Film Tips: Pressure (2026) and Digger (2026)

Go watch Pressure (2026) and Digger (2026) in the cinema now to stimulate your own critical thinking.  Get ideas for using it in your classroom.

The Big Screen

Two movies worth watching on the big screen are now playing in your cinema: Pressure (2026) is a more classically narrated film telling the story about the preparations for D-Day in August 1944. What is new is that it is mostly from the perspective from a meteorologist:

Digger (2026) takes place in the (foreseeable) future and is more controversial than Pressure in the way it is being narrated. It’s a story about Digger Rockwell, the most powerful man in the world, who is destroying the world with his company and then tries to do something about it.

What do others think? Scores.

Should scores persuade you to go or not?

Digger Rockwell is played by Tom Cruise, who certainly looks different from his normal action hero get-up. This film has a form that not everyone appreciates and some people have even walked out of the cinema half way. On Rotten Tomatoes, as per Oct 5 2026, it gets a 51% score from the critics and 72% score from the audience, so overall the critics would recommend you not to go.  

For Pressure critics and audience are more in line with an 89% critics score and a 95% audience score. It has also been in the cinemas for a few weeks so more people have voted.

In comparison, from the more ‘Dutch’ Cineville perspective (Cineville members have an art house movie theatre subscription), Pressure gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars, and Digger an almost 4 out of 5.

Although Pressure is more solid, you will still have to make up your mind yourself, especially when it comes to Digger.

How to teach your students critical thinking with Pressure and Digger?

There are several ways how to unpack these films to stimulate critical thinking with your students. First, I’ll give some ideas for Pressure and then for Digger, linking it to our freely available FlickThink Film Activities.

With Pressure you can zoom in on certain scenes related to doing research and decision making, two skills that are very important for critical thinking. One track to follow is General Eisenhower, who has the power and responsibility to make the ultimate decision on when D-Day should happen – how does he make that decision?

Another track to follow is the meteorologist James Stagg, whose method of forecasting the weather differs from the already trusted Americal meteorologist. It is interesting to look at both researchers methods, and also how they are convincing Eisenhower on what to do with these results. Especially as you can never be 100% sure of the weather forecast.

Film Activity tip: Several great scenes for applying Toulmin argumentation and decision making on the meteorologists research findings, and how the decision is made.

Like in Pressure, scientists in Digger also share data from their research, draw conclusions, and explain what is happening, but it is already too late to avoid catastrophe and science is discarded by the people in command.

The more interesting matter to look at critically is the narrative. What does Digger Rockwell do to spin and create narrative? What does the audience do with the narrative? Without giving too much away if you have not seen the film, I am not only referring to you as the audience watching the film.

A quote from Toni Morrison, author of Beloved, would be one to compare it to:

“Narrative is one of the ways in which knowledge is organized. I have always through it was the most important way to transmit and receive knowledge. I am less certain of that now – but the craving for narrative has never lessened, and the hunger for it is as keen as it was on Mt. Sinai or Calvary or the middle of the fens.”

Film Activity tip: Fishbowl is a great way to unpacking and discussing narrative.

Author: Wypkje van der Heide

Wypkje van der Heide is a FlickThink founder and lecturer Critical Thinking at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. She also works as a researcher for the research group Change Management. She is currently doing the On The Movie course to become a certified film teacher.