Elon Musk speaks out against “disconnected” critics over negative reviews of ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’

11 April, 2023

Elon Musk has spoken out against the negative reviews of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, claiming film critics are “disconnected from reality”.

The animated children’s film, adapted from the iconic Nintendo video game franchise, was released in cinemas last week.

Reviews have generally been negative, and the film currently holds “Rotten” critics’ score of 57 per cent on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

However, the audience score – which is voted for by non professional critics – currently sits at 96 per cent positive, making it “Fresh”.

On Twitter, Musk commented on the disparity between the critics and audience after an account called @BoredOfElonMusk shared an image of the Rotten Tomatoes scores.

“Content review systems are broken. Because critics have a problem with Chris Pratt, the ‘experts’ have deemed the new Mario movie a D- even though audiences clearly love it,” the account tweeted.

“Both of these groups are obviously biased, but the disparity here reveals a major problem.”

In response, Musk wrote: “Wow, the critics are so disconnected from reality!”

Musk’s comment sparked a debate on Twitter, with some users arguing that critics should review films based on their intended audience.

“Ya and movies really shouldn’t be rated or reviewed in a vacuum, but rather the audience they were created for,” tweeted one person.

Another wrote: “‘Critics’ ought to predict what you’ll enjoy. Instead they more focused on telling what they think you *should* enjoy.”

Countering Musk’s tweet, one person argued: “This is exactly how these numbers should look given that the movie’s audience is children and most professional critics are adults.”

In a two-star review of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, NME wrote: “Clearly, adapting the best-selling video game franchise of all-time into an equally ingenious movie is a tall order. It’s faithful enough to tempt existing fans to the cinema, but too perfunctory to be pored over. Is the Mario movie super? To paraphrase one of the title character’s catchphrases, it’s-a mediocre.”

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