Alejandro G. Iñárritu has always known how to make the absurd sit uncomfortably close to the real, whether it is a stranded man fighting nature in The Revenant or a fading actor trying to outrun his own image in Birdman. That collision gets stranger in Digger, where Tom Cruise steps into the skin of oil mogul Digger Rockwell, complete with a Texas drawl, thinning hair, and a body built to look nothing like the movie star audiences know. But before the character gave the film its name, Iñárritu was circling a title that sounded almost nonsensical.

The title’s origin is almost an Iñárritu miniature in itself. Beneath the spectacle, the filmmaker was interested in something much smaller and more dangerous: the human voice and its ability to bend reality.

Initially, the film was not named after Tom Cruise’s character, Digger Rockwell. Alejandro G. Iñárritu intended to call it BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, a title that sounds deliberately throwaway until the filmmaker explains the thought behind it. In an interview with IndieWire ahead of the film’s Los Angeles premiere.

“It was a reference to this incredible, terrible, terrifying weapon that we as humans have, which is the tongue,” Iñárritu said.

“It can change your perception of the reality that your body is experiencing. It can make you believe in something that you don’t see,” he said. 

 Iñárritu connected the phrase to what he considers one of humanity’s most frightening weapons: the tongue, which he talked about with IndieWire. For Iñárritu, language is not merely dialogue sitting on top of an image. It can alter how people interpret what their own bodies are experiencing, making them accept something they cannot actually see. That idea fits neatly into Digger, where a powerful man attempts to control the narrative surrounding a catastrophe he helped unleash. 

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Iñárritu has described the strange experience of watching reality catch up with the film’s imagination. His point is not simply that the world has become absurd, but that absurdity can become ordinary when powerful people repeat a version of events often enough. That makes BLAH, BLAH, BLAH sound more like a tiny thesis statement for the movie.

If the original title was about the weapon of language, Tom Cruise’s transformation gives that idea a physical counterpart. The actor arrives as a potbellied oil magnate with thinning hair, a pronounced Southern drawl, and a silhouette deliberately designed to erase the familiar Cruise image.

The transformation was initially a six-hour makeup process, but Cruise challenged the team to reduce it to one hour. Variety reported that he worked with the makeup department through repeated timing and practice until the process was streamlined. Iñárritu has said that Cruise embraced the look because it liberated him from the polished movie-star persona audiences have carried for decades. 

That contrast is part of what makes Digger such an intriguing Iñárritu experiment. The director has built a career around characters pushed toward emotional or physical extremes, and here he has placed one of Hollywood’s most recognisable stars behind a mask that deliberately makes him harder to recognise.

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What do you think of the story behind Digger’s original title? Share your thoughts in the comments.