‘Digger’ Explained: The Story, the Twist, and the Ending

The following post contains SPOILERS for Digger. If you complain that it ruins the movie you might just get squished by a rogue glacier.

From the moment Warner Bros. unveiled the first look for Digger, cinephiles speculated that something was going on with the film that wasn’t immediately obvious from its trailer. I even heard speculation from multiple sources that Digger, starring Tom Cruise as a brash billionaire whose reckless attitude causes an environmental calamity, was actually a secret musical.

That wasn’t quite right — but it was a lot closer to the truth about Digger than I certainly expected. Even after you see the film, the exact specifics of what is real and what is fiction here is a little hazy. So let’s break down exactly what transpires in the latest mind bender from director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Who Is Digger?

In Digger, Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an obscenely wealthy oil tycoon with a cartoonish accent and a hideous combover. He’s expanded his deeply American business to every corner of the globe. As the movie begins — and as he attempts to prolong the life of his dying cat — Digger’s team at a drilling platform near Greeland has made a troubling discovery. A crack in a glacier is rapidly expanding, causing the release of methane and imperiling Digger’s entire operation in the region. His safety experts recommend they shut the platform down and investigate. Unconcerned about the potential hazards, Digger bullies his employees into continuing their work. A few minutes later, the platform has exploded and everyone aboard is dead.

Much of the rest of the film follows Digger and a few of his employees — most notably an environmental scientist named Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) as they race to contain the literal and metaphorical fallout of this disaster. A massive chunk of the glacier nicknamed “Judy” is dislodged in the explosion, and it heads out to the open ocean; if it reaches mainland Europe, Ganesh warns that it could cause thousands upon thousands of deaths and cause trillions of dollars in property damage. At the same time, Digger seeks to insulate himself from criticism. If he can’t control nature, he explains he can at least “control the narrative” around the ultimate responsibility for this accident.

Ah, but that’s just part of the film. About 30 minutes into Digger’s story, the entire reality of the story breaks down, as Iñárritu reveals that everything we have seen in Digger to that point is actually a very elaborate stage play, one in which the role of Digger Rockwell is played by an actor named Curtis Markson — also portrayed by Tom Cruise.

Who Is Curtis Markson?

As soon as Digger breaks the fourth wall — in the form of a model tree toppling over in the background of a scene between Digger and U.S. President Compson (John Goodman) — Cruise drops Digger’s Southern fried accent, and returns to his natural speaking voice. We never see him without his Digger hair and prosthetic makeup, but we follow him backstage where he engages in FaceTime-style phone calls (conducted on a high-tech vanity mirror) with his wife. Their converstions gradually reveal that Cruise’s actually an actor named Curtis Markson, who is playing the role of Digger Rockwell in a play called Fossil Fools. The first 30 minutes of Digger are the play’s final dress rehearsal before its first performance in front of an audience.

So Digger Is Character in a Play?

Yes ... and no. That first fourth-wall break establishes that most of what we are watching is a play performed by actors. But the specifics of the play’s origins, and the details of when and where this play is being performed, are left vague until Digger’s final act, when a monologue delivered by actor Jesse Plemons reveals that Fossil Fools is a satire based on real events that actually occurred decades earlier within the reality of the film.

In other words: Digger Rockwell was a real person, and his careless business practices resulted in the creation of “Judy,” a massive iceberg did cause catastrophic harm across Europe and to the Earth’s ecosystem at large. While society still exists, and plays like Fossil Fools do as well, Digger’s final moments reveal that the world outside the theater where this production is staged is a drowned, ruined, dystopian nightmare, complete with flooded streets, gray skies, and jackbooted soldiers patroling what’s left of civilization.

Think of Fossil Fools as this future’s version or something like Hamilton or Evita; a fictional interpretation of historical people and events.

So Digger Is Not a Musical?

Sadly, no. But the rumor that the film was a musical wasn’t completely off-base. The trailers for Digger were hiding something — namely, the fact that the whole Digger Rockwell storyline is actually a play performed by actors within this dystopian future.

(Honestly, the film may have played better if it was a musical. It might have been easier to accept the heightened reality of Digger’s play-with-a-film — which is wildly unrealistic at times — if it more fully dove into the realm of fantasy with elaborate musical numbers.)

