We need a solution for the movie critic disconnect

1993 was a monumental year for the world. Jurassic Park was released, Bill Clinton was sworn into office, and the Waco Siege ended with a deadly fire, but there was one release that changed the world, The Super Mario Movie. Now, this was simply a terrible movie, as it was very reflective of the 1990s action movies with sci-fi elements and atmosphere. Universally derided by critics and audiences alike, this movie was one of the worst game adaptations made.

Nintendo seemed to think the same thing. After the bad release, Nintendo fully gave up on turning video games into movies for over 20 years. In 2018, though, it was announced Mario would finally be resurrected for the big screen in a joint production by Nintendo and Illumination. 

As of the April 5 release of the new Mario movie ,we now have 2 Mario movies in the world. The “Super Mario Bros. Movie” came out this year to acclaimed success from fans, earning a 96 percent approval on Rotten Tomato from over 10,000 verified people who saw the movie. This is a movie designed for fans to love all the hints and references to the mushroom kingdom, but it also allows for people who don’t know anything about Mario to walk into a funny movie for the whole family. With joy, though, there is hate, and that has led to a threat to all movies created in the same vein as Mario: The critics of the movie industry. These are people who live and breathe movies, for better or for worse, and this has caused a disruption in the movie industry, celebrating movies that are more emotional, while criticizing those that are just fun adventures.

Should this elite group of moviegoers who go to every movie, from dramas to comedy, decide whether each movie is good or bad for a broader audience? I personally say no. While they might be good at consuming media and appreciating more touching options, there shouldn’t be a broad base of critics, the main reason being that people should review what they personally enjoy. While movie critics might think of themselves as omnipotent and always having the right feelings no matter what they are watching, they are human, and us humans have different opinions about what we enjoy and what we dislike. But there is a solution to this problem, and that’s assigning movie critics by genre. 

This solution, which I call Movie Critic Genres, is quite simple, but might be a hard thing for everyone to work together to accomplish. Basically, critics would pick what genre they want to rate. For example, imagine if a super serious critic who had reviewed media like Breaking Bad and horror movies had to also rate My Little Pony. As you can see, there is a massive amount of disconnect between these genres. With Movie Critic Genres, the critic would only rate media they actually want to see. This would allow for critics to connect to their films more, and give better recommendations. Movies like Mario would no longer have a disconnect in their reviews, because the critics would be lovers of the genre just like the audience.