Taika Waititi’s whinge about critics is even worse than his new film

The message is accompanied by an image showing that the critically-panned Klara, which stars Jenna Ortega, is far more popular with the public than the pros – by a huge margin of 78% to 25%. Waititi is ignoring the fact that this public score is the lowest of his directorial career so far. But, hooray, I guess. 

Then we get to the comedy in Waititi’s post. Like most of his recent work, it isn’t funny: 

“Let’s spare a thought for those sad lost souls who couldn’t achieve their dreams of becoming artists, and thus settled, and became critics. The same people who also hated Jojo Rabbit. 😂 🤷🏽‍♂️ Irrelevant. Out of touch. Obsolete. In the bin. 🗑️😢🫶🏽”

Ouch. Hurtful. So Let’s just get a few things straight first. What We Do in the Shadows (2014) was great. Jojo Rabbit (2019) was a piece of shit. That’s the entirety of my review. 

But JJR still got many, many, many great reviews. It’s got an 81% RT score. Meanwhile, the critics actually liked What We Do in the Shadows more than the public did; ditto Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) and Thor: Ragnarok (2017).

I know this guy got married to Rita Ora and his expectations have been unreasonably high ever since, but talk about making perfect the enemy of good … 

And there has been much that has not been perfect nor good in his oeuvre. Do you remember his last film Next Goal Wins (2023)? No? Nobody does. Michael Fassbender doesn’t and he was in it. 

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Despite Russell Crowe’s excellent cameo, Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), the winkiest Marvel strand went from acid trip to acid reflux. The comedy became cocainey and the emotions incohate tearful mush.

But there are some other bigger issues with what Waititi has said. Generally speaking almost all of the filmmakers I’ve met have understood we’re all working in the same industry. Of course, a critic might take a few jabs at a film they think falls short, but they can also champion a film and get the word out.

Werner Herzog once called me a colleague. Now say “colleague” in Werner Herzog’s voice. You’re welcome.

Some critics are artists. Dilys Powell and David Thomson’s writing is better than Taika Waititi’s. Anthony Lane and Geoff Dyer are funnier than he is.

Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard both started as critics, and never stopped being critics: Godard with his essays on films and Truffaut with his wonderful book on Alfred Hitchcock. 

And the distinction between artist and critic isn’t as cut-and-dried anyway, you twat. Part of Martin Scorsese’s enormous legacy is going to be his promotion of cinephilia through his documentaries, curation and restoration work. 

Quentin Tarantino once claimed: “I respect criticism, but I know more about film than most of the people writing about me… And I can write film criticism better than most of the people writing about me.” A point he strove valiantly to disprove in his book Cinema Speculation. 

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Waititi isn’t the first filmmaker to denigrate critics. He’s joining an illustrious list that includes Rob Schneider, Roland Emmerich, Kevin Smith and Uwe Boll. The Greats. There’s nothing wrong with a to-and-fro, but don’t expect critics to always agree with you; always like you. An artist would be suspicious of such adulation: a Uwe Boll longs for it.

Critics are part of the cinematic biosphere. We’re fallible. Some of us are good; some not so much. You know, like film directors. 

But we’re the people who watch ALL the films. This year I’ve watched 277 films so far. We see the blockbusters everyone sees and the festival films nobody sees; the zero-budget YouTubers, the Bollywood extravaganzas, the directors feted as national treasures and the artists persecuted by their own governments. 

We gather in Pordenone, Italy, to watch a week’s worth of silent movies; or Bristol to see a season of Film Noir; or Annecy, in France, for the latest animation; or Sheffield for the latest in documentaries. Some of us – God protect our souls – even have podcasts. Our passion for cinema goes beyond the narrow confines of “enjoyment,” the way sex is bigger than PornHub. 

We might well be obsolete. We might well be irrelevant. We might well need to get in the bin, Your Highness. 

To be honest, Taika, I quite like the look of the bin at the moment. It looks like there are some other things in there like integrity and the ability to take criticism, which will keep us company. But at least I’m not a 51-year-old man using emojis to express my pain.