With the absolute massive success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie,
it can only be expected that there are a ton of fan opinions circulating on the internet.
I’m Kyle with WickedBinge and this is The Super Mario Movie Opinions we LOVE and HATE.
Also, as always, here is our obligatory
spoiler warning as we will be discussing major plot points, so go watch the film.
So, without further adieu, we can talk about all of these Opinions everyone has on this film.
Starting off our list is the first opinion on our list, Nothing more than a frantic dash for
Easter Eggs. This is a criticism levied by a lot of reviewers, but this comes from a direct
quote from “The Guardian”. The idea here is that despite all the fun references to past
projects from Nintendo like the Punch Out Pizzaria or characters like King Bob-Omb
and King Boo popping up, the movie sacrifices everything else. Now, let’s be clear, the film,
like a lot of Illumination movies is built to be enjoyed by children, but also its already
established fanbase of Nintendo fans of all ages. And these easter eggs are a ton of fun
for anyone who’s been a Mario fan… regardless if they were a gamer in the 90s or today.
And frankly, these easter eggs don’t detract from the great world Illumination built,
as well as the story or characters they fleshed out.
So, yes, we do hate this because it sounds like the reviewer maybe didn’t catch many of these
easter eggs… or just forgot that Illumination was attempting to make a film for Nintendo fans.
Up next on our list we have “Bland, Witless and Flagrantly Pandering”. This is a quote from
the New York Times review, and it’s the overall message of the article. As the quote illustrates,
the whole film is bland, witless and pandering, and you guessed it, the reason the article lists
it as “pandering” is all of the easter eggs and references in the film. We think this review
sucks because while it meets the dictionary definition of “pandering” the connotation of
the world implies negativity while we believe the references are not a negative thing. Again,
I don’t understand why people take issues with these references, they’re a ton of fun. And
calling it witless is just goofy and pretentious… It’s a lighthearted movie designed for kids and
those that want to embrace nostalgia a bit… and the characters have a tremendous amount of heart.
It brings to mind how much critics seem to hate children’s films if they’re not
deep existential films like “The Iron Giant” or movies that shift the animation genre as
a whole like “Into the Spiderverse”. The Mario movie may not be the animated movie
of the century if you’re not a huge Nintendo nerd, but it is a fun adventure that’s action
packed and filled with nostalgia, that maybe could have been a bit more fleshed out. So,
we have to say, we hate this take. Like, get over yourself New York Times.
Continuing on our punches towards the New York Times, we have “There was no
reason for the Go-Karts”. I think, maybe in their defense, this kind of illustrates the
difference between Mario fans and non-Mario fans… because the Rainbow Road sequence is
such a cool part of the movie. Yeah, maybe it panders a bit… but not in a bad way. Sure,
there are some people like New Rockstars who point out that maybe having the Jungle Kingdom feature
the more classic riding animals from Donkey Kong Kingdom might have been better. However,
the use of go karts is a fun reference, and with a character like Funky Kong
existing in the universe, the go-karts are still a good idea. So, once again,
we have to say we hate this because it feels like they just don’t want to have fun.
Moving away from the New York Times, we have “A fun but safe romp” from Engadget.com’s review of
the film. During the review they bring up a lot of things, but the overall point of the article
is that the film is a fun film but it’s very safe. And that’s definitely true, the film has a lot
of fun and good moments and is well-done for the most part, but it is a very safe film, it revels
in tropes and ideas that have been done a million times. However, despite the safety of the film,
it doesn’t fall into every trope it could, it lacks a lot of potty humor that Illumination is
known for and it doesn’t do things like the “Liar Revealed” or “Opening Narration” like a lot of
children’s films. In fact, we think the fact they kept the film so safe made it a better movie in
the long haul if predictable, so of course we love this review as it’s very similar to our own.
Also from Engadget.com is “Stunningly animated”. This comes from the same review,
and it’s an interesting take to talk about, because while the film is very well animated it
still looks like a lot of other CG animated films from the past couple years. Sure, it’s not copy
and paste like a lot of others, but it’s also not as unique as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or Into
The Spiderverse. There are few if any major goofs in the animation and most if not all scenes are
really well done with backgrounds and characters having lovable but iconic designs. The world is
just super charming and super polished thanks to the animation. So, we do love this opinion.
