您是否应该去看一部《乐一通》式的讽刺片，影片由汤姆·克鲁斯佩戴假体扮演一个喧闹的美国石油大亨的夸张形象，目前看来这部电影正朝着影史最大票房失败之一的方向发展？
Should you see a Looney Tunes–esque satire that stars Tom Cruise in prosthetics portraying a loud caricature of an American oilman, that’s currently on track to be one of the biggest box-office failures of all time?
绝对应该——而且这部电影彻底颠覆了我对一部关于气候变化的电影应该是什么样子的期待。由亚历杭德罗·冈萨雷斯·伊纳里图执导的新片《掘金者》在评论界口碑两极分化，制作成本极其高昂，它质疑了艺术的目的，甚至质疑在资本主义机器推动世界走向气候灾难的背景下，说出真相的基本意义。这部令人深感不适的影片迫使观众正视：我们最愿意把哪类角色塑造成气候变化的反派。
Absolutely yes—and it’s a movie that rewired my expectations of what a movie about climate change should be. Digger, the critically panned, exorbitantly expensive new film from Alejandro González Iñárritu, calls into question the purpose of art and even the basic purpose of telling the truth in the face of a capitalist machine churning the world toward climate disaster. The deeply uncomfortable film forces audiences to confront what kind of characters we’re the most comfortable making into climate villains.
影片由汤姆·克鲁斯饰演掘金者·洛克韦尔（Digger Rockwell），一位只穿牛仔靴、住在满是鹿角和北极熊皮地毯豪宅中的石油亿万富翁。影片开头，掘金者的一座石油钻井平台意外导致一座巨型冰山脱离，引发巨大甲烷泄漏。灾难迫在眉睫，他必须警告总统（约翰·古德曼饰演，其表演令人联想到他与科恩兄弟合作时的最佳状态），因为这座冰山正以滚滚之势冲向欧洲。
The film stars Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an oil billionaire who only wears cowboy boots and lives in a mansion covered in antlers and polar bear skin rugs. At the start of the film, one of Digger’s oil-drilling platforms accidentally causes a massive iceberg to break loose, resulting in a huge methane leak. With catastrophe impending, he has to alert the president (John Goodman, putting in a performance reminiscent of his best work with the Coen brothers) as the iceberg barrels toward Europe.
预告片将这部电影宣传为对美国石油大亨的过度夸张、令人痛苦的讽刺，暗示一个受特朗普启发的宗教右翼政府将如何应对真正的气候灾难。然而，伊纳里图却在影片早期向我们透露了一个秘密：我们正在观看的闹剧实际上是影片中的一个戏中戏，正在一个天花板漏水、经常断电的剧院里上演。汤姆·克鲁斯并没有直接饰演掘金者·洛克韦尔，而是在扮演一个正在演绎掘金者·洛克韦尔的演员。
The trailers play up the movie as a too-broad-it’s-painful satire of American oilmen and how a Trumpian-inspired religious-right administration would respond to a real climate disaster. Iñárritu, however, lets us in on the secret early: The farce we’re watching is actually a play within the movie, being performed in a theater with a leaky ceiling that keeps losing power. Tom Cruise is not playing Digger Rockwell, but rather an actor playing Digger Rockwell.
我们最终得知，这部名为《化石傻瓜》的戏剧描绘了几十年前真实发生的事件。从那时起，你就会意识到，每一个笑话、每一个将挖掘者和总统描绘成“真正的坏家伙”的反派形象，都是面向两类观众的：2026年的电影观众以及生活在反乌托邦未来的戏剧观众。
We eventually learn that the play, Fossil Fools, depicts events that actually happened some decades ago. From then on, you’re aware that every joke, every villainous portrayal of Digger and the president as Really Bad Guys, is for two audiences: moviegoers in 2026 and theatergoers living in a dystopian future.
