Latest / The Front / Tom Cruise’s $350m ‘flop’ Digger is actually a masterpiece

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Tom Cruise’s $350m ‘flop’ Digger is actually a masterpiece · The Front

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: From The Australian, this is the weekend edition of The Front.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. What if the movie we'd all been
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: told was a lemon was actually brilliant? Everyone's bagging Tom
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Cruise for his part in Digger, which is on course
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: for a $ 240 million hit at the box office. But
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is the criticism fair or just a schoolyard pile-on? Of course,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: bad box office numbers and Tom Cruise don't usually go
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: hand in hand. And rough reviews are new territory for
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Digger's director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who started his career with
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a bang. Amores Perros, a gritty tale of converging narratives,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: was a hit with critics and fans alike, and there
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: have been Oscars along the way for Birdman and The Revenant.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Digger has been labelled an exhausting misfire and the ugliest
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: film of the year, but the ambitious satire does have
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: its defenders. One of them is Ben Affleck, Another is
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: my guest today, Senior Editor at Culture, Jill Rowbotham. Jill,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I've heard a theory that it's the trailer that tanked Digger,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: so I thought we might watch it together.
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  Speaker 2: Great.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
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  Speaker 2: We're in a tight spot.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Now, do me a favor.
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  Speaker 1: Imagine they're one of those people who think that Digger
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Rockwell is Satan himself. Let's bomb the shit out of her, Mr.
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  Speaker 3: President. I got a tomahawk so accurate it can shoot
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: the tits off a Russian ballerina from that way around
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  Speaker 3: the world.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Please.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: There are women present.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a gag in there about the lack of women,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: but in the trailer itself, there are, I counted, about
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: 50 men and four women, one of whom is a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: statue wearing a blindfold. Are there more women in this
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: actual movie? No.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: There are not. There's the woman who plays Digger's daughter,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: and that's pretty much it. But I have to say,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't notice the lack of it because the rest
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of it is so engrossing. As you can see from
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: the trailer, it's a wild ride. And that was the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: part I wasn't expecting because I had seen that trailer
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and another trailer which featured the ghastly... fake cat the
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: robot cat having its temperature taken which which truly was
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: ugly and clearly was a fake so I thought well
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: what's going on here Tom Cruise is acting with a
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: fake cat this is just going to be a shocker
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: I think I'll just let this one go and wish
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: him well so I had no plans to see it
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: and then what changed well first of all I couldn't
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: believe how badly it had been received and And a
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: couple of colleagues of mine who work in culture had
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: both seen it and thought it was terrific. And then
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: the inevitable when you're a younger sister. My older sister
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: texted me and said, have just seen Digger. Can't wait
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: to hear what you think. And I had been planning
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: to write a column saying, you know, Tom Cruise has
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: every right to make a lemon. You know, he's made
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: a million films. It's okay if some of them are lemons.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: So I was doing my research and stockpiling what had
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: gone well and what hadn't gone well and You know, why,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: you know, a person whose talent and commitment, you know,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: should be allowed to do this. And I thought, oh,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: now I'm going to have to go and see it
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: because I'm about to say he's made a lemon and
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: this is okay. And then within half an hour, it
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: was clear to me, new problem, not a lemon, not
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: a dud, a very serious, searing film about one of
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: the major issues of our time, climate change. And whether
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: that works or not remains to be seen because not
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: enough people have been given the opportunity to actually see it.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Nobody turned up to the opening weekend. And that's when
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: I began to smell a rat. I thought something's going
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: on here. They didn't even turn up on the opening
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: weekend and then pan it. They just didn't show. Wow.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I've heard the same thing from other people who work
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in the movie business, that the hype around it and
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the reputation it now has for being a flop is
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: all you hear. And in fact, nobody's really talking about
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the quality of the filmmaking. It seems from the trailer
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: very ambitious in lots of ways. Having no women in
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: your movie is quite ambitious and bold, I would say.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: But also the staging of it seems big and impressive.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: It looks like it cost a lot of money.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: It's mesmerising because of all the detail. I read somewhere
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: the other day that the design of the set was
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: sort of high art, basically. It was just done within
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: detail after detail after detail. And I agree with all
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: of that. And of course, it makes it... Even more
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: surprising when part of that is drawn away, the film
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: set is drawn away, or what we think is a
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: film set is drawn away and revealed to be a play. And,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: of course, it's exaggerated because it's a drama, a stage drama.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: So you have two things happening. You have the film,
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  Speaker 2: which is, yes, has high production values and is very
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: opulent and sophisticated and detailed. And you have the sets
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: for plays, which are equally impressive plays.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: The last time I saw Tom Cruise wearing that amount
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: of prosthetics was in Tropic Thunder when he played another
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: kind of bloated captain of industry. In this case, it
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: was Les Grossman, the grossly unappealing studio boss.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Les Grossman.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: We don't have money yet. Price now 100 million. Let
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: me get this down. 100 million. Oh, wait. I got
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: a better idea.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Instead of 100 million... How about I send you a
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: hobo's dick cheese? In the meantime, and as usual, go
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: fuck yourself. It's the most likeable thing I think he's
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: ever done. Tom Cruise showed that he has a sense
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: of humour, that he is funny. Is he funny in this?
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: There are funny lines in this, but no, the actor
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: that he plays, who is playing Digger... is a tortured man.
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  Speaker 2: And so what you see is all the bluster and
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: the high volume and the rapid delivery, which he does
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: as Digger. And then when they draw back the camera
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: and see him backstage with his various prosthetic masks, because
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Digger ages during the course of the film, what you
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: see there is a man who's actually grappling with a
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: very serious personal crisis.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: There's a theory that the more of Tom Cruise running
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: in a movie there is, the better the movie does. Yeah.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Is that part of the issue with Tom Cruise that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: we have typecast him or we only want him to
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: be saving the world in some way, running away from
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: explosions or running towards danger, being a hero?
