Tom Cruise’s Digger has become one of those movies where the wildly split reviews are almost as entertaining as the film sounds. Some critics think Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s environmental satire is audacious and hilarious. Others have called it obnoxious, exhausting and flat-out unpleasant. Warner Bros. has already turned that divide into marketing material, so apparently everybody has chosen violence, but now Guillermo del Toro has entered the chat. The Frankenstein filmmaker responded to an IGN post about Digger on X and took immediate issue with how the story was framed. Calling the headline “Entirely Petty,” del Toro reshared IGN’s post and made it clear that, love it or hate it, he personally digs the movie and admires its scale, ambition and reach.Entirely Petty headline. Love it or not. And, yes, I do. The film delivers in scale, ambition and reach at a theatrical screen level. Daring, bold and Cinematically complex. Decidedly a Theatrical experience. https://t.co/Gby9ykcj9AOctober 1, 2026The interesting part here is that del Toro was not simply objecting to somebody disliking the movie. His points are about a deeper conversation regarding the industry as a whole. IGN critic Michael Calabro gave Digger a 6 out of 10, praising its performances and finding plenty of laughs while criticizing the satire. His full review actually says the theater is “undoubtedly the best way to experience it,” thanks to the production resources and artists working at that scale. Where things get pricklier is the recommendation that skeptical moviegoers save their money and catch it later on streaming, with an HBO Max subscription. That appears to be what got under Del Toro’s skin.And I get it. A critic is completely entitled to tell readers a movie is bad, mediocre or not worth the ticket price. That is literally the job. Del Toro is equally entitled to look at a movie made by one of his peers, shot entirely in VistaVision and designed for IMAX, and say maybe reducing the conversation to “wait for streaming” misses something about the experience.The debate is almost perfectly suited to Digger, because everybody seems to be seeing a different movie. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an enormously powerful oil tycoon whose drilling helps unleash an environmental catastrophe. He is buried under prosthetics, sporting a Southern accent and playing considerably further from Ethan Hunt than we are used to seeing. Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons and Michael Stuhlbarg round out the cast.Critics have been all over the place. Its Rotten Tomatoes score has hovered around the low-50% range as more reviews have arrived. Warner Bros. apparently looked at that divided reception and decided to bottle it. A new ad flashes contradictory reactions like “unpleasant” and “masterpiece” before cutting to Digger himself saying, “F--- those people.” (Image credit: Warner Bros.)Del Toro, meanwhile, has been defending the movie since before this latest dust-up. When the internet briefly became convinced Digger was secretly a musical, he stepped in to say it was not, while also calling the film “great.”So his latest defense should not be particularly surprising. I still have to see Digger for myself, and with reactions this scattered, that now feels like half the fun. Maybe I’ll love it. Maybe I’ll hate it. But if Guillermo del Toro is standing outside the theater, metaphorically pointing at the door and telling everybody to go inside, I’m at least curious enough to buy the ticket.Digger hits the 2026 movie calendar, opening in theaters and IMAX on Oct. 2.