从预告片来看，我最初以为这部电影会类似于亚当·麦凯的爆款《不要抬头》，这是一部在2021年上映时在Netflix上吸引了创纪录观众数量的气候讽刺片。《不要抬头》讲述了科学家们竞相向公众通报即将发生的小行星撞击，并推动避免灾难的故事，而他们却面临着有其他计划的企业和政治势力的阻碍。麦凯当时表示，这部电影的目的是让“人们对领导人的不行动更加 intolerant（无法容忍）”。
From the trailers, I’d initially thought that the movie was going to be similar to Adam McKay’s blockbuster Don’t Look Up, a climate satire that drew record numbers of viewers on Netflix when it aired in 2021. Don’t Look Up puts scientists racing to inform the public about an impending asteroid collision and pushing to avert catastrophe against corporate and political interests that have other plans. McKay, at the time, said the film’s purpose was to make “people less tolerant of inaction from their leaders.”
如果媒体——记者、电影人等——能够正确向公众传达气候变化的风险，这部电影（及其伴随的行动号召）认为，我们将开始看到减排方面的进展。
If the media—journalists, filmmakers, and the like—could correctly inform the public about the risks of climate change, the film (and its accompanying calls to action) posited, we would begin to see progress on cutting emissions.
同样地，《挖掘者》也围绕气候错误信息展开主题。挖掘者承认自己忽略了自己公司关于钻井平台上正在展开的危机的警告。古德曼的总统及其内阁决定部署一个“防火墙”，审查掉所有关于气候危机的提及（包括“阿尔·戈尔”这一短语），以控制关于正在发生事情的叙事。
Digger, similarly, deals with themes around climate misinformation. Digger admits he ignored alerts from his own company about the unfolding crisis on his drilling platforms. Goodman’s president and his cabinet decide to deploy a “firewall” that censors out all mentions of the climate crisis (including the phrase “Al Gore”) to control the narrative of what’s happening.
但《不要抬头》的论点是，只要我们更好地传达真相，行动就会发生。而《挖掘者》则持有更为虚无主义的观点——认为真相毫无价值。长期受苦的环境专家甘尼什博士（里兹·阿赫迈德饰）愤怒地告诉石油大亨，他将向一群欧盟领导人揭露该公司在气候变化方面的真相，并信守诺言。（甘尼什在此电影中首次提到我所记得的“埃克森知道”调查。）
But where Don’t Look Up’s thesis is that action would happen if we just communicated the truth better, Digger takes a much more nihilistic view—that the truth has no value. Dr. Ganesh (Riz Ahmed), Digger’s long-suffering environmental expert, angrily tells the oilman that he is going to tell the truth about his company and climate change to a crowd of European Union leaders, and keeps his promise. (Ganesh makes the first reference to the “Exxon Knew” investigation I can recall in a major movie.)
《挖掘者》从后屋观看，随后在一段构成电影主干的激昂演讲中，他告诉敌对的欧盟代表们，他和其他石油大亨一样，知道他们的产品将导致失控的气候变化。但这并不重要，他得意地叫嚷道。世界已经离不开石油，而这个房间里的人们已经找到了它的无数用途。
Digger watches from a back room, then, in a ripping speech that forms the backbone of the movie, he tells the hostile European delegates that he, like other oilmen, knew that their product would cause runaway climate change. But that doesn’t matter, he crows. The world is hooked on oil, and the people in that very room have found a myriad of uses for it.
“你希望利用AI来解决它本身所助长的那些灾难，”他对与会代表说。“你希望自由地沉浸在你不可持续生活的舒适中。”他最终利用甘尼什的说真话来逃避责任——在议员们互相争斗时，他悠闲地走出议会。
“You want energy to ask AI to solve the very same disasters that it’s fueling,” he says to the assembled delegates. “You want freedom to bask in the comfort of your unsustainable lives.”He ultimately leverages Ganesh’s truth-telling to avoid accountability—strolling out of parliament as members fight among themselves.
