Everybody Hates "Excavation." It's Great Weather for the Movie

A deeply unsettling film that forces viewers to confront the many stories we tell ourselves about people who hold economic and political power.

Absolutely - and it's a movie that reimagined my expectations of what a climate change movie should be. The Digger, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's critically acclaimed new and very expensive film, questions the purpose of art and even the very purpose of telling the truth in the face of the capitalist machine that is driving the world toward climate catastrophe. The deeply unsettling film forces viewers to confront the kind of characters we easily turn into climactic villains.

(Spoilers ahead - if you plan on seeing the movie, I really encourage you to do so before reading any further.)

The film stars Tom Cruise as Rockwell, an oil billionaire who wears only cowboy boots and lives in a mansion covered in antlers and polar bear skin rugs. At the beginning of the film, one of Digger's oil rigs accidentally causes a massive iceberg to break off, resulting in a massive methane gas leak. As disaster approaches, he must warn the president (John Goodman, giving a performance reminiscent of his best work with the Coen brothers) as the iceberg heads for Europe.

The trailers show the film as a broad, painful satire of American oil and how a Trump-inspired religious right-wing government would respond to a real-life climate disaster. However, Iñárritu lets us in on the secret early on: the farce we're watching is actually a show within a movie, taking place in an auditorium with a leaky roof. It keeps losing its power.

Finally, we realize that the play "Fossil Fools" depicts events that really happened decades ago. From then on, you know that every joke, every vicious portrayal of the Other and the President as truly bad guys, is for two audiences: moviegoers in 2026 and theatergoers living in a dystopian future.

From the trailers, I initially thought the film would be similar to Adam McKay's blockbuster Don't Look Up, a climate comedy that premiered on Netflix in 2021 and drew record numbers of viewers. Don't Look For It puts scientists in a race to inform the public about an impending asteroid impact and a favorite asteroid impact. They have other plans. At the time, McKay said the film's goal was to "make people less tolerant of the inaction of their leaders." If the media—journalists, filmmakers, and the like—can properly inform the public about the dangers of climate change, the film (and accompanying calls to action) will see progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Another similarly deals with issues surrounding weather misinformation. Another admits that he ignored his company's warnings about the looming crisis on its drilling rigs. President Goodman and his cabinet decide to deploy a "firewall" that censors all mentions of the climate crisis (including the words "Al Gore"). Control the narrative.

But where the thesis of "Don't Look Up" is that if we communicate the truth better, action will happen, it takes a very nihilistic view - that the truth has no value. Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), another longtime environmentalist, angrily tells the oilman that he wants to tell the truth about his company and climate change to a group of EU leaders, and he keeps his word. (Ganesh makes the first reference to the Exxon Knew investigation that I can recall in a major motion picture.)

Another watches from a back room, then, in an original speech that forms the backbone of the film, he tells hostile European representatives that he, like other oilmen, knew their product was causing runaway climate change. But that doesn't matter, he exclaims. The world is tied to oil, and people in the same room have found countless uses for it.

"You want the energy to ask AI to solve the very disasters it's fueling," he told the assembled delegates. "You want freedom to enjoy the comforts of your unstable life." He ends up using Ganesh's truth-telling to avoid accountability - he walks out of Parliament as members clash with each other.

Rockwell's other exciting picture is also about what kind of truths we as the audience get and who the most likable climate villains are. In between Fossil Falls' ever-increasing workouts, we see Cruise grappling with how to play. Dieger noted that he watched hours of film and realized that he's not a finger-shooting idiot in Texas, but a thoughtful, shrewd businessman. But the show's audience, watching Fossil fools in a world the digger helped destroy, isn't looking for truth — they're looking for catharsis. Late in the film, an incredible twist reveals that the play has a wealthy benefactor who is very interested in performing it.

One of my big criticisms of "Don't Look Up" was that a Hollywood movie could be a catalyst for change. That movie star Leonardo DiCaprio, who rides yachts and private jets, can tell people to listen to the scientists and just vote us out of this mess. Deere essentially looks at the existence of Don't Look Up, noting that enjoying a satire about climate change that depicts certain villains like Doug Rockwell risks overlooking forms of corporate power that are more palatable to liberal audiences.

All of this might sound downright nihilistic, and I don't think the movie is meant to be happy. But I also don't think it's a message not to make art. Instead, it tries to be a reflection of our current reality, where truth often doesn't matter, and art is often funded by the very powers it criticizes. While Don't Look Up was supposed to be a call to action, Digger simply responds by telling viewers: This is where we are.

Five years after record numbers watched Don't Look Up, the Trump administration is back in power and has pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement again. The government is happily doubling down on "drill, baby, drill." Tech companies that touted their goals during the Don't Look Up era to cut emissions and even reverse past damage are now backing off thanks to the boom in artificial intelligence — which they say will one day help solve climate change. And here I am typing on my computer and driving a car that uses fossil fuels.

The Digger, the last film made before David Ellison bought the studio from Warner Bros., shows only the role that the rich and conservative are increasingly playing in controlling the arts. In closing, I really appreciate Digger for pointing out the absurdity of the whole thing.