What’s the Deal With Curtis’ Daughter?

Every time Iñárritu goes backstage of Fossil Fools, Markson stresses out about his missing daughter. He speaks to her over the phone early in the film while she��s about to take a flight, but then at some point while he’s rehearsing, she disappears. Markson and his wife exchange frantic calls while they try to locate her, while referring to a terrible hurricane that’s affecting flights all over the world. (Someone refers to it as a “Category 6 storm,” a designation that does not currently exists, one of the early clues that Digger actually takes place in the future.) In Digger’s final scenes, after Curtis and the cast finish their first performance of Fossil Fuels, his wife appears in person and reveals that their daughter has been found and is safe, thanks in part to Jesse Plemons’ character Kenny.

Those are the events depicted onscreen. What do they have to do with the story of Digger Rockwell, and why are they included in Digger? That’s open to interpretation.

Thematically, the search for Curtis’ daughter may be related to what Digger says during his big monologue before that European tribunal investigating Judy. During that speech, Digger both admits his company’s fault in the tragedy while pointing the blame back on society for demanding cheap oil in order to fuel their easy lives. He explicitly mentions that people are too concerned with their day-to-day survival and comfort to worry themselves with future issues like energy sustainability and environmental devastation. The storyline involving Curtis Markson’s daughter is an echo of that; even as he prepares for this big performance, his most immediate concern involves his daughter.

The other potential reading of the daughter character is metatextual. Tom Cruise doesn’t discuss his private life very much in interviews, but he has several children, including his daughter Suri with his ex-wife Katie Holmes. Suri is now 20 years old — close to the age of Curtis Markson’s daughter in Digger. The more the film invites us to peak behind the curtain of Fossil Fools and see this actor’s backstage life, the more the audience might be inclined to try and place Cruise’s own biography atop Curtis’ life story. Certainly it’s interesting to speculate about the parallels between the two. (And the differences; Curtis is married, Cruise is not.)

Who Is Jesse Plemons’ Character?

During Digger’s backstage scenes, Curtis repeatedly encounters a mysterious man referred to as a producer of Fossil Fools. It’s only at film’s climax, as the tensions between Curtis and the play’s director reach a breaking point, that the producer fully introduces himself.

He’s not just some wealthy backer of the show; he was actually a witness to the events depicted in Fossil Fuels. A handful of scenes in the play involving Digger and his family feature a young boy with bright red hair. This is Kenny, the son of Digger’s half-sister Emma (Sandra Hüller). Plemons plays the adult version of Kenny, Digger’s nephew.

As the cast and crew debate whether Fossil Fools is accurate to the real historical disaster, Plemons steps forward to reassure them that their work is good, and funny, and above all truthful. He explains that he backed the new production of the play (it is supposedly considered a cult classic in this dystopian society) because of a sense of familial guilt about the role his uncle played in the destruction of the world’s ecosystem. He wants Digger and the rest to look ridiculous because, well, they were ridiculous. (That’s at least according to Kenny. It’s left the audience to determine how Kenny’s own motives might influence his actions — just as Digger’s motives affect the way he responds to Judy.)

What Does the End of the Movie Mean?

Digger’s penultimate scene show Digger Rockwell’s final days. After his role in the Judy fiasco is exposed, he and his family are exiled to another of his company’s oil rigs in the middle of the ocean. President Compson dies, and his bumbling Vice President (Michael Stuhlbarg) replaces him; he eventually cuts off support of the disgraced businessman. Digger and his family are left to subsist on the meager supplies left in their compound’s refrigerator. Instead of slowly starving to death, a delusional Digger jumps into the ocean and drowns.

That concludes Fossil Fools. The movie’s last few minutes reveal the extent to which the real Digger’s actions contaminated the Earth. As the play’s audience leaves the theater, some sort of alarm sounds, and the attendees all put on gas masks before venturing out into a world that is mostly submerged in dirty water, and patroled by jackbooted soldiers. It’s too late for Fossil Fools’ patrons — but I imagine Iñárritu would like us to heed Digger’s warning and ensure our future descendents don’t end up the same way.