Digger’s Shockingly Low Rotten Tomatoes Score Could Seriously Hurt Tom Cruise’s Oscar Chances

The low Rotten Tomatoes score for Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Digger may put Tom Cruise’s Oscar chances in jeopardy.

Ahead of the film’s release, there was significant hype. Playing Digger Rockwell, Cruise takes on a character quite different from his Top Gun and Mission: Impossible roles. Unfortunately, according to the latest update, the movie’s initial critical reception did not turn out as many fans had expected. According to Rotten Tomatoes, Digger debuted with a 41% Tomatometer score. At the time of writing, it stands at 53%, based on 87 reviews.

The summary of the movie reads, “The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.”

41% score puts Digger in a difficult position

Digger initially debuted with a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.1/10 on TMDB. While Warner Bros. and Tom Cruise launched a major awards campaign for the satirical dark comedy, the mixed critical reception has complicated Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s awards campaign for the feature.

Digger earned a 5 out of 10 from ComingSoon.net‘s Jonathan Sim. Sim commented on the film’s twist and stated, “Unfortunately, that twist also creates one of the movie’s biggest problems: Digger starts to feel considerably lower-stakes than its premise initially promises.”

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, “The most disappointing film of the year: an exasperatingly shallow, laborious, self-congratulatory satire with a trick up its sleeve, featuring very good actors giving not very good performances.”

Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail stated, “All these preening, obnoxiously self-satisfied moments, and so many more, add up to a movie so convinced of its own brilliance that it cannot see it is in fact the most banal variety of idiot: loud, ugly and forever oblivious to its own shortcomings.”

The Independent‘s Clarisse Loughrey noted, “When you’re watching a film that doesn’t really seem to work, which then voluntarily indulges the suggestion that its very existence might be completely pointless — well, then, why did any of us, filmmaker or audience, bother in the first place?“

The Wrap‘s critic William Bibbiani said, “Digger is what happens when you give the week’s worst Saturday Night Live sketch an inexplicably large budget and delusions of grandeur.”

Tom Cruise’s Digger will arrive in the U.S. theatres on October 2, 2026.

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