Was 'Digger' Better Than Critics Are Saying?

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

Now for the second half of our Tuesday Health and Climate Segment, which we do every week. We did a health-oriented one earlier in our 30 Issues series on RFK's war on vaccines as an issue in the midterm elections. Now we're on the climate side, and we're going to the movies. Have you seen Digger?

Probably haven't, given it's on track to be one of the biggest box office flops of the year. Tom Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell, an oil baron whose drilling rig sets off a climate catastrophe, and John Goodman plays the president who has to deal with it. Critics, as you may have seen, have been brutal and audiences haven't been much kinder. But at least two writers are making the case that Digger might actually be a great climate movie even if it's not a great movie. Jayson Greene argued in a New York Times op-ed last week that director Alejandro Gonzalez in Yartu hit a thoughtful film about climate change inside a loud empty movie. Molly Taft at Wired said, Digger changed her mind about what a climate movie should even be trying to do. Wow. We have both of them. To make that case, Jayson Greene, critic and author of the novel UnWorld, and Molly Taft, senior writer for Wired, covering climate change, energy, and the environment. Fair warning to you listeners before we start, we are going to spoil this movie, twist and ending included. If you don't want to hear that, tune out now and come back in 10, 15 minutes. We are going to spoil this movie because we need to do it to make the point that they're making. Jason, Molly, welcome to WNYC.

Jayson Greene (1:57)

Thank you for having me.

Molly Taft (1:58)

Thanks for having me too.

Brian Lehrer (2:01)

Molly, for listeners who haven't seen it, what's Digger about? Again, listeners, a spoiler may come right away and answer one here, but just start at the beginning.

Molly Taft (2:13)

Yeah. I'll admit, I wasn't keen on seeing the movie when I saw the trailers.

The trailers sold this film as a so broad it hurts satire of an oil man, Tom Cruise, in heavy makeup and prosthetics, whose drilling rig causes a crisis, essentially, triggers a global catastrophe and he has to team up with the president to try to handle it or in so many words, not handle it. But the twist of the movie is that the director, Inuritu, lets you in on pretty early is that it's actually a play within a play. So the audience realizes pretty quickly on that we are not watching a straight up satire about climate change, about fossil fuel forces, but we're actually watching actors in a near dystopian future portray events of the past in a play called Fossil Fools. Like we are, we are watching a play within a play. And the movie continues on with that framing. And I think I'm going to go on record and say, I think it's a fantastic film as well as a fantastic climate movie. Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. And yeah, I think that it's been puzzling to me to watch critics respond. And you know, part of me is I'm a climate journalist. I've been a climate journalist for 10 years. Some of the jokes in movies do feel written for me specifically about how we handle the climate crisis and some of the climate politics. But I also just think it is a really interesting meditation on what art means in terms of political protest, how we value the truth and what kinds of villains we as audiences find easier to digest. So if we're spoiling the whole thing, I think the most significant twist for me is at the end, it's revealed that Jesse Plemons, who's been playing this mysterious producer throughout the movie, is actually Digger's nephew. And he reveals that he is a powerful, he runs a powerful global security firm and he's funding this play that essentially makes fun of his family and takes his family to task for this catastrophic climate event that has ruined a large part of the global climate. And I just loved it.

Even a couple of weeks after seeing the film, I am still kind of baffled by some of the critical response. I also thought it was really funny, so maybe that's just me.

Brian Lehrer (4:42)

And Jayson, you acknowledge you went in not wanting to see the movie, and the first 30 minutes were about as bad as you feared. I guess that was before the reveal that it was a play within a play, right?

Jayson Greene (4:53)

Right. I remember in high school, I was in probably a pretty bad play called Noises Off, which is where actors are staging a bad play, and then behind the scenes, it's falling apart. And the first 30 minutes of Digger, you are watching a really bad movie.