Essay by Eric Worrall
“… It is also the near-perfect climate change film for our era. …”
Tom Cruise’s Digger is a commercial flop – but also the perfect climate film for our time
Oliver Milman
Tue 20 Oct 2026 23.00 AEDTThe movie follows Digger Rockwell, whose drilling triggers a vast iceberg that’s five times the size of Washington DC
…
Digger Rockwell, the eponymous protagonist played by Tom Cruise, is a bluntly caricatured Texas oilman blase about the environmental ruin of his drilling, even as it triggers a disastrous splitting of the Arctic ice sheet. This causes a vast iceberg, five times the size of Washington DC, to barrel towards Europe and threaten a devastating tsunami.
Much like this impending disaster and the real-world retreat of glaciers and coral reefs, though, the mere act of watching Digger has become a forlorn race against time. The box office failure has been resounding, and Digger’s time on the big screen has been brief.
…
“Let’s cut the bullshit, you love oil,” as Digger tells enraged European lawmakers, all dressed in muted beige and grey, in a lengthy rant. “You want to bask in your unsustainable lives.”
…But Digger was the last Warner Bros’s theatrical release before it was purchased by Paramount Skydance and the Ellisons. Its commercial failure, along with the ideological leanings of the movie studio overlords, may deter further attempts to give us unvarnished tales of the climate crisis. That would be a huge, iceberg-sized mistake.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/oct/20/tom-cruise-digger-climate-film
The Guardian sidesteps one important point – “The Day After Tomorrow” was a commercial success because it was entertaining. I don’t care that the climate science in “The Day After Tomorrow” is nonsense, just as I don’t care that the physics of Star Trek is nonsense. If the film is entertaining, I’ll watch it.
“Don’t Look Up” and “Digger”, not so much on the entertainment front.
And to be fair to Star Trek, we’re more likely to witness the development of a warp drive than an anthropogenic CO2 driven climate crisis or gulf stream collapse. At least the Warp Drive concept, while highly speculative, is based on real physics.
An Antarctic ice floe breaks off and triggers a tsunami that threatens Europe?
As bad as the science of The Day After Tomorrow, nothing in it was that bad.
Do you have a peer reviewed article from a major journal that says an Antarctic ice floe can’t break off and trigger a tsunami that threatens Europe? – Warren Beeton
/s
I didn’t catch that – Antarctic South, Europ North. I was too busy thinking “warming… how come the big bad disaster is always ice or water?”
Sudden! ice or water.
Edit 2: Waitaminit what about Greenland? Were the producers ducking paying Al Gore a royalty?
According to the Internet (so it must be true) the ice sheet did break off Greenland.
According to the text above its worse.
It says Arctic.While the antarctic may have high cliffs that can cause a Nepal scenario on a global scale, I do not see that kind of verticality in the arctic to cause such problems.
As long as we keep Hank Johnson away from that region so it doesn’t capsize, we should be pretty safe.
But .. but.. It’s 5 times the size of Washington DC!!!
(That makes it about half the size of London.)
And you’re right. It wouldn’t “barrel towards Europe”. It would likely just float right where it’s at.
The portion of an ice flow that “breaks off” is already floating. So it doesn’t even “fall” into the ocean. It just floats away, driven by the wind and currents.
Sayeth AI: “The average speed of a floating iceberg in the ocean is around 0.7 km/h (about 0.4 miles per hour).”
Yeah. Barreling.
DIGGA WHA?!
“Digger” – an unfortunate name for a dud flick for many Aussies .
Real Aussies revere the real Diggers –
WW1, WW2 & Vietnam soldiers that fought and died in many theatres.
And the Kiwis, eh?
Don’t Look Now was good though.
Saved the cost of going to Venice which still hasn’t sunk.
Commercial Flop & Climate are Siamese Twins.
You can’t have one without the other.
And even a Flop-proof Tom Cruise can’t change that.
(Maybe we need subsidies and mandatory watching for climate movies)
Interesting btw that even the movie admits that climate ain’t about climate but about “unsustainable lives” ,
which leads us back to square one – Club of Romes limits of growth.
