Tom Cruise’s Digger mirrors Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove with a modern twist

More than six decades later, Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu's upcoming film Digger appears to echo several themes explored in Stanley Kubrick’s political satire-black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb through a distinctly contemporary lens.

Starring 4-time Academy Award-nominated and Mission: Impossible star Tom Cruise, Iñárritu's upcoming satirical black comedy film follows Digger Rockwell (Cruise), an older potbelly oil oligarch whose company has potentially set off a global ecological disaster, which has worried the world's greatest leaders, including the President of the US (played by John Goodman). As the most powerful man in the world, Rockwell aims to solve this problem or change people's perception by changing the narrative.

The recently released Digger trailer hints at a rapidly melting iceberg, which could lead to a massive ecological disaster. One cannot help but draw comparisons between Tom Cruise's upcoming highly-anticipated project and Dr. Strangelove, considered one of the greatest and most influential films ever made.

Tom Cruise’s Digger: A 'modern-day Dr. Strangelove'

In addition to fans, who are drawing comparisons between the two projects, actor Jesse Plemons (who also co-stars with Cruise in Digger) has also name-dropped Kubrick's 1964 film.

In an interview with Variety, the Black Mirror star compared the two projects as:

“It’s one of the strangest, funniest, most tragic scripts I’ve read. There’s a kind of modern-day Dr. Strangelove thing, and then it becomes something else entirely.”

Dr. Strangelove centered on the terrifying possibility that a handful of flawed individuals could accidentally trigger global nuclear annihilation. The film stars Peter Sellers portraying three different characters: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the President of the US Merkin Muffley and the titular nuclear war expert and former Nazi Dr. Strangelove, who, along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sets out to stop a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, ordered by a paranoid brigadier general of the United States Air Force.

Nuclear paranoia and technological anxiety

A still from Dr. Strangelove (Image via YouTube/Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove arrived at the height of the Cold War, aptly transforming existential fear into military bureaucracy and political decision-making. Digger shifts that same fear into a modern-day setting.

While the recently released trailer for Tom Cruise's film features shots of fighter jets and talks of a nuclear war, it focuses on humanity's dependence on advanced technology and energy systems that may spiral beyond human control and eventually damage our environment.

Like Kubrick's film, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's upcoming film reflects today's anxieties and fears, where increasingly sophisticated technology poses a threat to our economic systems.

Satire as a form of storytelling

One of Dr. Strangelove's greatest strengths was its willingness to laugh at horrifying possibilities. The film, listed at number three on the American Film Institute's list of the funniest American films, used comedy (not drama) to expose institutional failures and political decision-making, employing humour as the most underrated weapon for social and political commentary.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu's The Revenant and Birdman are not particularly known for their humour. However, the first Digger trailer pivots from the filmmaker's usual style, offering glimpses of comedy. This hints that the film employs a similar approach to Stanley Kubrick. The final moments of the trailer show Cruise's titular character preparing to face the world with the 'hard truth', as he hypes himself in an unconventional (and comical) manner by repeatedly making 'Bang. Bang. Bang' sounds.

The early comparisons between Digger and Dr. Strangelove highlight that threats might change but the cautionary lessons remain remarkably similar.

In addition to Tom Cruise, John Goodman and Jesse Plemons, the film stars Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sophie Wilde, Emma D'Arcy, Robert John Burke, Burn Gorman, Pip Torrens and Mercedes Hernández.