Two years ago, I talked with Nintendo Global President Shuntaro Furukawa about the company’s then-upcoming movie based on its Super Mario franchise. At the time, virtually nothing had been disclosed about the film, a coproduction with Illumination, best known as the mastermind of the Minions animated franchise. Furukawa didn’t spill any secrets. But he stressed that the movie, as well as other brand extensions such as Universal Studios’ Super Nintendo World theme-park lands, weren’t going to venture far from the elements familiar from four decades of Nintendo video games.
With such new ventures, Furukawa told me, “We must make sure that the results are true to the players’ experiences, and that they would never prevent Nintendo’s developers from making another unique game featuring the same characters.”
Fast-forward to 2023. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the biggest box-office hit of the year and (at the moment) the sixth-highest-grossing animated film of all time. To say it’s found a large and enthusiastic audience would be understating the situation. But its reception by people in the business of judging movies has been downright hostile.
The film’s Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score of 59 reflects its dismal reception by critics; even Sonic the Hedgehog 2 eked out a better rating. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, many reviewers concluded, is far too much like a Super Mario Bros. game, crammed with explicit nods to the franchise (such as an inevitable kart race) and devoid of the plot twists and character development that would give the story a reason to exist. In an analysis of the film’s success, The New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka mourned its absence of dramatic stakes and—summarizing one critic’s take—called it “a shiny and noisy infantile distraction.”
As I read such assessments, I thought back to what Furukawa had told me about Nintendo’s overriding desire to keep its new ventures true to the vision established by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. That The Super Mario Bros. Movie nailed that goal explains both its popularity and critical failure.
Many reviews of the film accused it of laziness for hewing so closely to the franchise’s video-game origins. I find that unfair. It might have been simpler for Nintendo and Illumination to use the Mario intellectual property as raw material for a more conventional piece of cartoon storytelling—something along the lines of the 2012 video-game-themed Disney film Wreck-It Ralph. Goodwill alone wouldn’t capture anyone’s attention for 92 minutes: The film had to immerse audiences in Miyamoto’s world, just as his games always have. And it does.
As for the fact that Mario isn’t much of a character, well, that has always been core to his appeal. As the greatest in-game avatar ever created, he was born to die, spring back to life, and then die again, in an endless loop that started with 1981’s Donkey Kong and may well continue long after we’re all gone. Beyond being heroic and athletic and highly skilled at plucking coins out of the air, discernible traits might stand in the way of his ability to represent the wide swaths of humanity who play his games. Not imposing more of a personality on him for the big screen was an act of daring, not the easy way out.
Nintendo, whose strategy for success in the video-game industry is cheerfully out of sync with those of other giants such as Sony and Microsoft, has never had a problem with going its own route. It’s also extremely good at ignoring skepticism along the way. For example, instead of heeding calls a decade ago to abandon its hardware business, it created the Switch, one of its biggest triumphs ever. So it’s not that startling that its film didn’t come out the way film critics thought it should.
Illumination deserves credit, too: Even understandable departures from the Nintendo canon, such as Mario ditching his Italian accent and Princess Peach being a less distressed damsel than usual, are deftly handled. If only its 2018 Grinch movie had treated its source material as respectfully.
I’m not saying that The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a masterpiece, or that I think more animated features should be like it. (As far as I’m concerned, the medium peaked in 1940 with Walt Disney’s Pinocchio.) At some point, I imagine we’ll see a Legend of Zelda movie, based on Miyamoto’s other career-defining franchise; that seems like an opportunity to tell a Nintendo story that feels more like a story. More Mario movies are an even safer bet, and it would be nice if they held some surprises of their own—even if they’re also content to be comfort food rather than critics’ choices.
This story is from Fast Company’s new Plugged In newsletter, a weekly roundup of tech insights, news, and trends from global technology editor Harry McCracken, delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning. Sign up for it here.
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