It's less that people hate it right now and more that people hated it back then.

Imagine this. It's the mid-90's and you're between the ages of 8 and 12 and you love Mario. And you eventually hear rumors about a Mario movie!

Oh wow! So you're going to see Mario and Luigi fight koopas and goombas and Bowser! This is going to be so cool!

…and then the movie comes out and everything, everything is wrong and nothing is like the games.

As adults, we can look back and laugh, but as a kid, especially being there when it happened, it felt like a slap to the face.

It's all about context.

I never understood how people could seriously hate this movie; it's so bad it's good in the most artistically merited way possible, and I'd be completely down for more movies translating features of extremely cartoonish series into a "realistic" setting in creative ways.