‘Digger’ Ad Fires Back at Critics With Tom Cruise Character Declaring “F**k Those People”

Don’t listen to those hoity-toity critics. Go see Digger and make up your own mind.

That’s the gist behind Warner Bros.’ online ad for the new Alejandro G. Iñárritu film, which is receiving some scathing reviews (and, to be fair, many rather positive ones, as well).

“Decide for yourself,” declares the text introducing the ad (below). The ad then kicks off with a critic quote saying Digger “is an ambitious film sure to polarize audiences,” before Tom Cruise’s titular character exclaims, “You know what? Fuck those people!”

Other contrasting critic quote messages flash across the screen, juxtaposing the words “Unpleasant” and “Masterpiece,” and then, “Baffling” and “Brilliant,” and “Insufferable” and “Magnificent.” The ad ends with Cruise’s character saying, “Never be afraid to tell the truth — whatever that is.”

It’s a pretty bold ad for a rather bold film, essentially telling moviegoers: “Some people really dislike this movie, so go buy a ticket to find out why and, hey, maybe you’ll agree — or not.”

The studio must have had some idea that the film was going to get pilloried in some corners as the ad went live even before the review embargo broke Tuesday.

The $125 million production stars a nearly unrecognizable Cruise playing an oblivious oil tycoon whose drilling in Greenland dislodges an ice shelf from a glacier that’s going to cause a global disaster. He must race to prove that he’s humanity’s savior before the ecological accident wreaks havoc on the planet.

At least, that’s the film’s ostensible setup. Digger contains a twist upending its narrative that’s complicated the reviews and discussion as critics have been tiptoeing around describing the film’s actual meta storyline.

Some critics have praised the film as a bold and timely story with incredible production design and features Cruise clearly giving the role everything he’s got in a bombastic performance.

But others have slammed the effort as a pretentious and obnoxious slog. The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney wrote that Digger is “a climate crisis satire so smug and bombastic it makes Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up seem almost innocuous. Digger is basically what happens when you put two outsize egos together with nobody holding the reins to keep their most self-indulgent impulses in check … so meta that you watch in excruciating weariness as [the film] disappears up its own ass and then realize to your dismay that there’s another eardrum-shattering hour left to endure … It’s difficult to imagine mainstream audiences ever wanting to be a part of this bludgeoning ordeal.”

While reviews are still coming in, so far Digger has a 53 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes across 113 reviews, a split that almost perfectly reflects the polarized response to the film.