Episode 176 - Digger (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2026)
Digger (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2026).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Chris and Alex disrupt their normal programming schedule to bring you this recently recorded (and very last minute) podcast episode on Digger (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2026), the divisive political satire and black comedy still playing in cinemas. The film plots the trials and tribulations of boorish Digger Rockwell, a billionaire oil tycoon whose Arctic drilling triggers a global catastrophe in Greenland. Yet its narrative tells only part of its story - Digger’s poor box office return and growing reputation as a big-budget misfire reflects the many polarised opinions that it has generated, which both target its self-indulgence and heavy-handed political commentary while praising its ambition and screen performances. Topics for this spoiler-filled instalment include distanciation, provocation, and the success of its reflexive storytelling strategies; visual effects as a symbol of artifice and the labour of persuasive prosthetic aging; Tom Cruise’s star persona and traditions in the big-screen ‘animation’ of his face; narrative layering and the film’s rhetoric of fantasy as it is mapped against a split narrative of ecological disaster and national trauma; and what the struggles both in front of and behind the camera reveal about Digger as a treatise on humanity, accountability, and insanity.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**
Suggested Readings
Bingham, Dennis. 2004. “Kidman, Cruise and Kubrick: a Brechtian pastiche.” In More than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film performance, eds. Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo, 247-274. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Holliday, Christopher. 2023. “On Tom Cruise's Animated Face.” Fantasy-Animation, available at: https://www.fantasy-animation.org/current-posts/on-tom-cruises-animated-face.
McDonald, Paul. 2013. Hollywood Stardom. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Peberdy, Donna. 2010. “From Wimps to Wild Men: Bipolar Masculinity and the Paradoxical Performances of Tom Cruise,” Men and Masculinities 13, no. 2: 231-254.
Redmond, Sean. 2021. “Gazing at Tom Cruise.” In Starring Tom Cruise, ed. Sean Redmond, 36-52. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Sergeant. Alexander. 2026. “Digger tries to mock powerful older men – but can’t escape 64‑year‑old millionaire Tom Cruise.” The Conversation (September 30, 2026), available at: https://theconversation.com/digger-tries-to-mock-powerful-older-men-but-cant-escape-64-year-old-millionaire-tom-cruise-293276.