TPToA Podcast 465 – Digger

Digger

What do you get when an Oscar-winning auteur decides to dig a giant hole through environmental collapse, capitalist excess, and the very nature of performance itself? This week we’re shoveling into Digger (2026), the wildly ambitious (and intensely divisive) new satire from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the filmmaker behind Birdman and The Revenant.

Starring Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an ageing oil magnate whose actions help unleash an ecological catastrophe, the film blends environmental anxiety, political satire, and theatre in ways that are… a BIG SWING. Alongside a heavyweight cast including Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, and Jesse Plemons, the film asks big questions about power, responsibility, and whether the people causing the problem can ever be trusted to save us from it.

For Dion and Quinny, the real question is whether Iñárritu’s highly theatrical, self-aware approach manages to elevate the story, or whether it disappears up it’s own drill-hole. And perhaps the biggest question of all: is Tom Cruise, one of cinema’s most famous blockbuster icons, the right person to front a film that takes aim at capitalism, corporate power, and environmental destruction? Or does that tension make the whole thing even more fascinating?

Official Synopsis (IMDb):

“Digger: The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s saviour before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.”

https://youtu.be/bm-pwY9DkSs

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https://youtu.be/qORTe1wW3Wg?si=9LPDKqANsXGUWIXD

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