Taika Waititi Fires Back at Critics Panning 'Klara and the Sun'

Taika Waititi has never been a filmmaker inclined toward quiet diplomacy when his work comes under fire, and his latest feature, Klara and the Sun, has drawn a response from its director that is as pointed as anything in his films. Facing a sharp divide between critical reception and audience enthusiasm on Rotten Tomatoes, Waititi took to Instagram over the weekend to make his position unmistakably clear — and the film-criticism community found itself squarely in his crosshairs.

A Tale of Two Scores

The numbers at the center of Waititi's frustration tell a story familiar to many populist filmmakers who have felt the sting of critical consensus. As of this writing, Klara and the Sun holds a 28 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes against a 78 percent audience score — a gulf of fifty points that Waititi framed as evidence of a fundamental disconnect between professional reviewers and ordinary viewers. He shared the film's poster, which displays both figures prominently, and used the occasion to deliver a broadside that echoed his long-held skepticism of critical authority.

"I haven't read a review of anything aimed at me or my peers in almost 15 years. But I do listen to the people," he wrote, before adding that critics are "sad lost souls who couldn't achieve their dreams of becoming artists." He invoked Jojo Rabbit — his 2019 World War II satire that won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay — as a parallel case of critics failing to appreciate work that connected with general audiences. The language he used was unambiguous: "Irrelevant. Out of touch. Obsolete. In the bin."

The Film Itself

Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's 2021 novel of the same name — the Nobel laureate's first book since his Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day inspired a celebrated James Ivory film — Klara and the Sun unfolds in a near-future dystopian setting. The story centers on an artificial friend, a companion android named Klara, who grows increasingly devoted to Josie, a young girl navigating a serious illness. Jenna Ortega takes on the role of Josie, while Amy Adams plays her mother, lending the project a pair of performers with considerable dramatic credibility.

For those curious about how Waititi's sensibility translated to Ishiguro's introspective, quietly devastating source material, our own assessment found the adaptation to be a misguided exercise in tonal uncertainty — a view clearly not shared by the audiences turning out for it.

Box Office Reality

Whatever one makes of the critical conversation, the commercial picture adds another layer of complexity. The film opened across 880 North American theaters but landed outside the domestic top ten, earning an estimated $725,000 in its debut weekend. Worldwide grosses sat at approximately $1.7 million at the time of publication, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which covered Waititi's remarks alongside his appearance at the film's New York premiere. For a wide theatrical release anchored by two recognizable stars, those figures represent a modest start at best.

AI as Theme and Industry Reality

Perhaps the most resonant dimension of Klara and the Sun is the degree to which its central subject — the role of artificial intelligence in human life — mirrors anxieties playing out in real time across the entertainment industry. At the New York premiere, Waititi addressed the topic with characteristic directness: "I know it's probably inevitable that we end up using it in our industry, but as long as it's used by humans as a tool, as opposed to a replacement — I don't want to replace humans. I want to work with them."

It is a position that reflects the broader negotiation Hollywood is currently undertaking, and one that lends Klara and the Sun a thematic urgency that extends well beyond the multiplex. Waititi, who has been open about various projects in various states of development, appears committed to using his platform to engage with questions that matter to him — critical reception notwithstanding.

Whether his Instagram salvo ultimately helps or hinders the film's long-term prospects remains to be seen, but it has unquestionably ensured that Klara and the Sun remains part of the cultural conversation for at least another news cycle.

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