Hello, and welcome back to my blog. Sorry for the extended break, I have been quite busy and preoccupied with other things, but I want to make an effort to get more posts out.
Today, I wanted to talk about a made-up phrase I came up with earlier this morning – the idea of an “Anti-Fun Epidemic”. What does that mean though, and why did this come up? Well, if you don’t know, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie comes out next week, and Nintendo are premiering it in Tokyo. I am a huge Nintendo fan and general video game fan, and most my online circles lean towards video games. So, the reception of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and its mixed, leaning negative outlook is a bitter point as they enjoyed it, and are very excited about this new one. One went as far as to essentially discredit film critics for losing their sense of fun, and generally being miserable because of the way they criticised that original movie.
Now, obviously that’s just an opinion. And I’d not be honest if I didn’t admit my many clashes with critics’ opinions of certain movies. They can absolutely sometimes be pre-conceived in their views on certain films.
Why do I want to talk about this, though? It’s a non-issue.. who cares if my friend doesn’t trust film critics? Well that’s a good question. The short answer is that this is very insignificant, but in the long answer basically this is part of a larger ongoing discussion I’ve seen brewing since 2020 primarily.
The original Super Mario Bros. Movie is a bit of a mess. Very overstuffed, barely coherent, and goes at an insane breakneck pace, not allowing anything to breathe. But I enjoyed it anyway, as I love Mario and that’s fine. However, film critics pointed these things out and criticised the overall film on those points. Should a film critic be invalidated for pointing this out, and actually doing their job? Overall, the “fun police” angle feels very flawed. Ultimately, it’s an uphill battle for these fans who want to act like the credibility of film criticism has gone down as a result of criticising a film on its own merits.
Getting to my actual point, I feel this anti-criticism mentality for films that exist only to be “fun” and quality is allowed to be as low as humanly possible purely because of that fun, and how it played into your personal investment of a character or game or anything that’s being adapted, is a standards issue. It sounds condescending, but the standards for a good adaptation, especially in video game movies, are very low. The pure fanservice and love of the game it’s based on is seen as enough. But A Minecraft Movie sucks. That film isn’t even that fun to me. But it could’ve been. People had felt a Minecraft movie in live action was impossible to pull off.. but nothing is impossible to pull off. The production of the Minecraft movie went under too many creatives, and one included a Rob Mac script that probably was on a similar wavelength to what I was imagining. Minecraft can get philisophical and it’s inherently quite eerie conceptually. At the dawn of Minecraft, I feel as though its meloncholy, its post-apocalyptic vibe and its almost-horror elements were more prominent. Why can’t that aspect be adapted into an interesting, creative script and be made with love and respect for the source material? This side tangent is to prove that it CAN be good, and so the bad reviews of the one we have right now is not about whether it was a good adaptation of Minecraft or if it serviced fans enough, it’s about the final product based on the merits of the movie itself. Instead of allowing these types of adaptations that exist only to be good fanservice, it’s this fight back to act as if there can’t be a better version.
The case study, so to speak, being Mario movies is a little different. I don’t think these are bad movies, but they are so stuffed and it is so clear that Miyamoto has so many ideas and requests of what should be in the movies, and he infamously does not care about story, it results in a very packed film. Unlike the Minecraft point, I don’t know if Mario exactly needs to have a better movie, these movies really feel like good celebrations of the series, but criticism of those movies are valid and come from a place of criticising them as actual films.
The reason I ranted so much about this, and mainly about Mario and Minecraft, is because it always seems to spawn from these adaptations of video games, Sonic has this issue too, although it has seemingly beatem the curve with its third film.
It feels like every single fandom will rally against “film reviewers” when a film drops, has mixed reviews and is based on a widely beloved franchise. It paints this picture of an “Anti-Fun Epidemic”, one that almost certainly doesn’t exist. The ultimate counterpoint is The LEGO Movie, a genuinely amazing film that was critically acclaimed. An incredibly smart adaptation that holds its own, and even more recently Barbie snuck its way into Best Picture at the Oscars as another toy adaptation. These are movies that take beloved franchises successfully and pleased fans and critics. That’s the kind of balance you need to have and you want to have, and with a successful creative team you can. Because this is a creative industry, and you can very easily tell when a film is made out of love and passion, and when a film is made for money.
Ultimately, my point is that a film can be good and fun, and many flawed films seem to get shielded for that feature alone, forgetting that “fun” can’t be the only thing a film needs to be, since most are by default.
Newton's Law 