Tom Cruise’s highly anticipated collaboration with back-to-back Oscar winning director Alejandro G. Inarritu, “Digger”, only had an $8 million opening weekend. This isn’t the first time Cruise has starred in a film from Warner Bros. with an underwhelming debut. 2012’s “Rock of Ages”, in which Cruise gave a fearless performance as rocker Stacee Jaxx, only opened to $14.4 million, topping Adam Sandler’s raunchy comedy “That’s My Boy”, but losing to the second weekends of “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” and “Prometheus”. And 2014’s action flick “Edge of Tomorrow”, opposite Emily Blunt, had a $28.8 million open, well below “The Fault in Our Stars” and the second weekend of “Maleficent”. But “Edge” (one of my 10 favorite films that year) had great word of mouth, propelling it to a $100M domestic total.
“Digger” had an in-your-face marketing campaign — one that, as it turns out, was hiding the movie’s secret identity. That, combined with mixed reviews and competition (including Anne Hathaway’s “Verity” attracting younger moviegoers and Brad Pitt’s “Heart of the Beast” attracting older moviegoers), resulted in a disappointing debut. As for the movie itself, “Digger” has a showy, at times electric Cruise performance, but there’s one… BIG… problem.
SPOILERS: Inarritu borrowed heavily from himself. “Digger” is often a clone of one of favorite films of all time, his Academy Award winning 2014 Best Picture “Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”. The saga of Digger Rockwell is actually a play, starring a longtime, famous actor who’s heavily immersed in the material and dealing with significant personal issues. One of the core relationships is with his daughter. We see this actor backstage and in his dressing room, battling with the crew and himself. And there are speeches and declarations about why the play matters, why the theater-going experience matters, and what’s at stake. This all sounds pretty familiar, right?
As it was all unfolding, I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Inarritu was essentially re-making “Birdman”. There are identical style shots and camera angles. It’s stunning. Earlier this year, John Carney infused many of the core themes and elements of “Begin Again” into the mostly weak “Power Ballad”. And now Inarritu is going back to the movie that has defined his career. “Birdman” beautifully blended reality and fantasy, and you could still clearly tell which scenes part of the play (on stage) and which weren’t. Unfortunately, “Digger” is so massive in its scale — it’s a play but it’s shot so much like a movie — that I couldn’t buy into an audience witnessing this as a play in a theater because of all the gigantic sets/rooms. Jesse Plemons’ character stating he spent a gazillion dollars on the play doesn’t justify this. It’s a cop out of a line.
But Inarritu could’ve saved “Digger” with one simple, unique move. Have Emma Stone’s character from “Birdman”, Sam (the daughter of Michael Keaton’s Riggan Thomson), be one of the people in the audience at the play, standing up and applauding at the end. She wouldn’t have needed to say anything or be referenced by name. An older Sam, in this future setting, seeing another actor give it his all in another incredible play — reinforcing “Birdman”‘s themes of celebrating the arts, creativity and freedom of expression, which is what Plemons’ speech is all about — would’ve created a powerful statement and made “Digger” a surprise follow-up to “Birdman”, not a copycat.
Will Tom Cruise win a competitive Oscar for his performance? Will he even be nominated? Who knows. I think he’ll at least get a Golden Globes nom in Best Actor: Comedy or Musical. But no matter what, Cruise is already an Oscar winner. Inarritu presented him with an Honorary Academy Award last year for his career achievements, which is fantastic. I applaud Cruise for taking a break from action movies and trying something different with “Digger”. I just wish Inarritu did something different with it.