the mario movie, rotten tomatoes, and the war of public opinion

I watched The Mario movie on a camrip shortly after it came out. When I watched the movie, I thought it was a pretty adequate kid's movie with some fun references for big fans of the franchise. Despite my generally positive opinion on it, I came away with this niggling feeling of irritation. Like something was off, something I couldn't place or fully articulate.

Fast forward to August. The movie came to Peacock, free to stream. I decided to watch it again since my brother, who cares far more about Mario than I do, hadn't seen it. I remembered it being entertaining enough, and if I got bored I could kill time by tapping away at some mindless phone games.

What surprised me is that I didn't. At all. Never even felt the urge.

The movie was so much more fun and entertaining and engaging to me the second time, but why? It's not like it's full of complexities and densities that need multiple viewings to fully wrap your head around. I even had a very similar experience with Spiderverse, which I was equally as excited about both times.

I pondered this for the rest of the night and eventually came to my conclusion.

It wasn't the movie's fault, it was the viewers.

The film, for those that don't remember or who live in blissful ignorance of inane Twitter tiffs, was caught up in the general Culture War in a strange way.

Prior to the movie coming out, reactionaries rushed to list all the reasons why their precious multi-billion dollar darling was yet another victim of the dreaded specter of wokeness.

Why? Uhh... Peach had pants and jumped good, I guess.

Then, when it came out, critics gave it an honestly lukewarm score. One which, although I don't agree with it, I'm sympathetic to as someone who also feels fatigue at reboots and adaptations and sanitized sterile cashgrabs from studios helmed by men with more money than god.

But many members of the 'general audience' took great offense to this! This was obviously hatred of the fact that the movie doesn't blackwash the characters! I mean, that it stars two white men! I mean, that the sole female character isn't a Mary Sue! I mean, that Hollywood hates animation! I mean, that Hollywood thinks every movie needs deep political themes! I mean, that Hollywood doesn't think animation or children's films have depth! I mean- I'll stop.

It was turned into fuel for clickbait thumbnails and controversial op-ed headlines. The Mario movie wasn't a movie any longer, but a vehicle for whatever person needed a reason to be mad that week. Or a way to prove those high horse sitting critics wrong for once.

That irritation was because I simply didn't have a strong opinion. The movie, being a vehicle for hot takes and hit tweets, made me feel nothing particularly strongly. And I was mad about it! It wasn't brilliant enough to captivate me or awful enough to make me mad.

But when I watched the second time, leisurely snacking and joking around with my brother, it became a movie again. Something that could be use to bond or entertain as much as it could be used to fill the auditory emptiness in a room.

My advice, which I can't even promise I'll be able to follow, is to take these pieces of art that fall into the cogs of the culture war machine at their own merits. Allow them to speak for themselves as pieces of art independently. Not all of these are highly successful big budget Hollywood films that would've barely made a splash if not for the clout farmers. Some of them are indie games, or books by first time authors, or cartoons made for companies that almost blacklisted their creators for sneaking in two girls holding hands in a crowd shot, or even single tweets made by mildly annoying users.

Put your critical thinking skills to use, take art at it's word, and before you get into another spat, think of the kind of people making money off of your passion.