Ben Shapiro Criticizes Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ as Anti-Corporate Propaganda
Ben Shapiro calls Tom Cruise’s new film ‘Digger’ a ‘pretentious piece of anti-corporate propaganda’ with poor box office results.
2 min read
Tom Cruise’s latest film, Digger, opened to just $8 million domestically, far below its reported production budget of $160 million to $180 million. Ben Shapiro, Editor Emeritus of The Daily Wire, criticized the film as ‘a pretentious piece of anti-corporate propaganda,’ arguing that its politics, while ‘correct’ in the eyes of legacy media, couldn’t save it at the box office.
Analysts suggest the film would have needed a domestic debut of around $40 million to justify its production budget. Its disappointing opening followed mixed reviews, with several critics delivering sharp critiques. Shapiro argued that Hollywood typically embraces films with such politics, citing the accolades received by Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which he called ‘hyper-partisan.’
Cruise, known for his success with action films like Top Gun: Maverick, has also ventured into more unconventional projects, such as Lions for Lambs, which puzzled many of his fans. Shapiro also called director Alejandro González Iñárritu ‘one of the most overrated directors working.’
Shapiro compared Digger to The Daily Wire’s recently released Run Hide Fight: Infidels, which he described as the company’s biggest entertainment success to date. He argued that Infidels exceeded expectations without the favorable media reception that Digger would have received had its politics aligned with Hollywood’s.
Currently, Digger has a 51% critic’s score and 72% verified audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Boston Globe called it ‘the worst movie of Tom Cruise’s career.’ The Hollywood Reporter noted that the film is ‘a climate crisis satire so smug and bombastic it makes Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up seem almost innocuous.’ A writer from The New York Post said, ‘Audiences will urgently want to leave after the first five minutes.’
However, not all reviews were negative. A reviewer from the Chicago Reader wrote, ‘Digger is a huge swing which may not connect for a lot of people, but its commitment to its messiness is nothing if not fascinating.’ Another from The Atlantic noted, ‘Sure, not everyone will dig it. But as a Hollywood-star project, its existence is fascinating.’
Source: Daily Wire
