The conversation around Tom Cruise’s Digger has officially moved past the box office.
The film is being treated as a Warner Bros. disappointment, but the latest wave of criticism is less about ticket sales and more about what the movie supposedly says about climate change, politics, and Hollywood’s favorite habit: turning every piece of entertainment into a lecture.
According to the latest account making the rounds, Tom Hanks took aim at Cruise during a political appearance, arguing that Digger mishandled its environmental themes by presenting climate change through the lens of dark comedy.
That criticism sounds less like a movie review and more like a campaign speech with a screenplay trapped inside it.
The problem with Digger apparently became the message
Cruise has defended the film by making a fairly simple argument: movies are not created only for their opening weekend.
That should not be a controversial position. Plenty of movies find their audiences later, especially strange, divisive films that do not fit neatly into the current franchise machine. Digger appears to be one of those movies. People will either connect with its bizarre tone and twists or wonder what Warner Bros. was thinking.
I saw the appeal. The film takes a swing. The prosthetics and makeup give Cruise a completely different presence, and the story uses an environmental catastrophe as its backdrop without turning into a conventional disaster movie.
That distinction seems to be getting lost.
The reported criticism from Hanks focuses heavily on the movie’s climate-change setting, arguing that a dark comedy is the wrong format for a serious global issue. The account also connects the film to the 2026 midterms and broader partisan arguments.
That is a bizarre standard to apply to entertainment. A movie can use climate change as part of its world without functioning as a public-service announcement. Fiction is allowed to be strange. It is allowed to be cynical. It is even allowed to make audiences uncomfortable.
Hollywood keeps confusing seriousness with quality
What bothers me is the assumption that a film becomes irresponsible simply because it refuses to deliver its message in the approved tone.
Hollywood has spent years insisting that every movie must explain its politics, announce its values, and reassure the audience that it understands the correct position on every issue. Then, when a film tries something more unusual, the same people complain that it is not serious enough.
That is how you end up with movies that feel less like stories and more like internal memos.
The reported Hanks comments also follow recent criticism from Robert De Niro, who allegedly took issue with Cruise’s approach to the material. At this point, the pile-on feels less like an honest response to Digger and more like an attempt to use a struggling movie as a convenient political prop.
A flop can still find an audience
None of this changes the box office. If Digger cost Warner Bros. a fortune and failed to connect with mainstream audiences, that is a real problem for the studio.
But commercial failure does not automatically make the movie worthless. Some films are built for immediate mass approval. Others find their audience after the initial noise dies down.
I would rather see Cruise make an odd, risky movie than another polished sequel assembled by committee. Digger may not work for everyone, but at least it appears to be trying something different.
And if Hollywood’s response to that is to demand a more obedient message, then the backlash tells us more about the industry than it does about the film.
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