Remember “GeoStorm”? Another climate scare movie that tanked very badly. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/geostorm
And for your consideration, coming this December (released in time for Oscar season) will be “A Statement” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt39373342/. This stunningly awful movie is about a 1980 conference to draft a statement about global warming and carbon dioxide. Got you on the edge of your seat? It was previewed at the New York Film Festival with Paul Rudd and other stars yawping about how the climate crisis is worse than evah! https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/paul-rudd-calls-climate-change-172737442.html
Wokesters will spend tons of other people’s money to promote their agenda and so the films will continue despite being box office poison.
I’m still not brave enough to watch climate movies(it’s like paying to get beaten up) so I’d rather pass.
Though “A Statement” sounds promising.
Considering that the ice age scare was still in full swing in 1980
it would be interesting to see how many minutes it’ll take to find the first 100 lies, inconsistencies, omissions and historical revisions.
I think they might quote him:
“This stunning… movie is about … global warming… tons of … money … will continue”
“This stunningly awful movie…”
Brilliantly framed +1
Hush now. If the BBC picks up on your post, it will be integrated into their “climate” brainwashing website.
Can you imagine the CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Galactic Warming) warp drive will cause?
It was quite catastrophic on Hekaras II. Starfleet imposed a Warp 5 speed limit through the corridor.
Years ago my kids got me a book about Star Trek called “Captains’ Log”.
It had behind the scenes information and interviews about each episode from the original series up until just before Voyager.
The episode of TNG where they came up with the Warp 5 limit was written specifically to call attention to the plight of Al Gore’s Ozone Hole. (I guess by introducing and making it seem believable that something Man did could effect it.)
PS The rest of the series’ seemed to ignore the limit. If it was mentioned at all it was in giving the Enterprise permission to exceed the limit because of the importance of their current mission!
The episode is called “Force of Nature”. It is perhaps telling of the fanaticism of many environmental scientists. In the story, incremental damage to subspace was undetectable, so one of the scientists “proves” it by suicidally causing a warp core breach, initiating a disastrous tear in space and nearly killing everyone else while accelerating the harm to her own planet.
That sounds like a cool book.
I wonder how many millions Cruise got paid for this movie?
If he was smart (questionable) he got paid up-front rather than a percentage of the profits. But he probably went for the latter think this was going to be box office gold. This film is going to lose the studio millions.
I wonder what percentage of that cash he donated to climate causes?
Hint: Net Zero.
Tom Cruise is producing the movie therefore the payment should be moderate.
I guess he was promised by Hollywoke an Oscar nomination.
The director is an artsy fartsy multiple Oscar winner.
The current hottest DEI Oscar Muslim Riz
and the female Christoph Waltz(Sandra Huller – Oscar Nominee )
This is more an award for propaganda vehicle than entertainment or money focused.
I’m sure you’ve seen Ricky Gervais speak to the Hollywood crowd at the awards ceremonies. He really roasted them, several times.
I don’t understand why he’s no longer hosting the awards.
Seeing Chris Rock being punched in the face is also refreshing(whre was BLM?)
but Ricks performance was way funnier.(If ISIS started a streaming service, you’d contact your agents)
The previews and trailers for this film were very cagey about what exactly the film was about but I finally found a description (SPOILERS) from someone who actually saw the movie. It turns out it is a play within a movie. Cruise is an actor in a play about Digger Rockwell. As such, his over-the-top performance is meant to be an actor chewing the scenery to make a point. The play takes place many years after Digger’s actions, and is financed by Digger’s son, who is making amends for what his father had done. At the end of the movie, we see the play’s patrons leave the theater into the toxic world left behind by Digger’s actions. Somehow the Greenland iceberg inundated Europe, polluted its waters, and fouled its air. How this happened is not explained. It’s just ‘climate change’, which we all know is just bad karma.
I can see why this bombed even among critics inclined to buy its premise.
Thanks.
Somehow that makes the movie sound even worse than the box-office indicates.
Just a minor nit.
Warp drive based on real physics should be based on theoretical physics.
I know you’re all waiting with baited breath for Warner Bros and Hollywood alphabet noodles to produce the cutting edge blockbuster about a lone warrior fighting clandestine organised crime gangs and saving the day for the poor downtrodden taxpayer-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/general/watch-how-billions-in-taxpayer-money-disappeared-into-new-york-s-biggest-fraud-network/vi-AA27Y39p
I love the “revenge of nature” films of the 1970s, not because they are convincing in presenting the possibility of animals fighting back because of what humans have done to the planet, but I suppose I just like watching wildlife munching on people.