Tom Hanks jokingly described film critics as “bastards” during an interview with Conan O’Brien.

Hanks appeared on O’Brien’s podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend to promote his new film Here, and was asked about his directorial debut That Thing You Do!, which was released in 1996 – and which, according to O’Brien, is now out, after an initially disappointing reception considered a ‘cult classic’.

Hanks responded by saying, “Let me tell you something about these motherfuckers who write about movies…” He then described a writer who criticized That Thing You Do! upon release because it looked like it was “shot on TV and not much of anything”, and much more recently called the film a “cult classic”.

Hanks isn’t the only major Hollywood figure to lash out at critics. Outraged by the negative coverage of his most recent film, Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola said it is “inexcusable to attack a film for not playing by the current rules of Hollywood”, and released a trailer for the film using so-called negative reviews of his film. previous films. (The trailer was quickly removed after the quotes were revealed to be fake.) Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron also responded to negative comments about his work, saying, “You know what? Let me show you three of the four highest-grossing films – then we’ll talk about the effectiveness of the dialogue.

However, Hanks quickly struck a conciliatory tone, saying, “But you know what, that’s what we all signed up for. That’s carnival, that’s the competition, right? I have confidence in it.”

Here, directed by Robert Zemeckis and promoted as a “Forrest Gump reunion” starring an old Hanks alongside Gump co-star Robin Wright, has been widely panned by critics, including a one-star review from the Guardian’s Benjamin Lee.