Reviews for The Super Mario Bros. Movie are stirring up some strong emotions. At 53 percent, it is the lowest-rated animated film Illumination has produced, falling behind Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax by just a single point. As often occurs with movies that have built-in fanbases, many are pointing to the huge disparity between the critical consensus and the audience score, which currently sits at 96 percent. Their logic is that if audiences love the movie, the critics must be wrong.This is a common discourse, egged on by actors and directors that produce lackluster films then go on the defense by assuring everyone they made this one “for the fans”. Many people have valid animosity towards film critics, who have a reputation for being elitist and out of touch. You can see examples of this in a few cherry-picked reviews of the Mario movie, like the one that explains Bowser is a cross between Lionel Barrymore and the Wayland Flowers puppet Madame. If you know what both of those things are without Googling them, congratulations you’re TheGamer’s oldest reader.Related: The Super Mario Bros. Movie's Platforming Is PerfectI think there’s valid reasons to be dubious of Rotten Tomatoes scores, including the way they’re aggregated and represented (53 percent means most critics wrote a positive review) but I also don’t think it makes sense to put the critics score and the audience score against each other. The two scores tell very different stories, and while considering both of them does provide some insights into the movie, comparing them is a waste of time. You might disagree with one score or the other, but that doesn’t make either of them wrong.Critics and audiences do not evaluate movies the same way. It’s a film critic's job to evaluate every aspect of a film and synthesize a review that is holistic. They are, or should be, experts in the language of film, students of storytelling, and clear, concise communicators. They are expected to be rigorous in their assessment of media and have the skill to demonstrate how they come to their conclusions. They are not here to tell you whether or not they personally enjoyed watching the movie, but rather to investigate and evaluate it as a piece of art.None of these expectations apply to reviews written by non-critics. The way audience members evaluate films is based entirely on whether or not they enjoyed their time watching it. Audiences can be swayed by a single aspect of the movie or an ideological connection they make. A movie can be good because it had a funny character, or bad because it was too woke. There are thousands of one-sentence audience reviews for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and they’re all exactly the same. It was fun. I liked the characters. Bowser was hilarious. My kids loved it.

You have to recognize that these two types of reviews are fundamentally different things, and therefore their respectives scores represent different ideas. That’s not a bad thing, and both scores have value. But if you’re looking at these two numbers and wondering why they’re so different, you have to remember that they refer to different things.

If the only thing you care about is if the Mario movie is fun, then your opinion is going to align with the audience score. That’s totally fine, but it doesn’t invalidate the critic score or prove that the critics are wrong. There is no critic agenda against video games, Chris Pratt, or kids movies here; it is expressly the job of the critic to critique the movie on its own merits. If there is bias to be found, surely it's in the audience score, which is prone to review bombs, as we so often do with video games and movies or shows with diverse casts. If you want an example of a movie that has a low score because the people don’t like the actor, look at Captain Marvel. I’ll let you guess whether it was the critics or the audience that were biased.

I understand why people are passionate about the Mario Movie. I personally think the critic score is pretty accurate, but I’m happy to celebrate its success because I recognize this is an important milestone for games. There are some laughably out of touch critic reviews out there, but for every pompous review written by an elitist boomer, I can show you several hundred reviews that just say “good graphics, five stars”. Don’t worry about comparing the critics to the audience. Or, even better, don’t worry about Rotten Tomatoes scores at all.

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