Photo by Bryan Steffy/Getty Images for CinemaCon Tom Cruise took the stage alongside director Alejandro González Iñárritu to premiere the trailer of their upcoming movie, Digger. What reeled on screen was not the supersonic pilot or the death-defying spy audiences have come to expect, but a jaw-dropping metamorphosis. Warner Bros. reveals teaser trailer for Digger at CinemaCon Warner Bros. dropped the Digger trailer during its studio presentation, immediately making the project as one of the most talked-about ones of the coming year.

The trailer confirmed that Tom Cruise, for the first time in decades, has fully submerged himself in a grotesque and comedic character far removed from Ethan Hunt or Maverick. Sporting a prominent beer belly, thinning white hair made into a failing combover, and an excitable accent, Cruise plays Digger Rockwell. He is an oil tycoon whose corporate malfeasance triggers an ecological disaster teetering on the brink of nuclear war.

“It took 40 years for me to be able to put on the boots of Digger Rockwell,” Cruise told the crowd as he presented the trailer. The actor further shared that he has been angling to work with Iñárritu ever since wearing out his personal copy of Amores Perros in 2000. Their collaboration began in earnest seven years ago during the filming of Top Gun: Maverick, when Cruise drove his motorcycle to a midnight meeting.

“It’s how I get around,” Cruise explained. “It’s much faster, and you don’t have to worry about traffic.” Now, the Digger trailer oscillates between absurdist humor and apocalyptic dread. In one jarringly intimate scene, Cruise’s character wanders his mansion, gut protruding, while tenderly feeding a dying cat.

This domestic strangeness collides with scenes of warplanes scrambling and polar ice caps crumbling into the sea. John Goodman also appears as an ailing U.S. President, desperately imploring Digger to clean up the very mess his company created.

“If we can’t control the course of nature, all that matters is who has got the balls to win this war,” Cruise’s Digger states in the trailer (via Variety). The film carries a hefty $125 million production budget and features a cast including Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, and Sophie Wilde.