made possible—helped create the business in the first place. Soon afterward, another ice shelf breaks away from a Russian glacier and moves toward Alaska, threatening an even larger disaster. The United States responds by detonating a nuclear weapon against the glacier, despite warnings from one of Digger’s scientists that the plan will fail. It does.
Digger Ending Explained: Does Tom Cruise Save the Day?
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As the rehearsal is periodically interrupted, the film gradually clarifies the purpose of Fossil Fools. The play’s events are not fictional inventions; they occurred before the story begins. The film takes place after an environmental collapse that has submerged major cities and left the atmosphere dangerously polluted. What began as a modest satirical production, created to express grief and anger toward those responsible, has been transformed into an enormous theatrical spectacle, complete with sprawling sets, a huge ensemble, and even extras—an unusual luxury for a stage show, but one that makes the illusion feel almost real. The production is financed and controlled by Digger’s nephew, Kenny, played by Jesse Plemons. Kenny believes the massive show can help survivors confront their fury and sorrow. He also taps his wealthy network to locate Curtis’s daughter, who is eventually found safe.
The play concludes with Digger taking his own life, prompting thunderous applause from the audience. Curtis, who has repeatedly complained that the production turns real events into grotesque caricature, finally falls silent. The film confirms the horrifying truth as theatergoers leave the building and put on elaborate gas masks before entering streets filled with floodwater and debris. The world outside looks unmistakably post-apocalyptic.
Neither version of Cruise’s character ultimately changes the course of events. Digger helps cause the catastrophe, but he never races to prevent it, despite the studio’s description of the movie as a story about a man trying to stop the disaster he accidentally unleashed. Instead, he watches as the U.S. president, played by John Goodman, moves from one grotesquely ineffective solution to another. Curtis is similarly powerless. Though his struggle is more personal and actively obstructed, he cannot alter the horrors of his world—or truly save his daughter, a task he is hardly equipped to accomplish as an actor inside a play.
That contrast is especially pointed given Cruise’s public image. For years, particularly through the increasingly spectacular Mission: Impossible films, he has portrayed men who repeatedly save the world at enormous personal risk. Digger initially appears to promise a twist on that familiar persona. Instead, it goes further in the opposite direction, presenting Cruise as both the man responsible for catastrophe and the performer who can only reenact and amplify it—not prevent it.
The film’s grim, seemingly predetermined conclusion raises a larger question: What does Digger want its audience to take from a disaster that has already happened, yet continues to damage lives and deepen old wounds? The story carries faint reminders of the COVID-19 pandemic, another global crisis whose effects remain visible. But environmental destruction is hardly confined to the past. In that sense, Digger stands out as a rare major-studio climate movie willing to acknowledge that much of the damage to the planet may already be irreversible.
The most obvious comparison is Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, the previous major climate-disaster film to combine celebrity appeal, bleakness, and dark comedy. Yet it is unclear whether Iñárritu wants to deliver the same kind of warning—or question whether that style of satire accomplishes anything beyond briefly distracting viewers from reality. At moments, Digger seems to reprimand audiences for ignoring films like McKay’s. At others, it appears skeptical of satire that presents itself as political truth while functioning mainly as escape. The film’s closing image settles on ruined streets rather than the audience’s temporary amusement at a vicious portrait of a wealthy man who profited from destroying the world—and whose family remains comparatively comfortable.
Digger takes an unusually winding route toward its many possible interpretations. Once the stage-play conceit is revealed, Cruise’s intentionally broad performance becomes more difficult to accept at face value, even as the added context gives it greater emotional weight. The film’s two realities begin to work against each other, much like its competing ideas about whether satire can meaningfully respond to catastrophe. That tension may explain the sharply divided reactions from critics and moviegoers. It may also be the point Iñárritu is making: In a world shaped by environmental collapse, finding firm ground—on screen or off—has become increasingly difficult.