The director of a film reviled by the American people highlighted rejecting science as an explanation for why the movie bombed. In an interview with The Frame on Thursday, Mother! Director Darren Aronofsky responded to the movie’s highly unusual F-grade Cinemascore this way: “... You have other people who basically believe in the power of a iPhone that they can communicate to 35 million people in a blink of an eye, yet they don't believe in science in other ways.”
He continued, “It has as many people believe in it as believe in gravity. And it scares me and it's time to start screaming. So I wanted to howl. And this was my howl. And some people are not going to want to listen to it. That's cool.”
The movie website Dark Horizons noted that the Jennifer Lawerence film “has earned the dubious honor of being one of only nineteen films in history to receive an F-grade CinemaScore – a marker more of failed expectation than a bash of its quality.”
Trying to express how Americans reacted so negatively to Mother!, the director seemed to indicate that they weren’t supposed to like it:
What's interesting about that is, like, how if you walk out of this movie are you not going to give it an "F?" It's a punch. It's a total punch. And I realize that we were excited by that. We wanted to make a punk movie and come at you. And the reason I wanted to come is because I was very sad and I had a lot of anguish and I wanted to express it.
Filmmaking is such a hard journey. People are constantly saying no to you. And to wake up every morning and get out of bed and to face all those no’s, you have to be willing to really believe in something.
I said, Look, this isn’t going to be a popularity contest. We’re basically holding up a mirror to what’s going on. All of us are doing this. But that final chapter hasn’t been written and, hopefully, things can change. And, to go back, the fact that it’s going down right now and things are really falling apart in a way that is really scary.
According to Box Office Mojo, the film has grossed $10.1 million as of September 21 and had a budget of $30 million.
If only Americans would stop rejecting science and learn to love a movie that features a mob eating a baby.
