Tom Cruise Gives Advice to YouTube and Gen-Z Filmmakers

Tom Cruise is pelvic-thrusting and finger-pistol shooting his way into auteur territory again as revealed in the first full trailer release for Digger, the upcoming dark satire from four-time Academy Award winner Alejandro González Iñárritu. 

After more than a decade of action movies filling up Cruise’s resume, Film Twitter’s patron saint of cinema is bringing Mission: Impossible levels of enthusiasm to his first collaboration with Iñárritu. And at a Digger press event last week on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Cruise held court in a theater full of reporters and influencers to discuss the experience of filming with the director and the helmer’s long-time cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, as well as the glee of subsuming himself in prosthetics and finding the “rhythm” of this larger than life character, Digger Rockwell. 

Also long embracing his status as a statesman for the cinematic experience, Cruise seemed eager to discuss the state of moviemaking, particularly during a summer that might represent something of an inflection point. Hence after presenting the Digger trailer, Cruise talked to Den of Geek exclusively about how he sees the theatrical hits from younger Gen-Z filmmakers/YouTubers released this year as a great sign of the health of Hollywood.

“I feel very good,” the actor told us with his trademark intensity about the future of cinema. Furthermore, he has advice for the next generation of talent making the jump to theatrical: “Don’t ask for permission to create. You know Steven Spielberg started out directing an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., learning the craft. I’m still seeing that. I love movies. And I see a lot of movies, and there are a lot of great movies still to come this summer.”

Earlier during the moderated Q&A around the Digger trailer presentation, Cruise set some broader context for his current temperature taking of the industry. “Since I was a kid, I’ve traveled the world and I go and I watch movies with audiences, and I’m very curious about, do they feel the same way I do?” Cruise said. “That’s the beauty of this art form, everyone has the things they like and their own taste and what works and what doesn’t work. I tell people, learn these skills and go off and communicate your own stories. You don’t have to do it like I do. Do your thing.”

The actor and Iñárritu are certainly embracing that with Digger. In a pre-taped message from the director in London, where he’s mixing the film, Iñárritu said Digger is based on a character archetype he conjured up a decade ago after The Revenant.  

“People often ask me why I chose Tom to play Digger,” he offered. “To me, that’s like asking somebody why you drink water when you are thirsty? Because it’s what you need. The film needed Tom.” 

Iñárritu said of the character and film that “it’s absurd, it’s dangerous, but certainly comedic, because the source of great comedy is tragedy.” All of that is personified through Cruise’s frighteningly wealthy industrialist who kicks humanity toward the precipice of environmental ruin, and then wants to be the cowboy frantically barreling in to save the day. The Digger trailer teases the bombast of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb with the pointed environmental satire of Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Mickey 17. 

Cruise said of jumping into Digger: “There’s nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, ‘Let’s do this. And I trust you and whatever we’re going to do, I know this is going to be a hell of an experience, and let’s come together and let’s do it. Let’s all do it.’ I have never had something that could challenge me in this way and neither has Alejandro…. And when you see this film, it’s totally original.”

Digger releases on Oct. 2, 2026.

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