$756M and a 43% Score. Miyamoto Calls Critics Baffling

Nearly $756 million at the global box office. A 43 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Those two numbers shouldn't coexist for the same movie, but here we are with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and Shigeru Miyamoto doesn't understand why they do.

In an interview with Famitsu ahead of the film's Japanese release, reported by Game Developer, Miyamoto called the critical response "quite baffling." His argument is essentially that Nintendo crossed over from games to help energise the film industry, and the very people who should be championing that effort have been passive. "I thought this time would be different," Miyamoto said, noting he felt the criticism of the first Mario Bros. Movie in 2023 had some merit. The sequel getting hit even harder clearly stung. The franchise has now surpassed $2 billion across just two films, and the Galaxy Movie hasn't even opened in Japan yet.

What's more interesting than the box office argument is what Miyamoto plans to do with the movie's story. In a separate group interview translated by Nintendo Everything, he said he wants future Mario games to adhere to the backstory the film created for Princess Peach, specifically the reveal that Peach and Rosalina are sisters. "Before making this movie, I hadn't decided on the character's backstory, but now that I'm making the movie, it's become fun to expand on the character in various ways," Miyamoto said. This is a direct retcon of Rosalina's origin from the 2007 game Super Mario Galaxy, which told a completely different story through its storybook sequences.

I find Miyamoto's frustration with critics a little misplaced. A movie printing money doesn't mean the people who review films for a living got it wrong; it means families will show up for Mario regardless, which everyone already knew. But the lore decision is the real story here. Miyamoto has spent decades deliberately avoiding deep backstories for Mario characters because he saw narrative as a constraint on game design. Now he's voluntarily importing continuity from a film that 57 percent of critics didn't like. That's a strange hill to build your canon on, especially when the game version of Rosalina's backstory was one of the most beloved narrative moments Nintendo ever produced.