The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Is a Hollow Sugar Rush, But...
It also feels like exactly the movie Nintendo wanted to make, a cinematic reflection of their approach to game design.
There is a famous post on Tumblr about modern Star Wars that goes like this:
“every time a new Star War movie or show is announced all the fans are like ‘OMG Glup Shitto is back’ 😭😭😭”
That’s what I felt like every time I would turn over to my nine-year-old during The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, in which I would proudly—perhaps too proudly—inform here “that’s R.O.B.” Or “that’s a Super Scope, which your dad used to have at your age.”
She would look at me, squint, and go back to the movie.
Did you know that one’s named Birdo…? OK, back to your popcorn and sour gummies.
There’s been an understandable conversation around whether The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is “good” and whether it matters if it’s a “good,” because it’s targeted at kids.
Kpop Demon Hunters is a movie meant for children and it’s a great movie. Hoppers is a movie meant for children and it’s a great movie. These are films that can be enjoyed without an ounce of irony or distance if you’re an adult. Hell, Minions does it better!
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a fun way to spend 90 minuets. I had fun and my kids had fun. But it’s reasonable to have expectations that are more than a roller coaster, especially when we’re talking about one of the most popular characters ever created.
Yet it’s also a reasonable expectation from a movie adapting a character who has historically found this balance in his original medium, video games. Mario games are explicitly designed to be appreciated by a child who is learning how to jump in a game for the first time and the seasoned adult who’s excited to sweat through a series of increasingly hard jumps. It doesn’t have an “easy” mode. It doesn’t have a “hard” mode. The Mario games remain one the best examples of player-agnostic dynamic difficulty. It’s a company that’s grown up with its earliest fans and drawn in new ones.
Why wouldn’t you expect the movie to the same? Isn’t that what plenty of others do?
But I don’t think it comes from a place of cynicism or hostility from the house of Mario. I think it’s a sincere expression of Nintendo’s approach to designing Mario games over the years and specifically Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, who has a well-documented history of chaffing at the notion of over emphasizing story in games.
It’s an emphasis on “fun” over everything. The problem is the mediums are different!
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a never-ending series of elaborate set pieces. It feels as though Nintendo and Illumination (but mostly Nintendo?) came up with an idea of something that would look cool, then worked backwards. “Wouldn’t it be fun if…?”
Which, naturally, makes all the sense in the world when you’re making a video game, and makes a ton of sense for Nintendo’s games, which often do not emphasize stories. (This point is especially true of the Mario platforming games, though ironic that this movie, in particular, is influenced by Mario’s biggest flirting with adding a real story!)
It’s also, much like the original, gorgeous—a true wonder to look at. And it’s this level of craft, care, and commitment that makes the lack of effort with the story stand out.
There are loads of awful kids movies on the various streaming services. But the “bad” part extends to every single part of the film—the art, the music, the story, the everything. What makes The Super Mario Galaxy Movie so strange is that you’re watching a truly incredible-looking movie that feels like a premise and nothing else.
(The movie gestures at an alternate path with Bowser’s parenting regrets and Peach’s deep isolation from her family, but no time is spent with either of these ideas. And what happened to Mario’s family? That was one of the better parts of the original!)
Of course, none of these reasonable dings against the movie can negate my six-year-old crying as [REDACTED] fell into the lava, or when [REDACTED] showed up during the second post-credits scene—at which point she nearly exploded in her theater seat. Six is probably the exact right age to be swayed by the bright colors and shallow emotions that make up the (tiny) journey you go on in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
But it was barely enough for my nine-year-old. And it’s a movie my wife and I won’t think about in a week. Holding a Mario movie to higher bar is not unreasonable, but I also think Nintendo made the movie it wanted to make. It was not tricked by Illumination. It feels like the Minions people were dragged in Nintendo’s direction.
Sure, roller coasters are fun. But your first ride is the best, and the reason you go on another one is to chase that feeling again. Maybe that’ll be the inevitable third movie in a few years, maybe it’ll be whatever Nintendo’s trying to do with their live action Zelda movie, or maybe, like most kids, they’ll simply grow up and find it elsewhere.
It is, however, a missed opportunity. (But it’s also not anti-art. C’mon.)
I did not have time to to ask my children to write movie reviews, but on the ride home from the theater last night, before my six-year-old passed out, I asked some questions.
Favorite character: Rosalina (and the “Lumas”)
Favorite part: When everyone stopped fighting (they liked Bowser being nice)
Worst part: When Rosalina was kidnapped
Favorite other part: When [REDACTED] shows up in the post-credits scene
Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.
Also:
The music is so dang good in this one; there are no needle drops and tons of wonderful interpretations and references to the great music in the Mario series.
I wonder what these movies would be like without Nintendo’s deep involvement; I swear Illumination is trying to give these movies more depth.
When I went home, I fell asleep on the couch re-downloading the Super Mario Galaxy games. I’m really excited to share those games with my kids this week.