‘Digger’ and ‘The Social Reckoning’ Have the Same Problem, But Only One Is a Good Movie

At first glance, it’s hard to see how Digger and The Social Reckoning could have much in common. One is a movie about an ambitious, egotistical man of wealth who delivers incalculable horrors that threaten to destroy humanity. And the other stars Tom Cruise.

But the one thing that really links these two movies is a question of stakes. At some point during each movie, I found myself asking, “Why do I care?” Watching Digger , I cared deeply by the end. So much so that I think it was my second-favorite movie of 2026 thus far. I’ve already seen it twice. During The Social Reckoning , the feeling of detached apathy never went away.

I should mention at this point that I’m going to reveal spoilers for both films, and if you haven’t seen Digger, I suggest you see the movie first. Digger is a lot more fun if you don’t know the twist.

Jeremy Strong gives a perfectly acceptable performance as Mark Zuckerberg. And it’s hard to fault the other actors in The Social Reckoning for a hokey script filled with laughable dialogue. But even if you can get over screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s obnoxious lines, you’re still left with one big problem in The Social Reckoning : A movie set primarily in the late 2010s feels like ancient history when the technological threats to humanity are whether Meta’s Muse mistakenly empties my bank account and Anthropic’s Claude starts World War III. Or, at the very least, Claude is used to surveil Americans and power fully autonomous weapons .

Throughout The Social Reckoning , I kept asking myself, why should I care about this ? The big scandal of the movie is that Facebook was messing around with its algorithm to create an environment where people are constantly angry about politics and kids are exposed to material that harms their mental health. And that’s undeniably true. But nothing about the movie made me feel like it was something I needed to care about in this moment. There has been no reckoning for Meta or Mark Zuckerberg, and at least when it comes to a reckoning for the events portrayed in the film, there never will be. You may as well have presented me with ancient Roman history.

Contrast that with Digger . The movie starts by presenting an over-the-top character played by Tom Cruise, until the audience is abruptly pulled out of that reality and it’s revealed we’ve all been watching a play. Admittedly, I found it really difficult to go back to suspending disbelief for maybe 10-15 minutes after that big reveal. We’re plunged back into the world of theater and are supposed to become fully immersed again as though we haven’t just been presented with another layer of reality. After a while, I was able to care again. But I understand why some people couldn’t do it. And I suspect that’s why the reviews have been so polarizing.

Once I was able to suspend disbelief again, I was fully invested in the characters. Because it all felt extremely relevant to our present moment. The reality of the movie is set well into the future, while the play is based on “historic” events that are still in 2026’s future.