Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto has weighed in on the rough critical response to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and bro, he sounds genuinely confused by how hard reviewers went at it.
Speaking to NDW, in comments translated by Nintendo Patents Watch, Miyamoto said critics were even tougher on the new Mario movie than they were on 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. He reportedly laughed while calling the reaction odd, and described the negativity around the film as “truly baffling.”
His broader point was that Nintendo came from the games world into cinema hoping to give the film business more energy, only to see professional critics push back hard. That is a spicy take, because critics are not really supposed to cheerlead an industry. Their job is to critique, question, and sometimes be the annoying friend who says the popcorn movie is not actually cinema. Still, you can understand why Miyamoto feels weird about it when the audience numbers are telling a very different story.
Critics cold, fans happy
According to Metacritic, The Super Mario Bros. Movie sits at a 46 metascore, while The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is lower at 37. Rotten Tomatoes shows a similar gap, with the 2023 film scoring better than the sequel among critics.
But here is the important part: regular viewers are much kinder to both movies. Fan and audience scores on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes are significantly higher than the professional critic ratings. CinemaScore, which surveys moviegoers after screenings, also paints a very different picture. The first Mario movie earned an A, while The Super Mario Galaxy Movie received an A-.
That gap feels very familiar for Malaysia and SEA audiences. A lot of us are not walking into a Mario movie expecting some deep prestige drama. We want bright animation, Nintendo references, fun set pieces, and enough nostalgic dopamine to make the cinema ticket feel worth it. If the kids are laughing, the gamers are catching Easter eggs, and the parents are not bored, that already does the job.
Box office says Mario still prints money
Whether critics love it or not, Nintendo’s movie strategy is working gila well. The two Mario animated movies have now made more than US$2 billion combined worldwide. The 2023 Super Mario Bros. Movie alone earned US$1.36 billion, making it 2023’s second-biggest film behind Barbie, which made around US$1.4 billion.
Meanwhile, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has already crossed US$750 million globally, with some projections suggesting it could still hit US$1 billion before leaving cinemas. It has also passed China’s Pegasus 3 to become the world’s No. 1 movie so far this year.
For Malaysia, this matters because Nintendo’s film push keeps gaming culture visible outside the usual console crowd. Not everyone here owns a Switch or grew up finishing every Mario game, but everyone knows Mario. A successful Mario movie means more family cinema trips, more merch, more kids discovering Nintendo games, and likely more confidence for distributors to treat game-based films as proper mainstream releases in SEA.
Nintendo’s movie era is just getting started
The Mario films have also helped give the global box office a much-needed boost after the slower post-pandemic years. GameSpot notes that other big 2026 crowd-pullers include Project Hail Mary, Pixar’s Hoppers, The Mandalorian and Grogu, Avengers: Doomsday, Toy Story 5, Disney’s live-action Moana, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Supergirl, and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
Nintendo’s next major movie project is the live-action The Legend of Zelda, currently planned for May 2027. Production has reportedly wrapped, and behind-the-scenes images may already be hinting at its direction.
So yes, critics may not be fully onboard with Mario’s big-screen adventures. But fans are showing up, cinemas are cashing in, and Nintendo now has proof that its characters can travel far beyond games. For SEA audiences, that likely means one thing: more Nintendo on the big screen, and probably bigger launch hype when Zelda finally arrives.
Source: GameSpot