I don’t typically look at box office stats after I’ve seen a movie, but now that coverage of Iñárritu’s latest dark comedy has somewhat entered the mainstream, I think the media is confused. Did Digger bomb at the box office? Well, of the few news outlets that have covered it since its Oct. 2 release, all of them have said it did, which is interesting given the fact that I’ve yet to meet a real-life person who didn’t think the movie was great.
Controversy Over ‘Digger’
The critics seem to disagree, and film snobs are divided, but the consensus is that there’s no consensus. Haters are still disagreeing about why they didn’t like it. The phrase I’ve been hearing a lot is “it insists upon itself.” Checkmate haters! Have you considered that I, too, have watched Family Guy and know that the reference is about pretentious and empty film criticism?
If you look at the ratings breakdown, we get a little insight into who’s enjoying this movie and who’s not. On Letterboxd, which is populated by millennial and Gen Z movie fans and pop culture aficionados, Digger sits at about 3.9 out of 5 stars; however, my follower echo chamber consists almost entirely of people in college or college-age, and their average rating is much higher. Contrastingly, if you look at the reports of film critics on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, their average rating is almost comically low compared to the user average rating.
The large margin of difference is statistically significant, so we have to wonder why the critics don’t like Digger, but Gen Z does. Well, it’s probably due to the very same arguments that are bringing coverage of the movie down. Digger is a satire about a satire about particularly relevant politics, emphasizing how institutions of power are good at manipulating the narrative. Insert eyes emoji here, am I right?
A lot of the online controversy stems from Digger’s aggressive approach to climate change, capitalism, AI, and the way that billionaires would “roast our children alive if they thought they could sell them for a dime.” Listen, the movie said that, not me! This laundry list of talking points sounds right at home in a movie about cartoony, geriatric villains, right? It’s clearly making conservative audiences and casual movie-goers very uncomfortable, so why?
Look at the system around you, folks. Rub some brain cells together. Why would a dark comedy make those specific demographic generalizations about powerful institutions? I went to see Digger twice. Both times, Digger Rockwell’s face would swirl and morph into the faces of the billionaires we see in the office of the president, the billionaires making excuses for why workers don’t need breaks, the billionaires who’d watch this movie and think they aren’t the butt of the joke.
To Succeed, Or not to succeed
Cruise’s newest film has also fallen victim to the comment sections of TikTok, the same way that One Battle After Another (OBAA) did last year. Claims that the movie is misogynistic and unfunny to an uncomfortable point have forced ticket sales down in the Gen Z demographic.
In the same way that OBAA was a commentary on the strict roles society and the viewer create for Black women, have we considered that maybe the things people are complaining about are literally the exact point of Digger? Or were the evil government contractors just the friends we made along the way?
Digger is not a propaganda piece, nor is it a fluff adventure about redemption. It’s an incredibly astute depiction of what happens when you allow yourself to be a passive pawn of political narratives. Digger should scare you. It should send chills down your spine, and it should make you leave the theater wondering how close we are to this future, or whether we’re already there and don’t even know it.
messaging
Far from existing solely as a doomsday story, Digger is Iñárritu’s love letter to the generation of schoolchildren that watched Bill Nye rage about climate change and realized they inherited a shell of a future. In the movie, the children are the only innocent party, and the primary victims of the complacency of their predecessors. Sound familiar yet? Digger isn’t mocking your anxiety; it’s validating it.
This incredibly pointed moral of the film itself may be the reason why it’s not getting as much press as, say, Verity, which came out the same weekend. Directors and studios don’t spend millions of dollars to make movies that don’t mean anything. Iñárritu’s entire point is that if you let yourself be distracted by toothless entertainment, like this movie, you’re playing right into the hands of the politics machine that drowns you while watching from a bunker.
The director does a lot to make sure you comprehend that the absurd, unrealistic thing you thought you were safe from becomes very real, very fast if you aren’t paying attention. For a film anchored by Tom Cruise, typically a box office smash, the ratings show that audiences may have been alienated by the albeit heavy-handed messaging.
Closing Thoughts
In my opinion, there’s never been a more opportune time to recognize that in this modern age of social media and news sources in the pockets of billionaires, the narrative isn’t controlled by some cartoony villain stroking a cat on his lap like Dr. Evil. It’s controlled in a room of high-ranking officials in subtle ways you can’t even detect.
Having this pointless discourse about a political movie being too political means you missed the message. If you’re up on Twitter making up reasons not to go see Digger, that’s fine. However, let’s stop pretending that dodging uncomfortable commentary counts as critical film analysis. If you don’t think about the way you consume media, you’ll never realize what’s missing on your feed.
Is my conspiracy theory about Digger being deliberately buried kind of far-fetched? Probably, but art is inherently political, and making the masses forget a movie about making the masses forget something is a little too on the nose for this scientist to let go. As a Gen Z woman in STEM, I think that Digger is a surreal, must-watch for the generation of adults who have been warned their entire lives about the impending climate change apocalypse, by the same generation who can’t appreciate Digger’s cynical tone and overt messaging.
If I didn’t suspect that the majority of legacy academy critics probably get the senior discount at Golden Corral every Sunday brunch, or at the very least are wildly out of touch with Gen Z audiences, I’d bet on Digger sweeping at the Oscars. All this being said, you shouldn’t be basing your ideas on Digger from what the minimal coverage is saying. Instead, go and see it for yourself before jumping on TikTok and Instagram to read reviews.
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