Director Innaritu Embraces Backlash on Bold Climate Satire

Alejandro G. Inarritu didn't set out to make a tidy crowd-pleaser with Digger, and he's fine with that. Speaking with the New York Times about his Tom Cruise-led climate-change satire, the Oscar-winning director says he wanted a film that lives in the blur between "reality" and
"truth," and that he expected the backlash. "I prefer that to the lukewarm reception," he says. Reviews have mostly skewed negative, and the box office has stumbled, but Inarritu calls a polarizing response preferable to indifference: "This is not like an ice cream." In the interview, Inarritu explains how Digger grew out of his experience chasing disappearing snow while shooting The Revenant and evolved from broad satire into something closer to "a documentary about the future" as real-world events outpaced his script.

Inarritu describes Cruise as a "wordsmith" whose presence anchors the film's rapid-fire, language-obsessed dialogue. "I need somebody who—you cannot stop watching him," he says. "And I think he has that power." Inarritu also frames the movie as a story about who controls the narrative in an era of spin, greed, and climate anxiety. For him, the movie's job is to provoke and start arguments, not settle them. "This film is a disaster movie, but the disaster is us," he notes. "The world is so beautiful and so incredible. There are so many resources, and the balance of the ecosystem is just insanely beautiful. If we can get together in the same room, in the same reality, and understand where we are in the narrative, I think it's hopeful." More on how he built Digger, and why he insists the risk is worth it, here.