Tom Cruise walked into a Tokyo animation expo and walked out with a new obsession: Eren Jeager’s Rumbling. Not the one from Attack on Titan, exactly — but the idea of it. The Hollywood star, in town to promote his latest film Digger, spent part of his October 9 visit to Studio MAPPA’s 15th-anniversary exhibition staring at a re-creation of the apocalyptic event that ends the manga. It wasn’t just a display. It was a mood. A warning. A metaphor. Or maybe just a really loud set piece. Either way, it stuck. 

Cruise and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu were led through exhibits for Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, and the final season of Attack on Titan, the latter being the studio’s most talked-about work. At one point, they paused before a sprawling diorama of Wall Titans stomping across continents, their bodies cracking the earth like eggshells. No word yet on whether Cruise asked if he could play Eren in a live-action reboot. But he did ask about how much of the animation was hand-drawn. That’s the kind of question only someone who still believes in craft can ask. 

MAPPA animator Tadashi Hiramatsu, who guided them, explained the shift from traditional drawing to digital tools. Younger animators now use software, but the old skills? Still vital. Cruise listened. Nodded. Then got handed an original illustration of Digger Rockwell. The protagonist of his own movie, by Hiramatsu himself. The artwork bore the message: “There is TRUTH within a LIE.” A line that might describe Digger, or the whole damn year. 

The film, which is already in theatres, has been called many things: a satire about satire, a trippy fever dream, a political allegory wrapped in a genre mash-up. Anne Hathaway praised it as “brilliant, aggressive, funny and ambitious.” Others aren’t so sure. Some say it’s too loud, too chaotic, too close to the edge of what audiences will tolerate. One viewer on social media said they’d seen it and still weren’t sure if it was a critique of climate denialism or just a very expensive panic attack. 

But here’s the thing: Digger isn’t supposed to be easy. And neither is the world it’s trying to reflect. Whether it’s a film about collective failure, or just Tom Cruise doing something weird again, it’s playing in India this Friday. The trailer says nothing about Titans. But the man who made it? He just spent two hours in a room full of them. And came away thinking about truth. Lies. And what happens when you dig too deep.