Guillermo del Toro is not digging some reviews for Digger

“The theater experience won’t change your mind on Digger,” IGN wrote, “and the laughs that are there still will be when it hits HBO Max.” Certainly, a post like this would attract the ire of someone who so earnestly advocates for the theatrical experience, like Del Toro, who has publicly referred to cinemas as “temples of images.” “Love it or not. And, yes, I do,” Del Toro posted. “The film delivers in scale, ambition and reach at a theatrical screen level. Daring, bold and Cinematically complex.”

As for where The A.V. Club stands on Iñárritu’s latest capital-C cinematic offering, our film critic Monica Castillo wrote, “In trying to prove his cleverness with various cinematographic tricks, substance once again gets short shrift,” saying that Digger‘s environmental message “lands with a ‘duh.'”  Insofar as audiences are compelled by reviews to see movies in theaters (which itself is a whole conversation), Del Toro pointed out that the initially mixed critical reception for noted flops like the Coens’ The Big Lebowski and Martin Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy didn’t stop them from being reevaluated as “masterpieces,” and also went to bat for Ridley Scott’s The Counselor while he was at it. The point of Del Toro’s Digger discourse, of course, is to encourage audiences to experience a film’s qualities and deficits for themselves, a sentiment we can certainly stand behind. “Dig or Die – c’mon!” he posted.