Climate Reporter Pans Iñárritu's 'Digger' as Loud, Heartless — SkimNews
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- 'Digger', Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film starring Tom Cruise as oil executive Digger Rockwell, centers on a Greenland rig whose methane leak collapses an ice sheet and sends an iceberg toward Europe — after which the executive keeps drilling.
- The film's proposed response to the crisis is a digital "firewall" tool to censor "methane," "iceberg," and "climate change" from the internet, while the president (played by John Goodman) suggests bombing the iceberg or praying for deliverance.
- The reviewer, a climate journalist assigned to cover the film, argues it says nothing viewers don't already know about corporate greed and climate change, calling the result "a mess of shrieking and spittle."
- Riz Ahmed plays in-house scientist Ganesh in a series of dialogues with Digger that, the reviewer writes, devolve into "worn-out culture war tropes," including a sashimi scene built around declining bluefin tuna populations.
- The film includes a self-aware reveal intended to position it as "a parable about a parable about climate change," asking what value a ham-fisted corporate-greed metaphor actually has for audiences.
- The reviewer compares the film unfavorably to Adam McKay's 'Don't Look Up,' noting that McKay at least hoped climate fables might spur action, while 'Digger' achieves what the reviewer describes as "about as much human warmth as a Twitter debate about permitting reform."
- The reviewer's parting recommendation: spend your money on 'Coyote vs. Acme' instead — "at least there, when the TNT crate drops, you don't have to think before you laugh."
Why it matters: A climate reporter who covers the beat professionally finds Iñárritu's heavy-handed satire has no more emotional pull than "a Twitter debate about permitting reform," concluding that watching a movie about a tyrannical oil executive is "not likely to make anyone buy an electric vehicle" — a critique the film itself poses via its twist but never resolves.
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