Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
This is the latest edition of Criticsour weekly roundup of reviews, essays, and conversations. Want to receive it in your inbox every Friday? Register here.
This roundtable contains spoilers for Excavator.
Thanks to a press tour involving a confusing GQ cover story and an extended boogie through Jennifer Hudson’s spiritual tunnel, the normally elusive and laconic Tom Cruise was brought to the forefront of the collective consciousness once again. The opportunity? Excavatorthe latest film from Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu, in which the actor plays an unrepentant oilman named Digger Rockwell alongside Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller and Jesse Plemons. Star power in and around Excavator may be out of the ordinary, and yet, as critic Bilge Ebiri writes in his review, the film – about climate change and the powerful few destroying our planet – is “acted with such pomposity that it’s hard not to wince.”
If you’re hypersensitive to spoilers, you should probably stop reading here – although the film is quick to reveal that the spectacle of ruthless oligarchs we’ve been watching is actually a play and that Cruise (nearly unrecognizable under his prosthetics) is playing an actor playing Rockwell. Excavator, which reportedly cost between $160 million and $180 million and hit theaters today, was widely panned by critics and is expected to be a box office bomb. What went wrong? I asked film critics Bilge Ebiri and Alison Willmore and our resident awards expert, Nate Jones. —Jasmine Vojdani, senior newsletter editor
We have been waiting for this Cruise-Iñarritú film for a very long time and, in fact, it has been in the works for almost a decade, also because of the delays. What did you expect from this film before seeing it?
Alison Willmore: This film was designed to mark the next phase of Tom Cruise’s career, in part because he made action films in which he insisted on putting himself in physical danger and doing stunts himself. This was supposed to indicate what serious actor Tom Cruise was going to be from now on.
Cale Ebiri: I consider myself a big admirer of Tom Cruise as an actor, not necessarily as a person. Years ago, when I made a rolling stone “Every Tom Cruise Film Ranked” and I made a point of reviewing everything, I came away impressed both by the level of control he exercised over his films, starting with Top Gunbut also by how he sincerely wants them to be good. Iñarritú is a director with whom I have a love-hate relationship. I will always remember seeing Perros Loves for the first time and be completely blown away – then see 21 grams And Babel and thinking they were really bad. I like Birdman. There is a very good 100 minute film in The ghost somewhere, but the director didn’t want to change it. Bardo It was a disaster on all fronts. I entered Excavator thinking this could be a really exciting movie. I didn’t like the movie, but I wasn’t entirely disappointed, because it takes risks. It’s wild there. This is climate collapse. And Cruise is absolutely taking a huge turn.
I’m a little disappointed that Cruise, for various reasons, will never again get to play a normal person, one that an audience can conceive of as existing in the real world. The person he plays in this film is pretty ridiculous. Will he ever get to play another Jerry McGuire? I think he could. The question is, will has he done this before?
I’m surprised to hear you say it didn’t disappoint, as you describe the film as “tortuous” and “like being stuck in a tuba for two hours.”
BE: Disappointment and dislike are two very different things.
One of your criticisms is that it’s hard to know how seriously to take satire that doesn’t seem to take itself seriously. Your description of Digger made me think of the original title of the film, Blah, Blah, Blah. Allison and Nate, do you both agree that this fails as satire?
AW: I feel like this is actually a film questioning the purpose of satire. We learn pretty early on that all these people are putting on a play that’s trying to skewer the oligarchs who are destroying the world. These venal politicians and military generals already exist in a bubble away from the rest of the world, and they don’t seem to feel responsible to ordinary people. The film makes fun of them, and yet Cruise’s character – the actor he plays – claims that by caricaturing them we lose all sense of them as people.
The film suggests that satire is an empty catharsis that we can achieve without taking responsibility ourselves, that it is easier to be angry at individuals than to question why we let them succeed. I think there’s a bit too much back and forth. I think he’s trying to ask, What are we looking for from these pieces of satire? I’m just coming out of this film industry of so many dark comedies rich in food, I think Excavator wonders if the miserable catharsis we get from mean-spirited depictions of the rich and powerful actually does anything for us.
Nate Jones: For me, the ending was more Sullivan’s Travels–y, arguing for broad-minded satire. It was like, These people are so powerful, but we can’t stop them. The only thing we can do is laugh at them. Rather, it was about the palliative effects of satire.
