Tom Cruise stepping away from fighter jets, motorcycles and impossible missions should have made Digger one of the easiest movies of 2026 to get excited about. Instead, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s strange new black comedy has produced some of the most divided first reactions of the fall.
That does not mean audiences have rejected Digger. The movie does not begin its wider theatrical rollout until the end of September, with its North American release set for October 2. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic did not yet have established critic or audience scores when the first reactions appeared. What we are seeing is something more interesting: critics who attended early screenings cannot seem to agree on whether Iñárritu has made a bold studio experiment or an exhausting mess.
So why is Digger already proving so difficult to embrace?
The movie apparently isn’t what its trailers suggested
Warner Bros. has sold Digger as a “comedy of catastrophic proportions.” Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an enormously powerful oil tycoon desperately trying to save humanity from a disaster he helped cause.
That sounds relatively straightforward. The early reactions suggest the actual movie is anything but.
Several critics have stressed that Digger changes direction in ways its marketing deliberately concealed. The Independent described the movie as highly polarizing and noted that Iñárritu personally asked early viewers not to reveal its surprises.
That unpredictability is exciting for some viewers. For others, it creates a problem: audiences expecting an outrageous Tom Cruise satire may find themselves watching something much stranger, darker and more self-conscious.
Even the marketing had been confusing before anyone saw the film. A June teaser spent roughly its first two-and-a-half minutes showing highlights from Cruise’s previous movies before finally revealing Digger. Some viewers initially thought they were watching an advertisement for a Tom Cruise retrospective rather than a new film.
The satire may be too strange — and not funny enough
The biggest complaint running through the negative reactions is not that Digger lacks ambition. Almost everyone agrees that Iñárritu is taking a huge swing.
The disagreement is over whether that ambition actually works.
Critic Kristen Lopez described it as a “very mixed bag,” arguing that the movie does not always trust its audience. Ryan Swen similarly called it “often unfunny and flat,” even while finding its ideas provocative.
That could be particularly troublesome for a film built around satire. Digger appears to be targeting billionaires, public image, environmental catastrophe, political power and the ability of wealthy people to present themselves as humanity’s saviors.
But satire becomes harder when reality already feels absurd. If the jokes are too obvious, the movie risks explaining ideas viewers already understand. If Iñárritu pushes too far into surrealism, mainstream audiences may simply stop connecting with it.
That tension seems to be exactly where the early divide is forming.
Tom Cruise is getting better reviews than the movie
Perhaps the strangest thing about the negative response is that Cruise himself is not really the problem.
Even critics who dislike Digger have frequently praised his commitment. Variety’s collection of first reactions includes compliments for Cruise’s performance even alongside descriptions of the movie as messy, unpleasant or narratively imbalanced. Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and the film’s production design have also drawn positive comments.
That matters because Digger represents something Cruise has rarely done recently.
For most of the past decade, his screen identity has revolved around large-scale action. Digger instead gives him heavy prosthetics, a different physicality and an eccentric character far removed from Ethan Hunt or Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Variety notes that American Made was his only non-action movie of the previous decade.
In other words, viewers may come away admiring Cruise’s willingness to take a risk even when they dislike the movie surrounding him.
Digger may simply be designed to divide people
There is another possibility: Digger is not failing to create consensus. It may be the kind of movie that was never likely to create consensus in the first place.
Some reactions have been extremely enthusiastic. IndieWire critic Jim Hemphill praised its visual invention and unpredictability, while Jake Hamilton called it his favorite film of 2026 and compared its mixture of styles to Stanley Kubrick and Black Mirror.
That is a very different response from critics calling the film unpleasant or baffling.
And perhaps that is the real story before release. Digger combines one of the world’s biggest mainstream movie stars with a filmmaker known for demanding, sometimes divisive work, then packages the result as a bizarre environmental satire rather than another safe Tom Cruise action vehicle.
That combination was always risky.
Whether general audiences embrace it cannot be answered until people actually start buying tickets. But the first screenings have already made one thing clear: Digger is unlikely to be the kind of movie where everyone leaves the theater having watched the same thing.
