Why Tom Cruise's Digger Bombed, and Why Being Original Isn't Enough

Digger bombed, and I think the reasons come down to a confusing premise, a comedy that didn't look funny, a gray visual style, and a $180 million budget that was kind of insane. I almost didn't write about it at all, which is kind of ironic considering what this piece is actually about.

I've been having a bit of an identity crisis with my work lately. It's supposed to be about movies, but whenever I make something that isn't about Marvel, DC, or Star Wars, it usually doesn't find much of an audience. When I sat down Monday morning to figure out what to write, the biggest trending topic in Hollywood after the weekend was the fact that Digger bombed. My first instinct was to cover it. Then I started second guessing myself, telling myself that maybe I should do something on superheroes instead, since a piece dissecting why Digger bombed would probably bomb too.

That's when I realized I have basically the exact same problem as Hollywood. People constantly complain that Hollywood needs to stop making superhero movies, sequels, and reboots and start taking chances on original movies again. Then Hollywood makes an original movie like Digger, starring one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and nobody goes to see it. At the same time, I often get asked to make less superhero content, but when I do, it bombs, just like Digger. I realized that might actually be the most interesting thing about Digger.

Digger basically lets Tom Cruise take his Les Grossman idea in a new direction

In 2008, Tom Cruise played Les Grossman, an overweight, balding, foul mouthed studio executive who spends most of his limited screen time in Tropic Thunder screaming obscenities at people before eventually dancing to Ludacris during the end credits. The funny thing is, the entire thing was Cruise's idea. He was originally supposed to play a completely different role in the film, but while reading the script, he thought the story needed a studio executive. So he helped develop Les Grossman, with two very specific requests for how he wanted to play him: he wanted big hands and he wanted to dance.

Despite only appearing in a handful of scenes, Grossman basically stole the show, so much so that people started talking about giving him his own spinoff film. Paramount actually announced one, but it never ended up happening. Yet the idea never really went away either. Up until even a few years ago, Cruise and Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie were seriously discussing potentially making it. So clearly, Cruise never lost interest in the idea.

There was a pretty obvious problem with actually making a Les Grossman movie, though. Grossman works in Tropic Thunder because he shows up every once in a while, screams at somebody, says something completely insane, and then disappears. Stretch that out over two hours and suddenly you're making an entire lowbrow comedy about Tom Cruise in a fat suit screaming at people while occasionally dancing in his office. Grossman is also tied to Tropic Thunder, which Ben Stiller created, so a Les Grossman movie would still be a Tropic Thunder spinoff, and there are limits to what that could be.

Create an entirely new character, though, and suddenly you can take the same basic idea in almost any direction you want, which is basically what Cruise gets to do with Digger. And by teaming with Oscar winning filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, Cruise gets a prestige movie positioned for awards season instead of a goofy studio comedy spun off a movie from 15 years ago whose moment in pop culture has come and gone. At least, that was the idea.

Digger cost $180 million and opened to $8 million domestically

Calling Digger a bomb is kind of an understatement. The film cost $180 million to make, plus another $100 million to market it, but it only made $8 million domestically on its opening weekend. That's not just a bomb; that's like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Basically, Digger dug itself a pretty big hole that it then had to dig its way out of, which it didn't.

Digger's trailer makes it hard to explain what the movie is about

Problem number one: after seeing the trailer, try explaining to anyone what Digger is actually about. There's a cat, a glacier, Tom Cruise in a fat suit, Tom Cruise in a cowboy hat, Tom Cruise with a shovel, John Goodman yelling at someone, possibly Roseanne. Is it a disaster movie, a climate change satire, a Tom Cruise comedy, a political movie, an awards movie?

The best movies you can summarize in a single sentence. Mission: Impossible is about a group of highly trained IMF agents stopping global threats while taking on supposedly impossible missions. Top Gun is about a group of elite fighter pilots competing at the Navy's top flight school while learning how to become better dogfighters. With those, you immediately understand what kind of movie you're buying a ticket to. Digger requires a paragraph, "and not a very coherent one."

When you're trying to sell anything, confusion kills. If somebody sees the trailer and still doesn't understand what the movie is about, you're asking them to spend $20 and two hours of their life finding out, which is a really hard sell. The exact same thing happens with my work. People see a title and an image for maybe a second or two before deciding whether to click. If it's about Spider-Man, Batman, or Star Wars, I already have a huge advantage, because I don't have to explain who Spider-Man is or why they might care. I just have to convince them that what I'm saying is interesting.