BE: I think you’re both right, in a sense. The most frustrating thing about having to watch this movie again is that my favorite part is the last five to ten minutes. This is the part that works wonderfully.
AW: Yeah, you want to talk about it as a whole. Before we reveal that it’s a play, the film is a macabre satire about a group of horrible people – we, as a society, are finally at a point where this kind of satire isn’t very cutting or funny, just an incredibly cringeworthy exercise.
Could this finally be the end of this genre?
AW: Either way, it looks like we’re reaching the end. I think the film makes you wonder what the genre accomplishes. As far as I can tell, this doesn’t sting the people who are depicted. Many of these people literally own the companies that release these movies and shows. True levels of power are not controlled by satirical box office comedy.
NEW JERSEY: It’s a way for the film to have its cake and eat it too. It’s like, I know I am a broad satire; if any of this is clunky and obvious and doesn’t work, it’s because it’s supposed to be. The film is much more fun to tell than to watch.
BE At first it was boring, then he recognized that it was boring, but then it continued to be even more boring. HAS that point, I didn’t even know what to think. Iñárritu clearly doesn’t care if it’s boring. It was at that moment that I said to myself: Nobody takes it seriously. And then the final scene makes it more interesting, but it doesn’t retroactively improve. In terms of production, the film fails in many respects. What is Sandra Hüller doing in this film? This is such a poor use of her.
NEW JERSEY: And she has, I think, an American accent, which is kind of funny.
BE: When I hear how the budget for this project blew up and how long it took, I say to myself What? Did they at any point rephotograph or reconfigure it? Was the play originally planned in the script?
Bilge argues that the positive side of the film is that Cruise, usually an apolitical actor, starred in one of the biggest films about climate change we’ve seen in a while. What would make you recommend this movie to other people? Is there any laughter? Is it nice as a hate watch?
BE: I would never describe anything in this movie as enjoyable. On one level, I think the set design is impressive. All the laughs in the film are in the trailer. The score is horrible. It’s shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, the world’s greatest filmmaker, and it doesn’t even look very good. I enjoyed this scene where Digger makes his big speech. There is so much to say in this movie that I keep saying “people should totally see this movie.” But at the same time, they should be aware that this could make their situation worse.
AW: I like the look of the film. He borrows from Roy Andersson, a Swedish filmmaker beloved by movie buffs and known to almost no one else. You have these complex shots, the camera is often static. Digger the character has this 30 year old cat who wants to die…
Thanks for raising the cat.
…It’s an animatronic cat for the part, so it looks hilarious and grotesque, and the idea is that he kept it alive just by investing money in it. He shits and pees in his bed every night. It’s the only thing he seems to like. There is something funny about his love for this cat who is almost a permanent ghost.
New Digger ads came out this week, incorporating the film’s mixed reception. Is it as mixed as they make it out to be, or is it extremely negative? We also saw Cruise press in a way he hasn’t done in a long time. Do you think this has a real chance of getting any award nominations?
NEW JERSEY: This looks like a case where people use mixed And polarizing as euphemisms. Every Iñarritú film has been nominated for an Oscar. They invented a special technical prize to give to a VR exhibition he produced.
I think given star power and greatness, Cruise can still be among the five nominees for Best Actor. It is clear that they wanted to campaign for the coronation: Everything had led to this. It’s very narrative driven. The idea was to wow everyone, become unstoppable, and then go from there so Tom didn’t have to do the whole six-month pole dance. And the best actor category has also become much more competitive. Suddenly people are talking about John Malkovich in New wild horse or Andrew Scott in Elsinore as potential winners. It will be fascinating to see if Tom continues on the road and continues trying to make the campaign happen, or if they quietly wash their hands of it.
BE: This is another area where the Paramount-Warner merger could have an effect. There have been examples of studio heads pulling a film’s awards season budget for whatever reason. I mean, if Tom Cruise really wanted to, he could fund his own awards campaign himself, but they tend not to do that. The industry has a way of closing ranks around Iñarritú. We’ll see.
I will say that, after seeing Excavator, I had a strange dream of guilt inspired by the film, the kind of guilt that Digger, the character, is almost not allowed to feel in the film, but which transferred itself to me. So I retroactively have a little more respect for the film.
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