On Wednesday, The Super Mario Bros movie, featuring actor Chris Pratt voicing the titular character, hit theaters and was greeted with cheers from fans and jeers from critics in a marked disconnect with reviews from film "experts" coming in at 53 percent but receiving an audience score of 96 percent on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.
On Twitter, Bored Elon Musk, who runs independent video game company Bored Box, wrote that "content review systems are broken" and "Because critics have a problem with Chris Pratt, the 'experts' have deemed the new Mario movie a D- even though audiences clearly love it."
Pratt has faced ire from critics ever since he openly espoused his Christian beliefs. According to Elle Magazine, Pratt spoke out about being Christian at the 2017 Teen Choice Awards speech and said, "I would not be here with the ease and grace I have in my heart without my lord and savior, Jesus Christ." Similarly, he thanked God in a 2018 Instagram post remarking on his engagement to then-fiancee Katherine Schwarzenegger.
Many of the reviews for The Super Mario Bros movie focus on Pratt's performance as serviceable in a forgettable film such as Molly Freeman writing for ScreenRant. Freeman said that Pratt's "simply fine — not so bad as to be distracting, but not strong enough to be at all interesting either.
Clarisse Loughrey writing for the Independent went further and said the film's "comfortable mediocrity is no better captured than in its choice to cast Chris Pratt – the current face of generic, easy-to-market heroism – in the starring role." She later said that Pratt is capable of the "puppyish élan" the role required but instead went for the "blandly sincere, hire-a-hero variety."
Audience reviews are almost unanimous with exclamations such as "CRITICS ARE A JOKE" and "Awesome movie!"
Bored Elon Musk wrote, "Both of these groups are obviously biased, but the disparity here reveals a major problem."
The audience bias resides in their satisfaction that the film is made for them.
Content creator DDayCobra wrote on Twitter, "#SuperMarioBrosMovie is 100% fan service. It's not trying to appeal to anyone but Nintendo fans and I loved it for that."
Twitter owner Elon Musk commented on the disparity and said, "Wow, the critics are so disconnected from reality!"
Bored Elon Musk replied that films should not be reviewed in a vacuum but in the context of who they are created for.
The disconnect between critics and audience has been a growing and pronounced trend, noticeably after Disney's 2017 Star Wars entry The Last Jedi, which attained 91 percent approval from critics and 42 percent from audience. Many critics noticed that disconnect and would chalk it up to filmmaker Rian Johnson "subverting" expectations.
The film's official Twitter account posted the audience score online and the film is expected to make $128 million in its opening week.
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