According to a WIRED review, the new film 'Digger' is a critical and commercial disaster: a big-budget satire starring Tom Cruise as a cartoonish oilman, on track to be one of the biggest box-office failures of all time. But the review argues that this failure is not a contradiction; it is the film's message.
The film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is structured as a play within a movie, set in a dystopian future. Its thesis, as the WIRED critic explains, is that truth has no value in a world hooked on oil. Unlike 'Don't Look Up,' which suggested that better communication would spur action, 'Digger' shows a truth-telling expert being used by the oilman to escape accountability. The critic says this is a more uncomfortable and honest view of how corporate power operates.
For the business side, the review also takes aim at the entertainment industry. It notes that audiences prefer cathartic villains and that art is often funded by the very powers it attacks. The WIRED piece suggests that enjoying climate satire can itself be a way to ignore less palatable forms of corporate power. In that sense, the movie's box-office failure may be the most fitting part of its argument.