(Image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
Digger, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Birdman Academy Award winner Alejandro González Iñárritu, began opening in markets around the world this week. Critics had already begun publishing their reviews, and the response has been sharply divided. The film has drawn plenty of harsh criticism, particularly in Europe and North America, and currently holds a 52% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes—below the threshold required for a “Fresh” rating.
Reviews are not the film’s only cause for concern. Its North American opening weekend was initially projected to come in below $10 million and ultimately finished at just $8 million. With its production budget reportedly ranging from $140 million to as much as $180 million, those figures set off alarm bells for a movie starring Cruise—especially one made on such an enormous budget.
Against that backdrop, distributor Warner Bros. Pictures has adopted an unusual promotional strategy. Videos released over the past several days have directly addressed the negative reviews, urging moviegoers not to let critics make the decision for them.
The promotional spots linked above prominently display the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score and excerpts from negative reviews, then juxtapose them with dialogue delivered by Cruise in the movie. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon whose behavior also provokes fierce public criticism within the story. Digger has no fear of answering his detractors, however, delivering lines such as, “You know what? Fuck those people!” and “You decide which!” The campaign repurposes those lines from the film as pointed responses to the criticism it has received in the real world.