Miyamoto Believes Bad Reviews Helped The Mario Movie's Success
The Super Mario Bros. Movie continues to be a massive success. Quickly becoming the highest-grossing video game adaptation ever as it sailed past $800 million last weekend, it will likely hit $1 billion very soon as the movie hasn't even been released in Japan yet. Nintendo boss Shigeru Miyamoto has been blown away by the film's success, admitting he thinks the somewhat negative critic reviews the movie received at the start of its run actually helped it achieve massive financial success.
“While many foreign critics have given the movie relatively low ratings, I think that also contributed to the movie’s notoriety and buzz,” Miyamoto told press in Japan ahead of the movie's launch there this weekend (thanks to VGC for the translation). “I did have a level of expectations that this movie would also do well [like Super Nintendo World], but I was very surprised that it went beyond what I could have imagined when it finally came out.”
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Hype for the Mario movie was high ahead of its arrival, but it did feel like some of the wind was taken out of its sails as reviews started to drop. It currently sits at 59 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the lack of any meaningful story making way for references and easter eggs one of the leading reasons for the relatively low scores. However, once the film was in cinemas, its audience score told a different story.
At 96 percent, it's fair to say the critics and the fans don't see eye-to-eye. As Miyamoto highlights though, if anything, bad reviews generated even more buzz for the film. Whether it be moviegoers who didn't care how strong a story the movie told, or people simply wanting to see it for themselves, the Nintendo boss
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