Shigeru Miyamoto claims bad reviews helped ‘Super Mario Bros’
Video game adaptations are always a high-risk manoeuvre because of the incompatibility of the two mediums, having resulted in some truly terrible projects over the years. While fans were cautiously optimistic about the latest Super Mario Bros film, the wave of negative critical reviews that followed its release created a unique phenomenon.
Following the critical backlash, many Mario fans took to social media to oppose the Rotten Tomatoes rating, which urged many people to go watch it in the theatres. According to co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto, this helped in making it one of the most successful films of the year. So far, it’s the highest-grossing film of 2023 and has racked up more than $900million at the global box office.
“I did have a level of expectations that this movie would also do well [like the Super Nintendo World theme park], but I was very surprised that it went beyond what I could have imagined when it finally came out,” Miyamoto told Retbit. “You need some luck to achieve this level of success for a film. While many foreign critics have given the movie relatively low ratings, I think that also contributed to the movie’s notoriety and buzz.”
While discussing the project, Miyamoto also opened up about the nuances of making a video game adaptation: “What I often say is that in games, we should value stories that are ‘like real stories, even though they’re not.’ They’re completely fictional, but I think they seem almost real because there’s some element of reality in them.”
“This is true for dramas as well. When I see that the most important part, which is making it seem ‘like a real story’, is done carelessly, I feel disappointed,” Miyamoto added. “So when we decided to make this movie, we discussed creating a unique Japanese script from the beginning. Even if we were shown an English script, it would be hard to understand the subtle nuances.”
Watch the trailer below.
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