Digger's Wildest Turn Makes It The Perfect Companion Piece To Birdman

Published Oct 4, 2026, 12:01 PM EDT

Brandon Zachary is a Lead Writer for Screen Rant's New Movie Team. He also writes or has written for Comicbook.com, CBR, That Hashtag Show, Just Watch, and TVBrittanyF. Brandon is an Emerging Screenwriters Semi-Finalist, co-writer of a Screencraft Quarter-Finalist, a seasoned on-screen interviewer, and a MASSIVE nerd. You can reach him at bs.zachary@gmail.com

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The following contains spoilers for DiggerDigger is a far broader comedy than what filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu is best known for. While the director has shown a talent for comedic characters, most of his work has been more rooted in grounded stories like 21 Grams, Biutiful, and The Revenant. However, he's also shown himself to be a deceptively ambitious comedian when he wants to be.

Look at Digger and his previous comedy, Birdman. Both movies have a lot to say about actors and art, all while containing critiques of the larger world. They embrace an absurdist approach that may be more pronounced in Digger but is clearly in the DNA of Birdman. In fact, those tonal connections quietly make Digger the director's true follow-up to Birdman.

Digger And Birdman Are Both About The Crossroads Of People And Art

Digger and Birdman may have very different scopes to their stories, but they share more than just a focus on actors and the theater. At first glance, Birdman's absurdist approach to a struggling actor trying to escape the shadow of his past fame doesn't seem to share too much with the ecological focus of Digger.

However, Digger's primary subplot reshapes the broad satire and puts the surrounding story in a whole new light. The story of Digger is actually an in-universe play titled "Fossil Fools," which pokes fun at the legacy of the oilman whose hubris had severely ruined the world around him. "Digger" is actually an actor named Curtis Markson, who is wrestling with the play's broad tone and the character's humanity.

Like Michael Keaton's Riggan Thomson, Tom Cruise's Curtis is a chance for Iñárritu to reflect on acting. While Riggan was an exploration of an actor trying to escape his legacy to reconnect with his passion, Curtis is just looking for a real person to embody with Curtis. Frustrated by the very over-the-top nature of the character, Curtis even gets into a shouting match with his director over the issue.

Curtis wants Digger to feel real, only relenting when Kenny Digger explains that his uncle can be real and a parody at the same time. Similarly, Riggan wants to be a respected actor again, even as his bumbling mistakes and short temper keep pushing people away and complicating his life.

Riggan and Curtis are both actors looking for something in their performance and frustrated by the lack of authenticity they find within. Although they take wildly different paths towards resolving that issue, there's a shared question about the nature of performance and the value of acting that speaks to the value of the films both approach the question.

Digger Is The Spiritual Successor To Birdman

While Iñárritu may be best known for his harder-hitting movies like The Revenant and Babel, the filmmaker has also proven himself to be a delightful fan of the absurd. Birdman is a purposefully strange and introspective movie, using the inherent drama of a washed-up star trying to reconnect with the world as a chance to poke fun at franchises and blockbuster culture absorbing actors of all types.

Conversely, Curtis is a parody of the actors who can't find the balance between farce and reality, his genuine concerns with the role coming out in immature outbursts and against the backdrop of collapsing props and a gaudy costume. Both stories speak to the complexities of performers and the ways they struggle with the lines that exist in their characters.

Both films also poke fun at actors for taking things so seriously, drawing out their internal conflict for comedic effect. In both cases, their struggles are earth-shattering in the microcosm of the movie and barely issues compared to the rest of the world. Both movies also find a bitter edge that doesn't distract from flashes of humanity, comedies that are mad at the world and not afraid to share it.

Digger and Birdman are both at their best when they find the right balance between the broad and the specific, drawing out critiques of the larger world while also being strange for the sake of comedy. That makes them ideal as a film pairing, a strange duo of absurdist dramedies that underscore Iñárritu's clear frustration and prickly empathy for the flawed and the ambitious.

Digger