Taika Waititi Lashes Out at Critics as 'Klara and the Sun' Scores Just 26% From 90 Reviews

Taika Waititi's new film 'Klara and the Sun' is squarely in critics' crosshairs. On Rotten Tomatoes the film's Tomatometer is reported at 26 percent from 90 reviews — meaning roughly three out of every four critics whose verdicts are counted rated it 'rotten.' After that score surfaced, the director posted on Instagram calling critics 'out of touch,' 'obsolete' and 'irrelevant,' describing them as 'sad, lost souls who never achieved their dreams of becoming artists.' It is worth being precise about what 26 percent does and does not say. The Tomatometer is not an average rating; it is simply the proportion of critics who marked a film fresh versus rotten. The average rating, the audience score and the top-critics split are all absent from the available information. A film at 26 percent with a 4.5/10 average and one at 26 percent with a 2.0/10 average are different stories. The sample of 90 reviews is large enough to be stable, so the number itself is probably sound — it is its meaning that is thin. In the post, Waititi wrote that critics have been repeating the same stale observations for years, that they are obsolete and irrelevant. He added that these were the same people who disliked his 2026 film 'Jojo Rabbit,' and that they are 'sad, lost souls who never achieved their dreams of becoming artists and therefore write out of a desire for revenge.' The post is dated Friday, October 30. The post contains a clear internal contradiction. Waititi claimed he had not read 'a review of anything aimed at me or my peers in almost 15 years.' Yet in the same breath he demonstrated precise knowledge of which critics 'hated' Jojo Rabbit and of the current reception. Both claims cannot be true at once: either he is reading reviews, or he is relying on second-hand summaries. The Jojo Rabbit argument is rhetorically attractive but weak on the facts. Jojo Rabbit was nominated for Best Picture in 2026 and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; it also drew a strongly positive critics' aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes. Framing it as a film critics disliked is therefore misleading. Every film has some detractors, which makes the claim effectively unfalsifiable. It should not be repeated downstream as established fact. Box-office numbers are adding to the concern. According to TheWrap, the film has grossed 1.067 million dollars domestically. That figure says little on its own: the budget, the theatre count, the per-screen average and international grosses are all missing. Without a budget, no claim about whether the film is a flop is derivable — only that the opening is small. Separately, a report attributed to TheWrap states that Sony Pictures is reportedly scaling back the film's international release. It matters that this claim rests on no official Sony statement, and that the report carries no response from the studio. 'Sony scaled back the release' is an over-assertion; 'TheWrap reported that Sony was scaling back' is accurate. 'Klara and the Sun' is adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's 2026 novel of the same name. The story follows Klara, an artificial-intelligence companion built to help a sick child, who gradually comes to understand human feeling, loneliness and love. Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2026, so the film was framed from the outset as a prestige literary adaptation. Jenna Ortega plays Klara, Mia Tharia plays Josie and Amy Adams plays Josie's mother. The supporting cast includes Aran Murphy, Steve Buscemi and Natasha Lyonne. That lineup underpinned expectations of success on both the commercial and critical fronts. Notably, the available information never states outright that Waititi directed 'Klara and the Sun'; that is conveyed only through references to 'his latest film.' That is precisely why the failure is drawing so much attention: a Nobel laureate's novel, an Oscar-winning director, a major studio project and a cast combining an established star like Amy Adams with a fast-rising one like Jenna Ortega. Against that backdrop, a 26 percent score inevitably raises questions. The biggest gap, however, is that the report contains no audience score, no CinemaScore and no PostTrak data. This matters particularly because Waititi said in the same post that 'I do listen to the people.' If his argument is that audiences are the real arbiter, then the single most relevant figure is the one the report does not have. Audiences may have embraced the film or rejected it — without the number, his argument cannot be tested at all. A second structural weakness is the framing itself. The headline asserts that Waititi criticised critics 'after' the 26 percent score arrived. Nothing shows that he saw the score or timed his post to it. The post is dated Friday, October 30, but no publication date or year appears in the report, so the sequence cannot even be checked. Likewise, poor reviews, weak box office and a director's outburst are presented as a causal chain, when all three could be co-effects of the same cause — the film itself. Taken as an argument, Waititi's position has three identifiable defects. First, he attacks critics' biographies rather than their criticism; calling someone a failed artist says nothing about what they wrote. Second, the self-sealing contradiction described above. Third, by invoking 'I listen to the people' he implicitly makes audience reception the valid metric — the very figure that is missing. There is a further metadata gap: the report carries no byline, no publication date and no Sony statement. This matters because two of its load-bearing facts — the Rotten Tomatoes score and the domestic gross — decay fast. The score moves with every added review, and a weekend box-office figure is superseded within a week. Circulating this story without a timestamp would silently misinform. What to watch next: whether Sony issues a statement, whether an audience score appears, whether the Instagram post is still live, and whether 'Aran Murphy' is spelled correctly — the one cast name that does not immediately resolve. The film's budget and marketing spend are also essential, because without them the gross cannot be interpreted. For now, the defensible conclusion is narrow: a major project is facing harsh critical rejection, its opening gross is small, and its director has publicly attacked his critics. Anything beyond that — 'flop,' 'critics' conspiracy,' 'audiences rejected it' — remains unverified. What has been quoted should be read as reported speech, not as established fact.