The Mannequins in Digger's Parliament Speech Scene Are There on Purpose, Plus More Details You May Have Missed

There are random mannequins spread throughout the crowd during the Parliament speech in Digger, when Digger Rockwell is addressing everyone, and this was done 100% on purpose. Tom Cruise delivers an incredible monologue in one of the best scenes in the film, but something you may have missed is that there are random mannequins spread throughout the crowd.

Beyond that scene, there's more hiding in Digger: the makeup Cruise sat through, the years it took to make the film, its original title, a clue to the ending, and the meaning behind Digger's cat.

The mannequins in Digger's Parliament crowd represent the people who stay silent

It took me a few minutes to notice. In a close shot of one person, you can clearly see one of the mannequins, and once I started looking around, I noticed a ton more. People are very angry at Digger in this scene. They're shouting and yelling, and the mannequins were used to represent people who stay silent.

They were used with a bit of satire, but they were also used as a symbol of passive public indifference. Digger's speech is all about how everyone is the problem, because we continue to use gas and need everything to live our lives. The mannequins highlight how a large portion of the public and political institutions act as a mindless, unblinking, and artificial bystander while an oil tycoon obsessed with himself literally pillages the planet for his own personal use.

Lastly, they were added to give the scene more of a play feel. If you've seen the film, you know this was a huge play put on, so adding mannequins was a way to add extras without having so many people in the play. Honestly, "it's one of the most genius movie details," and it was probably something most people didn't notice the first time through.

Tom Cruise wore heavy prosthetics to play Digger, a man just one year older than him

I just got back from seeing Digger, and it was honestly one of my favorite movies of the year so far. Something everyone is finding hilarious is that Tom Cruise had to wear a ton of prosthetic makeup to play a 65 year old, even though he's 64. Everyone always says Tom Cruise doesn't age at all, and it looks like that's true, because his character in Digger looks like he's about 80 years old.

The first time, Cruise sat in the makeup chair for over 6 hours, and he even had a stopwatch in his hand timing it so he could figure out what could be cut down to make the makeup time shorter. He wore facial prosthetics, gray hair, and a body suit. Eventually they were able to get it down to between an hour and an hour and 30 minutes every single day in the makeup chair.

He also overheated in the prosthetics during long takes, which is insane. They actually brought cooling machines onto the set, and he had to go into them right after shooting so he wouldn't overheat.

Alejandro Iñárritu spent over 10 years making Digger

Digger took over 10 years to make. Director Alejandro Iñárritu got the idea for the movie after finishing The Revenant, the film Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar for, and he spent over 10 years refining the character of Digger Rockwell to make him as perfect as possible. For the last 7 years, I believe, he wanted Tom Cruise in the role and had been talking to him about it.

He chose to shoot the movie entirely on VistaVision 35 mm motion picture film. The antique cameras gave this stage play an "aesthetic rich vibe and velvety visual texture."

Before it was called Digger, the film was titled blah blah blah

Before settling on the name Digger, the film was actually called blah blah blah. The director explained that the phrase was meant to reference the human tongue, which he called an incredible, terrible, terrifying weapon. He also believed a human tongue could change people's perception of reality, and that's kind of what Jesse Plemons' character does in the movie, and what Digger talks about a lot in the film.

By turning this into more of a satire piece, where people can cheer at Digger's death, they kind of don't blame him as much for it. That's emphasized by a line Digger says about how, when a house is on fire, no one asks who burnt the toaster.

A category six hurricane hints at Digger's twist before it happens

There's a hidden detail in Digger that reveals a major plot twist before it actually happens. Once we learn Digger is a play, we think it's a comedic piece, but in the end it turns out to be something much more disturbing, when we realize this is a dystopian world that Digger has actually destroyed.

The clue comes when Tom Cruise's character is talking to his wife about his daughter's plane. His daughter was flying, there was a huge storm, and it's mentioned that there was a category six hurricane. Category six hurricanes don't exist in real life, so this was one of the first key details that something was wrong.

Digger's dying cat Maggie mirrors his refusal to give up the Earth's resources

Early in the movie, we learn Digger's cat is dying, and this seems to be way more important to him than his business dying. To highlight the grotesque wealth and twisted priorities of billionaire Digger Rockwell, the film gives him his most prized possession, his cat Maggie. Maggie is 30 years old and dying. He calls in a doctor, who tells him she has around two weeks to five minutes to live. Digger doesn't like his answer and sends him out the door.

His desperate refusal to let go of his dying pet serves as a metaphor for his unwillingness to surrender the Earth's natural resources for his own selfish needs. It's one of my favorite details because it shows his true personality: how greedy he is, how he doesn't want to hear anyone else's opinions besides his own, and how he's just a selfish person who would rather put this cat through misery.

He's the same way when it comes to the oil. He had known for months that there could be a problem, but he let it go anyway, and this caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. Digger shows a total neglect for people and is a terrible person, and I love that the movie begins to highlight this through the cat, and through a simple scene early in the film where the cat pees in his bed.

What was your favorite scene in Digger?