10/12/2026
Tom Cruise, Climate Warrior? – The New York Times
Posted on October 12, 2026
By David Gelles Oct. 8, 2026 You’re reading the Climate Forward newsletter. News and insights for a warming world.
“Digger,” the new film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu starring Tom Cruise, has drawn mostly savage reviews. Critics have pounced on the writing, the acting, the production, the structure. Every aspect of it.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/climate/tom-cruise-digger.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IFE.C_qN.uqkebGRHeLEF&smid=url-share
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But whatever you think of “Digger,” one thing about it can’t be ignored: It is a climate movie.
In fact, “Digger” is one of the biggest-budget, widest-release, starriest pieces of climate media ever made.
The first film of Cruise’s post- “Mission Impossible” career, “Digger” was billed as the action star’s return to serious acting. For Iñárritu, a visionary director, it was a foray into a new genre: satire. And for Warner Bros., it was a $125 million bet that audiences would come along for the ride.
So far, in the week since its release, box office demand has been weak and “Digger” is on track to be a flop. That suggests the film may reach a limited audience, which is a shame.
Because despite whatever else is going on with the film, “Digger” is one of the most audacious attempts yet to communicate the causes of global warming, its potentially catastrophic effects and who is to blame.
On the press tour, Cruise has not engaged directly with the issue of climate change. But Iñárritu is trying to confront this moment head-on, he told my colleague Melena Ryzik.
Iñárritu was initially drawn to the subject when, while shooting his 2015 film “The Revenant,” he was hard pressed to find ice in Argentina. Then, as he worked on “Digger,” fiction became fact.
“The things that we imagined nine years ago start happening,” he said. “At that time, there was no ice shelf being detached. And suddenly it happened. Greenland was not in the conversation; methane was not in the mainstream language of the media. Now, methane is one of the biggest monsters ever.”
David Lindsay: This is a magnificent, complicated, funny movie. You will die laughing. Pun intended. Maybe the most important climate movie since Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” and certainly much funnier.
