Don’t hate the movie, hate the critic! Digger’s new PR push is a risky bet for film that was never meant to be divisive

‘You know what? Fuck those people!” The speaker is Tom Cruise in his serious-fatsuit role of Digger, in the bold new online ad which gives the finger to his film’s bad reviews and the haters. His words are now repurposed to address loathsome critics. The ad’s message is that a provocative, passionate film like this is divisive. You should make your own mind up. Which is true of course. Although it is just as true for films getting across-the-board raves.

The last movie to try this was Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: it too ran an ad campaign rebranding the existence of bad reviews (though like Digger it also had plenty of good reviews) as evidence of genius which had yet to be appreciated. This campaign went terribly wrong when it was pointed out that bad reviews it had quoted for Apocalypse Now and The Godfather were in fact made up.

We have to assume that Digger’s PR team have done their homework. Their ad punches out quotes matching superlatives to abuse: “UNPLEASANT – MASTERPIECE”; “BAFFLING – BRILLIANT”; “VERY GOOFY – EXCELLENT”; “MAGNIFICENT – INSUFFERABLE”; “SAME FILM – DIFFERENT TRUTH” it concludes.

But who is it being quoted? The answer seems to be: entertainment journalists on social media, reporters who are today startled and tickled pink to be cited in this way. The ad does not deign to quote the reviews as such, the actual longform reviews whose failure to line up unanimously behind this prestige film may have been hurtful. Their dissent is of more consequence in a movie-marketplace where the Rotten Tomatoes aggregation score is taken very seriously. And of course the good reviews are where the Oscar buzz is supposed to begin. So the narrative has to be changed to debate. Praise and mockery have to be mulched together and offered as a weird kind of controversy-clamour. But the awful truth is that Digger wasn’t supposed to be divisive. It was supposed to be a sophisticated film with glamorous stars and an impeccably liberal message that we could all get behind.

Director Alejandro Gonzaléz Iñárritu and producer-star Tom Cruise are naturally entitled to disdain the critics. I myself have raved about crazy high-risk films, like Darren Aronofsky’s much-scorned, much-mocked surreal freakout Mother! which have met with derision from the rest of press. But disdaining the press means following the example of the British Royal Family and ignoring them. And letting the film speak for itself.