Tom Cruise is biting back after critics dubbed his Oscar-bait movie Digger “desperate.”
The star appears in a new teaser Warner Bros. released Wednesday, where he screams—in character—“F--- those people!” Text laid over clips from the film pastes conflicting takes on early screenings. One critic called the film “unpleasant,” while another dubbed it a “masterpiece,” the teaser points out.
Another called the Cruise-starrer “brilliant,” contradicting another who said it was simply “baffling.” Yet another said Digger was “very goofy,” the teaser shows, while another critic called it “excellent.” Driving its point home, the text concludes, “Same film, different truth.”
“They’re afraid to tell the truth, whatever that is,” Cruise’s character adds as Warner Bros. implores audiences to see the Alejandro G. Iñárritu-directed movie when it hits theaters on Oct. 2.
Iñárritu, only the third director in Oscar history to win consecutive Best Director awards in 2015 and 2016 for Birdman and The Revenant, worked with Cruise, 64, for the first time on Digger, a climate-change satire in which Cruise plays an oil tycoon.
Teaming up with Iñárritu seems an obvious play for Cruise to finally win a competitive Oscar, but early reports have cast doubt on the effort.
According to the Daily Beast’s Nick Schager, “The film is a catastrophe.” Digger debuted with just 41 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, making it Cruise’s worst-reviewed in nearly a decade. The score has since risen to a still-dismal 51 percent.
