If you’ve seen the last two Mission: Impossible movies, you’ve seen Tom Cruise basically fight AI head-on. In those films, the IMF fought their most prescient villain yet, a program called The Entity. The back-to-back movies basically showed the scary capabilities of battling an omnipotent and omnipresent opponent. But in real life, Tom Cruise states plain and simple that audiences respond to real things. As someone who was shown to demonstrate the power of the Seedance AI program when a video of him and Brad Pitt fighting in a non-existent movie scene dropped online, The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Cruise thinks that viewers can always tell what’s real.
Cruise and Alejandro Iñárritu sat down at the Academy Museum’s David Geffen Theater for a talk after a screening of Digger. While Cruise never actually used the letters “A” or “I,” he took the time to extensively shine a light on the numerous crew members who worked to bring their movie to life,
This film is handmade.”sponsored content
He continued to say,
People want to see real things. […] People want real things and they want real experiences.”
Cruise would emphasize the importance of the terms “handmade” and “real things,” saying that all the effort that the cast and crew went through on the movie was done through learned skills and experiences. He stated, “It was never handed to any of us.” He also takes the time to show his appreciation to the ticket buyers, who allow him to continue putting together these hard-working films, and explained, “My hope is always that the films would do enough that I’d have that opportunity to do it again.”
For a bold project for Cruise, he’s certainly taking the divisive reactions in stride. Critics have been pretty split on their reviews. Iñárritu described the similarly divided nature in making the film, “We were laughing all day.” Then after watching dailies, he’d think, “Oh my God. This is not working. This is sh*t. It’s too naturalistic. It’s not so funny.” Cruise, meanwhile, would keep things positive by praising his co-stars, including John Goodman and Sandra Hüller.
Our Chris Bumbray was one of the critics who liked the movie, though he wouldn’t argue against someone who hated it. He says in his 7/10 review, “As such, Digger is highly experimental, to the point that it will alienate and turn off mainstream viewers—yet it might come to be regarded as an incredibly bold piece of filmmaking further down the line. […] Digger is a hard film to explain to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It also defies easy classification. Does it always work? No. It’s being billed as a comedy, but I didn’t laugh once. Yet it cries out to be seen and features elements—namely Cruise’s performance—that are nothing short of masterful. It gives you a lot to chew on and doesn’t always work, but it’s nonetheless a must-see, even if I wouldn’t blame anyone reading this for hating it.”