The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Shoots For The Stars – And Flies Too Close To The Sun
Dylan Z. Alter ‘29 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Spoilers for the Super Mario Galaxy Movie
When Super Mario Bros. released for the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985, it revolutionized video games. The platformer juggernaut made Nintendo the face of video games for children and their families, a status that has yet to die down. Since the release of the first game, the Italian plumber has gained a wide cast of characters on his adventures, which have taken him across the universe and across every Nintendo home console and portable device since the NES.
Mario is also no stranger to alternate forms of media. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, an American TV program featuring both live action and animated versions of the Mario Brothers cast, aired throughout 1989 to mixed reception, and a live action movie, starring Bob Hoskins as Mario, was released in 1993 to infamously negative reception.
Following the movie’s failure, Nintendo would shy away from adaptations of their works for several decades, until 2022, when they announced The Super Mario Bros. Movie, an animated film by Illumination that released the following year. The film saw success, as part of a new wave of popular and commercially well-received video game movies alongside Sonic The Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat. Just like those others, Super Mario Bros. would get a sequel.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie stars Mario (Chris Pratt), an Italian-American plumber who, in the previous movie, was torn from his life on the streets of New York and thrown, alongside his brother Luigi (Charlie Day), into the magical Mushroom Kingdom. At the end of the first movie, Mario and Luigi defeated Bowser (Jack Black), the series’ villain, and decided to live in the Mushroom Kingdom. In the time between films, Mario and Luigi have become celebrities in and around the Mushroom Kingdom, and have become protectors of the realm.
The film opens with the brothers finding the adorable green dinosaur Yoshi (Donald Glover) and meeting up with the ruler of the mushroom kingdom, Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), for her birthday party. As they enjoy the festivities, a Luma—a very young star-shaped creature—crashlands in the Mushroom Kingdom from outer space and begs for Peach’s help. The Luma’s mother, Rosalina (Brie Larson) has been kidnapped by the villainous Bowser Junior (Bennie Safdie), scattering the Lumas far from their home on a space station. Peach, alongside her assistant Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), leave the Mushroom Kingdom to find Rosalina and save the Lumas from his evil army.
Mario and Luigi, alongside Yoshi and a magically shrunken Bowser, are thrown into space when Bowser Junior touches down in the Mushroom Kingdom and destroys Peach’s castle, dragging it off the ground and into the depths of space.
The film’s plot is all over the place, scattered between at least four separate stories that never really gel. The primary storyline is Peach saving Rosalina—her long lost sister, as viewers discover near the end of the film—but scattered around that narrative is the misadventures of Mario and co. as they try to find Peach; the relationship between a (supposedly) reformed Bowser and his son as the former is turned back to the side of evil (and back to normal size); and a plot outline heavily reminiscent of A New Hope. There is far too much going on for the film’s runtime, and the film still manages to pack tons of extra, almost entirely pointless scenes into a film that already never stops moving.
Furthermore, the film is stuffed with easter eggs to various Mario games from across the series, though the primary focus is, of course, on Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel. Despite how much happens in the film, none of the narrative beats are all that complex, because the film is mostly focused on references and visual gags. There are even some references to other Nintendo properties, such as R.O.B.—a toy that could attach to the original NES for some games—being featured in an interplanetary airport terminal. By far the biggest outside reference is Fox McCloud (Glenn Powell), the main character of the Star Fox series of games, who is a major character in the second half of the film, acting as a Han Solo-esque pilot who flies the Mario gang to Bowser Junior’s hideout.
The film is very clearly made with love for the Mario series. The score is filled with motifs from across the series, the animation really brings the characters to life, and every scene and background detail is some kind of reference from across the series. However, the film fails to leave much of a lasting impact, largely due to just how much it crams in.
For Nintendo die-hards, this film will be a good time. For anyone not aware of the Mario series, or those with small kids who are unaware of the Mario series, this is not the film for them. While it is enjoyable and fun in short bursts, it fails to come together into something greater.