The First Reactions To Tom Cruise Doing Something Totally Different In Digger Are Here: ‘It Took 40 Years’

I’ve watched Tom Cruise dive into action movies for the majority of my lifetime. The characters have all been slightly different, but they all pretty much have high-octane stunts and running really fast in common. Only twice during my formative years can I remember seeing the actor on the big screen trying something really different. The first was when he played Frank T.J. Mackey in P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia and frogs rained from the sky. The second was when he popped into Tropic Thunder and demanded dancing and “fat fingers.” (Though people sometimes cite the flop Rock of Ages as another eclectic role, I haven't seen it.) Now, there’s Digger.

What Tom Cruise Said About His First Post M:I Movie Venture

It’s still hard to believe Ethan Hunt is done for good, but after the release of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Cruise was looking to do something different as his followup. He said at CinemaCon 2026 that it literally took him “40 years."

While audiences were treated to a first-look at the movie, Cruise also admitted even he feels “the movie is wild,” and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu said he “was not prepared for” Tom Cruise’s transformation, also noting:

Of course, anyone can say anything they want about an upcoming 2026 movie release that no one has really seen footage from. Putting your money where your mouth is can be another matter entirely. However, first-look audiences seem blown away by Cruise in particular.

Over And Over Again, First Reactions Say He’s Doing Something Different

Journalists are able to sit in a balcony overlooking CinemaCon to witness early footage themselves, and one resounding chorus from the crowd was that this is Cruise doing something completely different. Someone noted his “Foghorn Leghorn accent,” which caught my eye, but literally just look at these responses:

• Variety: ​​ "And this is definitely Cruise as you’ve never seen him before.”
• THR: "In the footage, Cruise is unrecognizable, sporting gray hair, wrinkles and a gut as he struts around his mansion and nurses his sick cat."
• EW: "He looks way more like Garry Marshall than like Ethan Hunt. He also acts like a massive jerk to everybody he interacts with, except his frail old cat. "
• Indiewire: Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell was something else. Cruise in Alejandro Inarritu’s film Digger plays an aging oil tycoon with gray hair, wrinkles, a big paunch belly, a firebrand Foghorn Leghorn accent, and no patience for the cataclysmic environmental event that his project has caused.

I think a lot of people love to watch Tom Cruise do death-defying stunts on the big screen, but he's been at it for so long it's difficult to remember there was a time in his career when the roles he took on were broader. They were a different kind of risk for the actor. While I'd still love to see him in Top Gun 3 (and maybe even an F1 spinoff should that A+fan idea pan out), there's a whole of roles out there I think he can still dominate. Now is the time.