Ben Affleck isn’t just defending Tom Cruise’s Digger — he’s warning Hollywood what happens when audiences punish ambition. The actor, who’s weathered his own share of box office disappointments over a career spanning decades, called out the backlash against the $160 million climate satire as a form of modern-day bullying. 'It’s a little bit like high-school bullying,' he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, 'with people who hadn’t even seen movies.' He wasn’t referring to casual viewers alone. He meant the rush to judge without watching, to celebrate a film’s failure as if it were a victory. To him, that kind of public shaming doesn’t just hurt one movie, it kills the very idea of risk in filmmaking. 'You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing,' Affleck said. 'And that means you’re going to sometimes look bad.' That’s exactly what’s happening with Digger, which opened October 2 and has so far earned only $15 million at the domestic box office. With a production budget north of $160 million and a marketing spend pegged at $100 million, the film needs $350 million to break even. According to Variety, Warner Bros. Is now looking at a loss of around $245 million. Making it one of the most expensive flops in studio history. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 53% critics’ score, reflecting a deep divide. Some see chaos. Others hear a quiet, urgent message about our collective failure to act on climate change. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film casts Cruise as an oil tycoon whose Antarctic rig malfunctions, triggering a chain reaction that sends ice caps hurtling toward Europe. It’s not a superhero story. It’s not a franchise. It’s a satirical fever dream wrapped in spectacle, layered with artful expression and radical shifts in tone. And it’s already become a cultural flashpoint. Neil Young, the musician, posted on his website that Digger is 'the best film I have ever seen.' He dismissed most reviews as missing the film’s essence. 'They seem to miss the effect,' he wrote. 'This film lives in a world of art. It is its own best review.' Mandy Patinkin, the Tony winner and Homeland star, called it an 'instant classic' and 'one of the greatest pieces of film I have ever seen in my entire life.' 'This is an incredible piece of work,' he said. 'It puts the heart and soul back into the cinema.' Anne Hathaway echoed that sentiment on Letterboxd: 'I loved this brilliant movie. It’s trippy, aggressive, funny and ambitious. For me, 10/10.' She urged others to see it for themselves. The real question isn’t whether Digger works. It’s whether audiences will ever give bold, strange films a chance again. If they don’t, the next big swing might never happen.