Super Mario Galaxy Movie Scores Near Perfect Audience Score After Brutal Reviews

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On Rotten Tomatoes, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has an audience score of 90%, based on over 2,500 ratings from users. That means there’s a gap of nearly 50 percentage points between the two scores, which is a huge difference (as a point of comparison, there’s a difference of 36 percentage points for the first film). While critics found the story of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie to be “threadbare,” audiences have enjoyed the bevy of Nintendo references packed into the sequel.

The site’s “Audience Says” section reads, “Mamma Mia! Nintendo nostalgia hits again in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, delivering Easter eggs, joyful wonder, and a spirited cast that make this an instant replay.”

The Super Mario Bros. Franchise Is Critic-Proof

There are instances where word of mouth can have an impact on a film’s box office performance, but those typically involve non-franchise titles. For instance, it’s hard to imagine Project Hail Mary posting record-breaking numbers without its enthusiastic reviews. On the flip side, there are plenty of examples of films and film franchises that do well at the box office regardless of what the critics say. This is because the appeal of the IP is so strong that the passionate fan base will come out to see the movie regardless of what the consensus is. The first few Transformers movies from director Michael Bay earned mixed reviews but were still major blockbusters.

Super Mario Bros. is now firmly entrenched in that latter camp. It doesn’t matter what critics say about the films, fans will come out in full force to support them and like what they see. That this happened a few years ago with Illumination’s first movie isn’t all that surprising. It had been a long time since a Super Mario film graced the big screen, so audiences were excited to see that world realized in a bright, colorful animation style that emulated the video games. History repeating itself with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a sign that viewers weren’t turned off by the thin story of the first movie and are instead onboard with Illumination’s approach.

This puts Super Mario Bros. in the same boat as other notable Illumination properties. The studio’s track record with reviews is very up and down; a handful of their films have earned generally positive reviews (the first Despicable Me has Illumination’s highest Rotten Tomatoes score at 80%), but they don’t have the reputation of being critical darlings. In contrast, their films typically perform very well at the box office, and Illumination has never earned anything under an A- CinemaScore. They’ve clearly cracked a winning formula for making movies that connect with target demographics, and the fan reception to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie will only galvanize Illumination moving forward. Galaxy sets up several other Nintendo films that could see the light of day.

It will be interesting to see if Illumination’s Super Mario movies continue to fare well with fans. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie generated headlines for introducing a major change to the established lore, a twist that divided viewers (one person went so far as to call it “diabolical levels of dumb”). Granted, social media backlash is not always representative of the general public consensus, so it’s possible a majority of viewers are unbothered by what Illumination is doing and will continue to be excited for future installments. Audience reactions to whatever the next Nintendo movie is will be a strong indicator of where fan opinion lies.

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