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, possibly. As somebody who... I had a serious case
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: of FOMO last year when the last Mission Impossible was
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: about to come out, or what we thought might be
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: the last one. You know, hadn't seen, you know, numbers
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: two to six. I panicked and started watching Mission Impossible
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: over a series of weeks and saw all those films. And,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: of course, he certainly has put himself in the frame
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: as an action man. He's very proud that at 62
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: he can do those stunts, that he can hang off
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: a biplane by a very small thread. And the scene
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: I thought was even more frightening was when he was
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: finding his way around a submerged submarine at the bottom
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: of the ocean. But those things, he revels in them.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: He's known for it. And we can typecast him because
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: of that. But it's a mistake because he's a very
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: fine actor, in my opinion.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I tried to watch the Mission Impossible movies for the
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: same sense of FOMO. I wanted to go and see
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the new one that was out in cinemas. And so
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I thought, oh, you know, I'll go back a few
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: movies and start watching. And I thought they were terrible.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: The high intensity dialogue scenes I thought were so lame.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: She never mentioned the taser.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Mind telling me what this is all about? My mission
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: is classified.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh. I need you to take me north.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Continue.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Continue. I'm expecting a set of exact coordinates via Morse
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: code transmission.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: And just how exactly do you expect to receive them
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: down here?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: You have to come to periscope depth, raise the antenna,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: signal scan the low end of the VHF band. For
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: how long?
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe I've been spoiled because action now in the era
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: of the new James Bond, the more recent James Bond movies,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Slow Horses, et cetera, we have very high expectations of
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: what those movies are. They're not just things exploding anymore.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: No, they're not. I enjoy them because I like a
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: good special effect, as I think you know. But I
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: also don't forget for a minute the intensity that he
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: brings to any role. And to somebody who likes a
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: good work ethic, I really appreciate that. And it's there
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: in this film too, the intensity and the hard work.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, you've convinced me that this is a great film.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Why did all the other critics hate it?
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I do think they should have shown a bit more
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: ankle in the marketing campaign. And I think it was
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: a very confusing campaign because nobody knew that actually there
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: were two sets of acting going on. There was Tom
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Cruise playing an actor behind the scenes of a play,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: and there was the actor playing Digger Rockwell. And so
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: people weren't sure what they were looking at. For the
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: first half hour, you're looking at Digger being completely mad
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: and all those scenes where, you know, John Goodman's sort
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: of the president and, you know, which is all really wild.
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  Speaker 2: And then it just quietly, the sets fold away and
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: suddenly you're in a different, you're in the film, you're
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: in the actual film. And it's very different. And part
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: of the reason that I liked it was because of
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: the surprise I got when it turned from one thing
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: into another. And I realized that it wasn't this absurdist piece.
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  Speaker 2: It was actually a very serious film, which I don't
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: want to go into too much because I don't want
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: to spoil it. We already know that it's a play
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: within a play, which is somewhat of a spoiler. So
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping that it does find an audience because a
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: lot of people I'm talking to who go to it say, yeah,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: that was quite good. It was easier for me to
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: make the leap from an apparent film, which was in
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: fact a play, to the actual film because I knew
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: it was coming. I knew the twist was coming. I thought, oh, well,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: here comes the twist, you know, half an hour in,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: it'll happen. And I was so surprised by the quality
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: of what came after that it was a truly delightful experience.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: It was that kind of rare thing in films these
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: days where you really don't know what's going to happen next.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Ben Affleck has defended Digger.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Because it's a little bit like the high school bullying thing.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: You see it happening now, frankly, with Digger. Everybody... wants
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: to celebrate this bomb as if like it's the most
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: exciting thing that happened. And you think like, it's a
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: pretty ambitious, interesting movie made by interesting people that have talent. And,
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: you know, everybody wants to count the money, what it
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: may lost or whatever. And to me, I just think like,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: If you punish movies that take risks, guess what you're
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: going to get? A bunch of shitty homogenized movies. Vanilla doubles.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: Because you cannot do something interesting.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe it shows that unlike Matt Damon, we won't just
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: go and see Tom Cruise in anything. We don't have
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: indulgence for him. You know, we'll go and see Matt
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Damon in The Odyssey, which is a hard sell. It's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Greek mythology for IMAX. And we'll give it a chance.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: And it was monumentally successful. But Tom, you know, sorry.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, he's a tall poppy. It's not just Australians
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: who have tall poppies, is it? It's America too. And yeah, sure.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's 62. He's a man of a certain
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: age now. He's not a young, hot Hollywood guy anymore.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: He's a much older actor and performer. And I suppose
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: the thing I think about this film is just to
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: forewarn people, you may go and see this film with
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: the best will in the world thinking, oh, well, you know,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: a few people are saying it's good. You may dislike
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: it intensely. You know, I liked it, but even knowing
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: everything you know about it once you get to the end,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: which is, yes, it's a play within a play and
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: this part's serious and this part's meant to, you know,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: move you, you might say, yeah, not good enough.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll know who to blame.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Thanks, Jill.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Jill Rowbotham is Senior Editor at Culture for The Australian.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: We've put a link to her article on Digger in
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the show notes. You can also read Jill's work anytime
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: at theaustralian.com.au slash culture. This episode of The Front was
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: hosted by me, Claire Harvey, and produced by Jasper League.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Our team also includes Kristen Amiet, Leah Tamaglou, Tiffany Dimak,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: and Joshua Burton.