Tom Cruise will be in a dark comedy, but still stunting

Ever since it was revealed that Tom Cruise was starring Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film, there have been Expectations. I’ve been saying since at least back in May, well before the title of the film or even a release date had been announced, that there would be an awards strategy announced. So it’s not at all surprising that they’ve finally confirmed that the movie will be out in October 2026, just in time for the next awards cycle. And for Tom, it’s been a minute.

The film is called Digger, and all we know about the plot is what we already knew from before – that it’s about “the most powerful man in the world […] on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.” What’s new is the classification, right there on the poster: “a comedy of catastrophic proportions”. Again, for Tom, it’s been a minute. When was that last time he was in a comedy?

Digger, probably, is closer to a dark comedy, which is also how One Battle After Another is being classified – another film in awards contention this year by an auteur director with an all-star cast addressing political issues through satire. I repeat, for Tom, it’s been a minute. And still, in the teaser that dropped yesterday, the familiar is there.

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For me it’s the sight of him stepping onto the railing, on a pier facing the ocean, and Tom as “Digger Rockwell”, steps up with his shovel and, with extravagance, takes a few steps on the narrow bar. It’s a stunt! Somehow he found a way to work a stunt into it! It’s not jumping from an airplane or scaling a skyscraper, but it’s a stunt all the same!

And it’s an interesting subversion, because even though this is not Mission: Impossible or Top Gun, it’s still Tom Cruise, the action movie star who’s been exclusively doing movies in which he has to save the world for 20 years straight now trying to save the world as, presumably, a billionaire trying to fix his f-ckups. With, perhaps, all the hubris of a billionaire who thinks that he is the only solution.

This is all speculation based on the film’s tagline but given our current reality, with American oligarchs shaping policy and society to the detriment of humanity, it’s hard not to make the connection. Which makes it that much more intriguing, looking ahead to how Tom Cruise will even talk about the film when it comes to promote it.

For a long, long, long time now, the way he promotes a movie has been to highlight the action sequences and the training and whatever locations he was shooting in. Let’s be for real, nobody at a Mission: Impossible junket is asking about the plot. Digger, however, will be a plot-driven character study, or a character study with 200% more plot than stealing a computer chip to prevent it from uncaging a digital monster. What conversations will Tom Cruise be having about unchecked power and extreme wealth and billionaire egos? Who is that version of Tom Cruise?!