Given how exciting Neill Blomkamp‘s District 9 was, the anticipation for Elysium was pretty high. While his second directorial effort explored social themes with a sci-fi twist and had those same striking visuals, it wasn’t nearly as strong has his first. The 2013 film was met with mixed reviews, had a weak script, and underperformed at the box office, but wasn’t a total box office bomb.

While on the Chappie press tour, Blomkamp opened up about some of the faults in Elysium, and admits that he “f*cked up.” Hit the jump for more.

Blomkamp spoke to Uproxx about some of the issues he had with Elysium. Normally we wouldn’t hear a director address some of the harshest criticisms of a film so soon. But it is really refreshing that someone like Blomkamp openly admit that there were problems with the film.

Here is he talking about Elysium‘s weak box office performance,

With District 9 performing well at the box office, Blomkamp didn’t feel any added pressure to follow that up to meet the same box office expectations or exceed them,

While Blomkamp does admit that he “f*cked up” Elysium “a little bit,” he didn’t feel any pressure to rush into making a movie right after the success of District 9. Despite that, there are just some things beyond your control, and the director says the reason why he released that cut of Elyisum is because “you’re just in it.”

It is refreshing to hear a director talk openly about some of the faults of one of his previous films, especially one that was released not too long ago.

[Source: Uproxx]