Taika Waititi, Tom Cruise, and the Class Divide Between Hollywood Stars and Critics

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There's a moment in Almost Famous wherein Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) tells burgeoning rock journalist William Miller (Patrick Fugit), "We play for the fans. Not the critics." Miller quickly replies, proving he's a fan, with a full breakdown of the band's history, and journalistic praise for their work. The entire band takes a beat, then responds with love and appreciation for him from thereon. It's a moment I thought a lot about watching director Taika Waititi go on a social media tear over the critical and commercial failure of his latest venture, Klara and the Sun.

A quick recap, if it passed you by: Waititi's latest film, an adaptation of a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, stars Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams. With an undefined budget between $20 million and $44.3 million, made around $720,000 its opening weekend and received scathing critical reviews. Home studio Sony, in response, scaled back the global release for the movie entirely in the wake of the domestic rollout, and it's already being pulled from U.S. theaters here. (Mind you, the initial plan was to only debut it in about 2,000 theaters.) Waititi decided to blame the obvious person: critics. Yes, that old boogeyman critics were the reason the movie failed and thus Waititi took to his Instagram to post to denounce the "sad lost souls" who "couldn't be artists themselves" and thus damned his picture unfairly.