There’s been something of a veil of secrecy surrounding Digger, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s eagerly-awaited collaboration with Tom Cruise. A veil that has somewhat lifted, thanks to the debut of the brand new trailer for the film, which opens in October. It’s now online for your viewing pleasure, but Empire was lucky enough to attend a trailer event screening on the WB lot in Burbank last week (where, for one day only, a giant shovel, much like the one Digger wields in the movie, was plonked), where not only did we get to see the trailer a few days early, but Cruise himself attended for a post-trailer Q&A. He’s still not giving away too much, but this is what we’ve learned.
1) It might be the new Dr. Strangelove
From the off, Iñárritu’s movie has been billed as ‘a comedy of catastrophic proportions’. Which is an unusual move for the Mexican filmmaker, who tends towards heavy dramas. If there are laughs in his work, they’re of the pitch-black kind found in the likes of Birdman or The Revenant.
Digger, though, is much more overtly comedic, with actual gags, a grotesque cat, and an amped-up, borderline absurd visual style. Its basic storyline, in which Cruise’s oil man ‘Digger’ Rockwell is tasked with averting a global environmental catastrophe that he seems to have inadvertently started with a frack too far, also invites comparisons with Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. This could be the rare movie that not only can withstand those comparisons, but might just surpass them.
2) Tom Cruise is not Tom Cruise
Cruise has been in Maverick and Mission: Impossible mode for the past few years, and been very recognisably Tom Cruise. On a surface level Cruise here is also trying to save the world, much like Ethan Hunt, but Ethan Hunt isn’t given to talking about the size of his dick. Digger is a very different kettle of fish. “Digger is charming,” said Inarritu in a pre-recorded introduction (he’s currently finishing the film in London). “He’s funny. He’s impossible not to watch. Like all the most dangerous people, he makes you want to agree with him.” As Digger himself says in the trailer, ‘the story is yet to be told’.
Here, Cruise is also buried under makeup (and, it seems, a fat suit) to play the larger-than-life Digger, an old-school Texan who shoots from the hip, and looks not unlike NCIS’ Mark Harmon. In the Q&A, Cruise talked about locking into the character’s look and voice, with the teeth particularly important. “Let’s fuckin’ go!” he laughed, slipping into his Digger voice. “Alejandro shows me, he’s like, ‘I want you to look like this,’” recalled Cruise. “I’m thinking, ‘This guy’s got fucking balls.’”
We’ve seen Cruise step outside his innate Cruiseness before, of course — he’s dabbled with prosthetics in the likes of Interview With The Vampire and as studio boss Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. But this is a step beyond those, with Cruise promising a character unlike anything he’s played before. More gross man, if you will. “There’s nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, ‘Let’s do this!’” he said.
3) This has been long in the works
Cruise first discovered the work of Iñárritu when he saw Amores Perros back in 2001, and became evangelical about it. “You could feel the powerful human voice of someone who was incredibly skilled at what they were doing,” he said. They met about a decade later, and then Inarritu came to Cruise about seven years ago with the idea for Digger. “We both knew that throughout our journeys,” said Iñárritu, “we had never done anything even close to this.”
4) The rest of the cast is pretty decent
As well as Cruise, who presumably will dominate the film as its title character, Iñárritu has assembled a cast including Riz Ahmed, in permanently harassed mode as someone who appears to be assigned to Digger’s side; Sandra Huller, who can be seen dancing with Cruise in the trailer; Michael Stuhlbarg; Jesse Plemons and, as the perhaps perma-befuddled President of the United States of America, John Goodman, giving serious Coen brothers vibes. In one scene, the President — who appears to be about to nuke a gigantic glacier which might have become unmoored thanks to Digger’s digging — falls into a catatonic state and has to be slapped back into life. “They’re exceptional,” says Cruise. “Alejandro understands music, and that’s the universal language we’re all finding.”
5) It was shot on VistaVision
The movie marks the latest collaboration between Iñárritu and his multiple-Oscar-winning DP, Emmanuel ‘Chivo’ Lubezki, who might hoover up another one of the little gold guys for his work here, shooting under controlled conditions and, what’s more, on VistaVision too. “We shot on VistaVision, because cinema deserves scale,” teased Inarritu. “We used a 1954-designed camera, and for the first time ever Chivo and I were allowed to mount on some new crazy wide vintage Leica lenses designed specifically for our film.” In the Q&A, Cruise, ever the cinephile, talked about the excitement of shooting on VistaVision. “Just loading a camera in VistaVision, the sound of that film going through, I was like, ‘Just everyone quiet for a second. Let’s just hear it going through.’ It’s a beautiful thing. I love it.”
Digger comes to cinemas on October 2