对迪格·罗克韦尔的夸张描绘，同样也是一种反思：作为观众，我们究竟能得到什么样的真相，以及谁才是最易被接受的气候恶徒。在《化石傻瓜》越来越离谱的排练之间，我们看到克鲁斯努力思考如何演绎迪格，指出他观看了数小时的素材，发现他并不是一个得州口音、爱开枪的傻瓜，而是一个狡猾、精明的商人。但观看《化石傻瓜》的观众——他们身处迪格帮助毁掉的世界——并不是在寻找真相，他们是在寻求宣泄。
The bombastic portrayal of Digger Rockwell is, too, a rumination on what kind of truths we get as an audience and who the most palatable climate evildoers are. In between rehearsal takes of the increasingly outrageous Fossil Fools, we see Cruise grapple with how to play Digger, noting he watched hours of footage and found him not to be a finger-gunning shooting fool with a Texas drawl but a conniving, sharp businessman. But the play’s audience, watching Fossil Fools in a world Digger helped ruin, are not looking for truth—they’re looking for catharsis.
影片接近尾声时，一个令人惊叹的晚期转折揭示：这出戏有一位富有的赞助人，他有既得利益，希望这部戏被上演。
Near the end of the film, an incredible late twist reveals the play has a wealthy benefactor with a vested interest in having it performed.
我对《不要抬头》的一个主要批评是，它认为一部好莱坞电影可以成为变革的推动者；认为这部电影的明星莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥——他乘坐超级游艇派对、乘坐私人飞机——可以告诉人们要听从科学家的建议，仅仅通过投票就能摆脱这个困境。《挖掘者》本质上是在对《不要抬头》的存在吐口水，指出享受讽刺气候变化的电影——比如那些把像迪格·洛克韦尔这样的特定反派描绘成恶人的影片——实际上是在冒着忽视更受自由派观众欢迎的企业权力形式的风险。
One of my big critiques of Don’t Look Up was the notion that a Hollywood movie could be an agent for change; that the movie’s star, Leonardo di Caprio, who parties on superyachts and takes private jets, could tell people to listen to scientists and just vote our way out of this mess. Digger essentially spits in the face of Don’t Look Up’s existence, pointing out that enjoying satire about climate change that paints specific villains like Digger Rockwell comes at the risk of ignoring forms of corporate power more palatable to liberal viewers.
这一切看起来可能相当虚无主义，我也不认为这部电影的本意是让人感到愉快。但我也不认为它是在告诉人们不要创作艺术。相反，《挖掘者》努力成为我们当下现实的反映——在这个现实中，真相常常无关紧要，而艺术往往正是由它所批判的那些权力来资助的。虽然《不要抬头》本意是成为一种行动的号召，《挖掘者》只是后退一步，对观众说：这就是我们现在的处境。
This all may seem pretty nihilist, and I don’t think the movie is intended to be cheery. But I also don’t think it’s a message to not make art. Rather, Digger strives to be a reflection of our current reality, where truth often doesn’t matter, and art is often funded by the very powers it rails against. While Don’t Look Up was intended to be a call to action, Digger simply kicks back and says to viewers: This is where we are.
《不要抬头》创下观影人数纪录已经过去五年，特朗普政府重新掌权，并再次让美国退出《巴黎协定》。政府正在乐观地加码“钻啊，宝贝，钻”。在《不要抬头》时期曾宣称要减少排放甚至逆转过去损害的科技公司，如今正因人工智能热潮而收回这些承诺——他们承诺AI有一天会帮助解决气候变化问题。而我此刻，正在用电脑打字，开着一辆使用化石燃料的汽车到处跑。
Five years after a record number of people watched Don’t Look Up, the Trump administration is back in power and has pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement again. The government is gleefully doubling down on “Drill, Baby, Drill.”Tech corporations that in the Don’t Look Up era were touting their goals to cut emissions and even reverse past damage are now walking those back, thanks to the AI boom—which, they promise, will help solve climate change someday. And here I am, typing on my computer, driving a car around that uses fossil fuels.
《挖掘者》是华纳兄弟在大卫·埃利森收购该工作室之前推出的最后一部电影，这更凸显了富有的保守主义个人在艺术领域中日益增长的控制作用。说到底，我最欣赏《挖掘者》的是它指出了整件事的荒谬性。
That Digger is the last film to come out of Warner Bros. before David Ellison’s purchase of the studio only underscores the role that wealthy, conservative individuals are increasingly playing in controlling the arts. In the end, I most appreciate Digger for pointing out the absurdity of the whole thing.