Alejándro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Digger seems to be Tom Cruise's latest frantic swipe at an Oscar nod. It's a satirical comedy about an asshole billionaire who is trying to make himself humanity's savior by stopping a planet-destroying tsunami that he caused. (Think Bezos with a cowboy hat.)(Sidebar, Jeff Bezos totally has a cowboy hat somewhere and Lauren Sanchez just won't let him wear it, right?)
The trailer is ghastly -- it feels very much like someone on Team TC was like, "Hah, remember when you were in all that makeup in Tropic Thunder and being raunchy and an asshole and people were SO SURPRISED? Let's make that into a movie." Jodie Turner-Smith up there isn't even in this movie, but attended the premiere, and just by her very aura is better marketing for it than the actual marketing. But, trailers are notoriously becoming poorer and poorer reflections of the movies themselves. I saw a theory that Digger is secretly a musical and the reason the trailer sucks is that they're trying so hard to hide that, and sadly that does not seem to be the case. That would have been amazing.
Mostly, I'm curious if the blatant Oscar bait of it all will work, or if in two months we'll be pretending Digger never happened. Or, probably worse for Tom Cruise, if John Goodman will end up the only actor who gets nominated for anything and so he won't be able to pretend Digger never happened. Early reviews range from, "Ambitious idea, but too zany," to, "Not zany ENOUGH," to, "Well, we get what they were going for, at least," to, "Unpleasant."