‘Digger’ isn’t the movie you think it is

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story details plot points from the movie “Digger” in a manner best consumed after seeing the movie yourself, if you intend to do so.

It’s a common complaint against Hollywood that trailers frequently give away too much of the movie they’re trying to get audiences to see. The new Tom Cruise film “ Digger ” may be suffering from the opposite problem.

A “Dr. Strangelove”-esque parable about greed and climate change, “Digger” opened in cinemas on Friday, but expectations aren’t high for its performance. For a movie that had once been generating top Oscar buzz, including a potential first win for Cruise, it has since been hit with critiques that have described it as baffling, brilliant or just plain bad. It’s now projected “Digger” may bring in somewhere between just $12-15 million in its opening weekend, according to Variety, which reported the film needs to earn north of $300 million during its total global run to break even when accounting for marketing costs. (“Digger” is being distributed by Warner Bros., the parent company of CNN.)

The hole in which “Digger” appears to have found itself may be one of its own making. It’s impossible to properly talk about the movie — in reviews, on social media or even in marketing materials — without revealing that it’s not necessarily what’s been advertised.

Something happens about a third of the way through “Digger” that critics were asked by Warner Bros. not to reveal. It’s a twist, of sorts, but not in the vein of “Fight Club” or “The Sixth Sense,” which changes what you’ve just spent an entire movie watching. Instead, it’s more like the revelation that occurs early in this year’s Zendaya-Robert Pattinson movie “The Drama” or the 2022 horror hit “Barbarian”: a structural or plot conceit that sets up the real movie you’re watching — one which none of the trailers or teasers have made clear: (Be advised: this story will contain spoilers for “Digger” from this point.)

Warner Bros. Pictures

Hollywood Minute: First look at Tom Cruise as ‘Digger’

The movie is actually about a play about a climate disaster.

Directed by two-time Oscar-winner Alejandro González Iñárritu, “Digger” is ultimately a much more ambitious, grand and artistic meta-spectacle than the film audiences have been sold. It wants to explore how the art of the future will make sense of our actions in the present — and whether it will even be able to. Whether it achieves those lofty goals is open to debate — and many critics feel it does not — but the fact that many potential filmgoers are oblivious to this ambition may ultimately count against it.

“What fascinated me about ‘Digger’ was the way the twist kept reverberating throughout the film, and how Iñárritu kept getting new visual and formal riffs out of it,” said Justin Chang, the film critic for the New Yorker whose mostly positive review of the movie opted not to spoil things, although Chang says he considered doing so. “Even though ‘Digger’ is, as I note in my piece, an extremely obnoxious and often unlikable movie, I took my hesitation to spoil the film as a clear sign that I did, in fact, like and respect it, maybe even in spite of itself,” he said.

“Digger” begins somewhat appropriately with a window shade rising like a theater curtain inside the bedroom of Digger Rockwell (Cruise), who owns a mansion that looks out over what appears to be a too-perfect garden scene. Rockwell is a schlubby, grey-haired, third-generation oilman who speaks in a comically large Texan drawl and values profit above all else — except, that is, his dying cat, Maggie, who appears to be so old that she moves like a robot. When a methane disaster strikes at one of Rockwell’s drilling sites in Greenland, a chunk of the Arctic shelf six times the size of DC begins drifting to Europe, where it will soon cause unimaginably catastrophic damage, warns Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), Digger’s top scientific advisor. Soon, the president of the United States (John Goodman) and his cabinet of fawning nitwits come to Casa Digger — because that’s how powerful Digger is — to plan the response.

And then, outside the window in that too-perfect garden…a tree falls over. We hear a director’s voice and see a man’s head rise from the horizon. The entire garden, the entire mansion, is fake — a set. The cat looks robotic because it is a robot. Cruise drops the Texan accent, and we hear him speak in a voice that sounds like his own. He’s no longer Digger Rockwell, but Curtis Markson, an actor, clad in prosthetics, participating in tech rehearsals for a play in a cavernous theatre.

There are questions answered right at the end of “Digger” that are best experienced for yourself: What exactly is this play? Is any of this real? And how does Jesse Plemons, playing someone on the sidelines of the play, fit into all this? There’s also an ending that revels in a form of catharsis — for the audience watching the play, not the movie — before yanking that, too, away.

Not every critic has been hiding the film’s main secret. For the New York Times , Manohla Dargis let the (robotic) cat out of the bag, but said the twist didn’t add much beyond inviting an “unflattering comparison” to Charlie Kaufman’s 2008’s “Synecdoche, New York,” which was also about the interplay between theater, reality and obsession.