With Digger, I'm asking people to care about a movie they probably didn't see and probably know very little about. First I have to convince them Digger is worth caring about, then that why it bombed is interesting, then that my take is worth clicking on. That's why I didn't simply call this Why Digger Bombed; I wasn't convinced enough people cared about Digger for that to be a hook on its own. Maybe that works and maybe it doesn't. Warner Bros. had the exact same problem. Digger was already fighting an uphill battle because it was something completely new, so the marketing needed to make the idea incredibly simple and appealing with a strong hook. Instead, after the trailer, you still weren't really sure what the movie was.

Digger was sold as a satire, but the trailers weren't particularly funny

Even if audiences understood what Digger was, there was another problem: it was supposed to be funny. Digger was being sold as a big absurdist satire, except the trailers weren't particularly funny. If you make a horror movie and the trailer isn't scary, you've got a problem. If you make an action movie and none of the action looks exciting, you've got a problem. If you're making an absurdist comedy and the jokes in the trailer aren't making people laugh, you've got a pretty enormous problem.

Superhero content is my bread and butter, and Tom Cruise has basically developed his own version of that over the last 15 years. When people see Tom Cruise now, they expect insane stunts and lots of action; that's basically become his brand. Digger isn't that at all. It's an absurdist political satire with Cruise buried under prosthetics. That creates the same problem I have whenever I step outside superhero content: you spend years training an audience to expect something, and when you ask them to get excited about something completely different, it creates brand confusion. It's kind of like when McDonald's started selling pizza, and we all know how that turned out. Although to be fair, I did love McDonald's pizza.

Digger's gray look hides its message

Then there's the way the movie looks. Digger has an extremely desaturated, colorless, gray visual style. It reminds me a lot of the beginning of Joe Versus the Volcano, when Tom Hanks is working a soul crushing office job and the filmmakers deliberately make everything look as gray, depressing, and ugly as possible. You're supposed to hate looking at that world so that when Hanks finally leaves it, everything suddenly becomes colorful and exciting. Digger basically looks like that for the entire movie.

Obviously that's a creative choice, and there's a reason for it. Alejandro has said the film is about white men controlling the world, so to show that visually, they removed the color to reflect the world we live in. But from the trailer, the audience doesn't know that. They just see a movie devoid of color that doesn't exactly look pleasing to the eye. So now you've got a movie that cost nearly $300 million, is difficult to explain, is supposed to be a comedy but doesn't look particularly funny, and looks gray, ugly, and depressing. Not exactly a winning combination.

Original isn't a genre

This is where I think the conversation around original movies gets a little more complicated. Whenever a movie like Digger bombs, you inevitably hear that audiences complain Hollywood never makes anything original, then don't show up when it does. I don't think that's entirely fair. Nobody owes Digger a ticket just because it's original, and nobody owes me a click just because I chose not to write about superheroes. You still have to make whatever you're selling interesting enough that people actually choose it.

Being original isn't enough. Original isn't a genre. It doesn't tell you what the movie is, whether it's going to be funny or exciting, or whether it's something you're interested in seeing. The premise needs to be clear, the hook needs to be appealing, and the movie needs to look like something people want to spend money on. Movies like Obsession and Backrooms proved this year that audiences will absolutely show up for something new when those things are there.

That's also why I think spending $180 million on Digger was kind of insane. A weird little political satire doesn't become a blockbuster just because you spend blockbuster money making it. If you're going to spend that much on an original movie, the idea itself needs legitimate blockbuster appeal.

The familiar option starts with a massive advantage

I deal with a version of this every single week. While I love superheroes, I don't just want to cover them, because my work is about movies, and Hollywood obviously makes a lot more than Marvel and DC films. But whenever I step outside that world, I know before I start writing that I'm taking a bigger risk. This work takes time and money. If I spend several days on something that gets a fraction of the attention a Marvel piece would, eventually I have to ask whether taking that chance is worth it.

That's basically the same calculation Hollywood is making. Taking chances is great when it works. But when an original movie loses hundreds of millions of dollars, or I spend several days on something that gets a fraction of what a Batman piece would get, eventually that starts influencing what gets made next. And I think that's really the problem. It's not that audiences don't want original movies, or that I shouldn't cover things outside superheroes. It's that the familiar option starts with such a massive advantage that anything new has to work that much harder to compete. Even though people are crying out for original content, you can't just make something original and expect people to show up; you have to give audiences a reason to take a chance on it.

Did the trailer for Digger make you want to see it, or did it leave you unsure what the movie was?