Tom Cruise’s Digger ad turns divided reviews into a pitch to audiences

Tom Cruise’s new Digger teaser, released by Warner Bros ahead of the film’s 2 October theatrical opening, puts sharply different critical reactions side by side and closes with the line ‘Same film, different truth’. The campaign gives prospective viewers a pointed invitation to judge the film for themselves as its early reviews diverge.

The Daily Beast independently described the teaser as a Warner Bros release on Wednesday. It reported pairings of ‘unpleasant’ with ‘masterpiece’, ‘baffling’ with ‘brilliant’, and ‘very goofy’ with ‘excellent’. Cruise, speaking in character, also says, ‘They’re afraid to tell the truth, whatever that is,’ according to the report.

What the Digger teaser says

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw reported a further pairing in the ad: ‘magnificent’ and ‘insufferable’. He also described a clip in which Cruise’s character says, ‘Fuck those people!’ Bradshaw reads the line, placed in this promotional setting, as a jab at critics. That reading is his interpretation of the advertisement, rather than a stated explanation from Warner Bros.

Bradshaw says the short reactions used in the promotion appear to come from entertainment journalists on social media. His account does not establish the full context of every original remark. The phrases give the teaser its rhythm, but they are not a substitute for reading the reviews behind the sharply opposed judgments.

How divided are Digger’s reviews?

The split is visible beyond the teaser. Rotten Tomatoes showed a 52% Tomatometer score from 141 reviews when its Digger page was retrieved on 1 October. That is a snapshot of a changing tally, not a final verdict. The page also showed no verified audience ratings at that point, so the review score cannot be read as a measure of what ticket buyers think.

Among the excerpts displayed on Rotten Tomatoes, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle gave Digger four stars out of four and praised the scale of its ambition. Moira MacDonald of the Seattle Times gave it two out of five and wrote that it left her exhausted. Those are materially different judgments of the film, even before the ad selects a handful of words from the wider discussion.

Nick Schager’s Daily Beast review called the film a tedious satire while praising Cruise’s performance as a departure from his familiar action roles. The distinction matters: a critic can value an actor’s work while finding the film around it unsuccessful. Paired adjectives in an advertisement cannot convey all of that reasoning.

The film behind the campaign

Rotten Tomatoes lists Alejandro González Iñárritu as director, Cruise as Digger Rockwell and Warner Bros. Pictures as distributor. Its film page describes a powerful man trying to prove he can save humanity before a disaster he has unleashed destroys everything. The Daily Beast’s review identifies Cruise’s character as an oil tycoon and describes the film as a climate satire.

That premise helps explain why critics have focused on both the film’s ambition and its execution. Schager, for example, praised Cruise’s willingness to play an eccentric figure far from his action roles but judged the satire harshly. Rotten Tomatoes’ excerpts likewise show praise for the film’s scope alongside frustration with its effect. The advertisement compresses that range into quick, opposing labels.

What remains open before release

The Guardian’s Bradshaw compares the tactic with the promotional campaign for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, whose trailer drew criticism after fabricated quotations attributed to older film reviews were identified. That precedent illustrates the risk of using critics’ words as marketing material. It does not establish that the Digger teaser has fabricated any quotations; the original context of its brief phrases has not been independently traced here.

Warner Bros is directing audiences toward the film’s scheduled 2 October opening, according to the Daily Beast, and Rotten Tomatoes lists that date for a wide theatrical release. Whether the provocation changes anyone’s choice to see Digger, or how audiences respond once they do, remains unestablished before that opening. For now, the ad’s claim is about disagreement among early voices, while the fuller published reviews show what those voices actually argue.