Faced with the rush of ominous headlines, and a Rotten Tomatoes score hovering around 50 percent , Warner Bros. pivoted to a new marketing strategy on Tuesday that was dubbed “ phenomenal ,” “ insane ” and “ generational. ” Distributors released a promo on social media that leaned into the wildly different receptions to the film by contrasting reviews that alternatively described it as “unpleasant” and a “masterpiece,” “baffling” and “brilliant.” The idea, as Warner Bros. urged in their teaser, was for moviegoers to “decide for yourself.” (Some observers noted Paramount, which was recently approved by a judge to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery, tried a similar strategy with 2017’s “Mother”, another film with a marketing campaign that, as GQ noted at the time , had been “a massive trick, and some people are going to f*cking hate this movie as a result.”)

Still, it may be too late to save what is essentially a massively expensive arthouse movie from becoming one of the year’s biggest flops. It certainly won’t help that many reviews for the film have been critical of the over-the-top acting, while failing to mention that Cruise and company are depicting characters who are playing things up for the stage. And those who do see the movie may feel they’ve had the rug pulled out from them, as if some massive sheet of ice has given way.

But even if the ambition shown in “Digger” may be part of its undoing, it’s arguably still a noble one. The film is among the first of its kind to try to answer the question of what future generations will say about how we responded to the climate crisis. Whether or not the movie is a satire or a farce (a distinction the movie actually tries to parse), the portrait it paints is cartoonishly bleak, greedy and oafish. But won’t that also ultimately prove to be an apt one?

“They know the facts,” Digger says at one point. “The story is yet to be told.”

编者按：本文详细介绍了电影《挖掘机》的情节，如果您打算观看这部电影，最好在观看之后再阅读本文。

人们经常抱怨好莱坞的预告片剧透太多，让观众无法专心观看电影。而汤姆·克鲁斯的新片《掘地者》可能恰恰相反，它面临着同样的问题。

这部类似《奇爱博士》的寓言电影，探讨了贪婪和气候变化，于周五上映，但人们对它的票房表现并不看好。这部电影一度被视为奥斯卡热门，甚至有望让汤姆·克鲁斯首次捧得小金人，但上映后却遭遇了铺天盖地的批评，有人说它莫名其妙，有人说它精彩绝伦，也有人说它糟糕透顶。据《综艺》杂志报道，《掘地者》首周末票房预计仅为1200万至1500万美元，而考虑到营销成本，该片全球总票房需要超过3亿美元才能收回成本。（《掘地者》由华纳兄弟发行，该公司也是CNN的母公司。）

《挖掘者》这部电影似乎陷入了困境，而这或许是它自己造成的。无论是在影评、社交媒体，甚至是宣传材料中，如果不指出它与宣传的内容并不完全一致，就无法恰当地谈论这部电影。

在《掘墓人》（Digger）大约三分之一处，发生了一件华纳兄弟要求影评人不要透露的事情。这算是一种反转，但并非像《搏击俱乐部》或《第六感》那样彻底颠覆你之前观看的剧情。它更像是今年赞达亚和罗伯特·帕丁森主演的电影《戏剧人生》（The Drama）或2022年恐怖片《野蛮人》（Barbarian）中早期出现的那种揭示：一种结构或情节上的巧妙构思，为真正的电影埋下伏笔——而这些伏笔在之前的预告片或宣传片中都没有明确提及。（请注意：本文从此处开始将包含《掘墓人》的剧透。）

华纳兄弟影业

好莱坞速递：汤姆·克鲁斯饰演“掘墓人”的剧照首次曝光

这部电影实际上是根据一部关于气候灾难的戏剧改编的。

由两届奥斯卡奖得主亚历杭德罗·冈萨雷斯·伊纳里图执导的《掘墓人》，最终呈现出的却是一部远比观众所了解的更加雄心勃勃、气势恢宏、艺术性极强的元叙事巨作。影片试图探讨未来的艺术将如何诠释我们当下的行为——以及它是否能够做到这一点。它是否实现了这些崇高的目标尚待商榷——许多影评人认为它并未做到——但许多潜在观众对这种雄心壮志浑然不觉，这最终可能会成为影片的一大败笔。

