Tom Cruise is perhaps the greatest living movie star there is. Since the ’80s, he’s been turning in iconic performances across genres and been the face of franchises like Top Gun and Mission: Impossible. When Tom Cruise is in a movie, people are seated. That’s the idea behind the trailer for his upcoming film Digger, from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant).
Warner Bros. released the latest trailer on YouTube, and while it lasts a little over three minutes, only thirty seconds of that is from Digger. The rest is a sizzle reel comprised of every legendary Tom Cruise moment on film you can think of. It begins with “I feel the need. The need for speed” from Top Gun, and somehow it only gets better from there. A particularly brilliant pull comes from 1994’s Interview with the Vampire, in which Cruise as the vampire Lestat (yes, the same Lestat in season 3 of AMC’s Anne Rice adaptation) says, “I assume I need no introduction.”
Action plays a big part in the hype trailer, of course, with plenty of clips of Cruise performing death-defying stunts across the Mission: Impossible series. The mashup does a good job of reminding viewers that Cruise has real acting chops as well, with excerpts from his Oscar-nominated roles in Jerry Maguire, Magnolia, and Born on the Fourth of July. It is also a real treat to see some of the wilder parts of Cruise’s filmography show up. 2012’s Rock of Ages, a critically panned adaptation of the Jukebox musical, still gets some love.
For roughly two and a half minutes, it is easy to watch the trailer and get lost in it, forgetting that it has any relation to a movie that hasn’t been released. That is until the trailer uses a piece of Eugene Kittridge’s dialogue from Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, “Everything you are. Everything you’ve done has come to this.” The trailer then cuts to a shovel hitting the floor and a short teaser for Digger finally plays. It is an excellent piece of marketing centered around the real-life legend that Tom Cruise has become thanks to his filmography. The trailer played in theaters earlier this summer before 40th anniversary showings of Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick. When the trailer played in my showing, the crowd went absolutely bananas.
Digger is directed by Iñárritu, the director of The Revenant and Birdman, and is billed as a satirical comedy. According to the synopsis, it, “tells the tale of the most powerful man in the world as he embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.” In addition to Cruise in the lead role, the film also stars Sandra Hüller (Project Hail Mary), John Goodman (The Big Lebowski), Michael Stuhlbarg (Call Me by Your Name), Jesse Plemons (Bugonia), and more. It is set for an October 2 release. The film marks Cruise’s return to more dramatic roles after the conclusion of the Mission: Impossible series. Could that elusive Oscar be within reach?