The final take we’ll have from Engadget.com is The Musical Choices Could Have Been More Unique. Now
the Super Mario movie is a weird beast because it has three distinct types of music throughout the
film. There is the classic usage of popular songs in certain places, like “Holdin’ Out for a Hero”
during one of the montages or “Mr. Blue Sky” later on in the film. Then there is the very
very long list of video game music used in the soundtrack from small little stingers of the
Underground Theme when they get into the sewers and the Underwater theme when the Cheep Cheep
death glares Mario. Then of course you have bigger more obvious ones like the DK RAP when Donkey Kong
first appears or The Super Star Theme when the Mario Bros use the power of said Super Star. Then
finally we have the original music composed for the soundtrack, and while there was only one fully
original number with Peaches by Jack Black there is plenty of background music that is generally
original. Now this is talking about that first section, popular music not made for the film being
used in certain scenes. In this case, this really points to the safety that we talked about prior,
because the big music choices, such as Holding Out For A Hero during the montage are very
very generic. Granted, it could’ve been worse, but in our opinion it would’ve been better to
scrap them and throw in a couple more original songs. So we have to say we love this opinion.
Onto our final direct quote we have “This movie is as bad as the original” from The Guardian’s
review which we found through IMDB. For those out of the loop, this is referring to Super Mario Bros
from 1993. This movie was one of the very first attempts to adapt a video game into a movie format
and it is without a doubt, horrible. It takes everything from the games and does it severely
worse. Without going into a full dissection as we compared the two already, they get character
relationships wrong, Goombas and Yoshi are depicted terribly and Bowser is just nothing like
his game counterpart. Now, if you’ve never seen the original you might assume we’re overreacting,
however, calling this new film anywhere near that level of terrible really feels like the
person who came up with that take is just trolling everyone and we have to say we despise this take.
Jumping to the world of predictions now, we have Pedro Pascal as Wario? So, Pedro Pascal
has made his prescence highly known lately playing the main character in multiple major
projects lately. Known for playing Din Djarin or The Mandalorian in the show of the same name and
more recently Joel Miller in The Last of Us. This means he’s been “fancasted” in plenty of projects,
but this particular casting comes very specifically from Jack Black himself,
the man voicing Bowser. How serious Jack Black is can be hard to tell,
but it has the internet abuzz. Now, in our opinion it’s not the greatest casting as
others like @GamesLiek on twitter point out other actors like Danny Devito
could be casted as the yellow villain. Would it be funny? Hell yes, would it work is a
whole different question however. So we have to say we have mixed feelings on this one.
The final thing we’ll be talking about is Fans vs. Critics. Mainly, that the audience score is
more important. In the world of movie reviewing it’s hard to determine who you should listen to
when it comes to gauging your interest in a film. Fans of the project, especially if it’s
based on something else like a comic book or video game might be more likely to either love
or hate a film based on something they’re already a fan of. It’s kind of a double edge sword. This
leads to places like Rotten Tomatoes, a place that collects masses of both critical and fan reviews
and gives an overall score. This situation is very clear when it comes to the Super Mario
Movie, most critics giving it mixed reviews - with some in particular downright ripping it apart,
with the critics score on RT being barely higher than 50 percent. Meanwhile, fans really loved it,
with the tomato meter landing in the mid to high 90s. This has happened before,
other big films like Venom were subject to a lot of ridicule from critics but
was widely loved by fans, including the writer. Sometimes however, it’s very much the other way,
where a critically acclaimed movie is panned by fans like with Sausage Party. Now, we as
fans of the original content, really enjoyed the film and we side with the audience… But
the reality is, there is a growing disconnect it seems between fans and critics when it comes to
reviews of not only movies, but also games and TV shows,,, So, we do have like this
opinion because generally we feel the audience score is a better gauage for a movie’s quality.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking. And
tell us what we should cover next. Remember to hit that notification
bell and binge more of our videos. But most importantly, stay wicked.