《纽约客》影评人贾斯汀·张（Justin Chang）表示：“《掘墓人》最吸引我的地方在于，剧情反转贯穿始终，伊纳里图（Iñárritu）不断地从中衍生出新的视觉和形式变化。”他对这部电影的评价总体上是正面的，但他选择不剧透，尽管张表示他曾考虑过这样做。“尽管正如我在文章中提到的，《掘墓人》是一部极其令人反感且常常让人难以喜欢的电影，但我犹豫是否要剧透，这恰恰表明我确实喜欢并尊重这部电影，或许即便它本身存在一些问题。”他说道。

《掘金者》的开场颇为贴切：迪格·洛克威尔（汤姆·克鲁斯饰）卧室里的窗帘像剧院幕布一样缓缓升起。洛克威尔拥有一座豪宅，窗外是一片完美得近乎不真实的庭院。他是个邋遢、头发花白的第三代石油大亨，操着一口滑稽的德州口音，把利润看得高于一切——除了他那只垂死的猫玛吉。玛吉看起来老得像个机器人，行动迟缓。格陵兰岛一处钻井平台发生甲烷泄漏事故后，一块相当于华盛顿特区六倍大小的北极大陆架碎片开始漂向欧洲，即将造成难以想象的灾难性破坏。迪格的首席科学顾问加内什博士（里兹·阿迈德饰）警告说，这块碎片很快就会造成灾难性的后果。很快，美国总统（约翰·古德曼饰）和他的一群阿谀奉承的蠢货内阁成员就来到了迪格的豪宅——因为迪格的影响力实在太大了——商讨应对方案。

然后，窗外那完美得过分的花园里……一棵树倒了。我们听到导演的声音，看到一个男人的头从地平线上升起。整个花园，整座豪宅，都是假的——一个布景。那只猫看起来像机器人，因为它本来就是个机器人。克鲁斯收起了德州口音，我们听到他用自己的声音说话。他不再是迪格·洛克威尔，而是柯蒂斯·马克森，一个演员，戴着假体，在一个巨大的剧院里参加话剧的技术彩排。

《掘墓人》结尾处解答了一些问题，这些问题最好还是亲自体验：这部剧究竟是什么？这一切是真实的吗？杰西·普莱蒙斯饰演的这个边缘人物，又是如何融入到这一切中的？此外，该剧的结尾似乎营造了一种宣泄的氛围——这种氛围是为观看舞台剧而非电影的观众准备的——但随后又将其夺走。

并非所有影评人都对这部电影的主要秘密讳莫如深。《纽约时报》的影评人马诺拉·达吉斯（Manohla Dargis）就透露了（机器人）秘密，但她表示，这个转折除了让人联想到查理·考夫曼（Charlie Kaufman）2008年的作品《纽约提喻法》（Synecdoche, New York）——同样探讨了戏剧、现实和痴迷之间的相互作用——之外，并没有增添太多内容。

面对铺天盖地的负面新闻和烂番茄上徘徊在50%左右的新鲜度，华纳兄弟周二调整了营销策略，并将其称为“现象级”、“疯狂”和“划时代”。发行商在社交媒体上发布了一则宣传片，巧妙地利用了观众对这部电影截然不同的评价，对比了那些既称其“令人不快”又称其为“杰作”、“令人费解”又称其“精彩绝伦”的评论。正如华纳兄弟在预告片中强调的那样，他们的目的是让观众“自己做出判断”。（一些观察人士指出，派拉蒙影业——该公司最近获准与华纳兄弟探索频道合并——曾在2017年的电影《母亲》中尝试过类似的策略。而《母亲》的营销活动正如《GQ》杂志当时所指出的那样，“完全是一场骗局，结果有些人会因此而讨厌这部电影。”）

然而，这部本质上是耗资巨大的艺术电影，恐怕难以避免成为年度最惨败的影片之一。许多影评都批评了演员们夸张的表演，却忽略了克鲁斯及其同伙所扮演的角色本身就是在为舞台表演而刻意营造效果，这无疑会雪上加霜。而那些看过这部电影的人，或许会感觉自己被狠狠地“抽走了”一块垫脚石，仿佛一块巨大的冰层突然崩塌。

但即便《掘地者》所展现的雄心壮志或许是其失败的原因之一，它本身也无可厚非。这部电影是首批尝试回答“后世将如何评价我们应对气候危机的方式”这一问题的影片之一。无论这部电影究竟是讽刺剧还是闹剧（影片本身也试图厘清二者的区别），它所描绘的形象都带有漫画式的阴郁、贪婪和愚蠢。但这最终难道不也恰恰是恰当的吗？

“他们知道事实，”迪格曾这样说道，“故事还有待讲述。”