- Warner Bros. dropped a cheeky "Decide for yourself" ad for Digger after reviews split critics nearly down the middle — the film sits in the low-50s on Rotten Tomatoes.
- The spot opens with Tom Cruise as oil tycoon Digger Rockwell snarling "F— those people!" and pairs raves with pans: "Masterpiece" vs. "Unpleasant," "Brilliant" vs. "Baffling."
- Critics are wildly divided: The Hollywood Reporter called it "spectacularly obnoxious"; others call it "absolutely never boring" and one of the year's boldest studio swings.
- The Alejandro G. Iñárritu eco-satire, shot by Emmanuel Lubezki for IMAX, opens in theaters on October 2.
Hollywood studios usually hide from bad reviews. Warner Bros. just decided to weaponize them. With Tom Cruise's Digger splitting critics almost perfectly down the middle ahead of its October 2 release, the studio dropped a gleefully confrontational ad that puts the pans and the raves side by side — and lets Cruise's oil-tycoon character tell the haters exactly where to go.
What happened
Reviews for Digger were first published on September 29, and they were a glorious mess. The Tom Cruise-led dark comedy, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, landed in the low-50s on Rotten Tomatoes: The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney branded Cruise's performance "spectacularly obnoxious" and compared the film to "colossal misfires" like Babylon and Amsterdam, while others called it "absolutely never boring" and praised one of the most daring studio swings in years. Metacritic settled even lower, at 44 out of 100.
Rather than pretend the split didn't happen, Warner Bros. leaned straight into it. The new ad — released Tuesday with the message "Decide for yourself" — opens with an early viewer calling Digger "an ambitious film sure to polarize audiences," then cuts to Cruise, in character as the paunchy, Stetson-wearing oil baron Digger Rockwell, shrugging: "You know what? F— those people!"
Read our earlier coverage: October 2026 Movie Releases: Digger, Clayface, Street Fighter and the Halloween Horror Lineup
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The spot is built like a tennis rally. Contradictory one-word verdicts flash in pairs — "Unpleasant" against "Masterpiece," "Baffling" against "Brilliant," "Very Goofy" against "Excellent," "Insufferable" against "Magnificent" — under the tagline "Same film, different truth." It closes with one last pull quote urging viewers to "go in blind," and Cruise's oil baron gets the final word: "They're afraid to tell the truth — whatever that is."
The timing was deliberate. The ad draws on reactions from film influencers whose social embargo lifted on September 22 — a full week before professional critics were allowed to publish. That now looks like a canny bit of sequencing: the influencer chatter was warmer, and getting the campaign out early let the studio frame the film as a "you'll either love it or hate it" event before the harsher reviews landed. The film itself is Cruise's return to non-action acting after years of Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible blockbusters, co-starring Riz Ahmed, shot in large format by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki — and it reportedly cost north of $125 million.
Oil pumpjacks at sunset. In Digger, Cruise plays a narcissistic oil tycoon whose company sets off a
catastrophic environmental disaster. Photo: Knipptang / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Why it matters
Studios almost never fight critics this openly — the standard playbook is to cherry-pick the good quotes and bury the rest. Warner Bros. is betting that in 2026, the argument itself is the marketing. And honestly? It might be right. A 50-50 critical split is catnip for the terminally curious: nobody wants to be the one person at the dinner table who hasn't seen the movie everyone is fighting about. Some of the most interesting films of the last decade opened to exactly this kind of critical civil war, and the studio is framing Digger as a film the professionals can't process but audiences might love — a seductive story whether or not it's true.
Impact on the USA and the world
For American moviegoing, Digger is the first real test of the fall season: a $125M-plus auteur gamble opening wide on October 2, the same weekend as the Anne Hathaway thriller Verity. If audiences show up despite the reviews, it strengthens the case that star power and event-sized curiosity can still beat a Rotten Tomatoes score — a lesson every studio in town will study. For Cruise personally, the stakes are legacy-sized: three acting Oscar nominations, an honorary Academy Award in 2025, but never a competitive win. This was supposed to be the serious-actor play; instead it's become the year's most entertaining referendum on what "good" even means — which, for a movie about a man who can't tell the truth, feels almost on-theme.
What happens next
The only review that matters now is the box office. A strong debut would validate the "critics vs. the people" framing and extend the film's awards-season life; a soft one confirms the skeptics' read that this is a $125 million misfire with great marketing. Also watch the audience scores: if viewers land closer to "Magnificent" than "Insufferable," expect Warner Bros. to double down — and every studio with a divisive film in the pipeline to copy it. And if you're going this weekend, the ad has one piece of genuinely good advice: go in blind. Half the fun is not knowing which camp you'll land in until the lights come up.
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