Illumination and Nintendo’s second iteration of the Mario Bros. hit the big screen with their rendition of the game with the same name, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” Gaining massive success in its first few weeks, the film garnered $372 million at the box office while successfully appealing to more than just the die–hard video game fans.
The first movie, released in 2023, set an expectation of quippy fun for the whole family, with references and subtleties to old games that wouldn’t take away from a casual viewer.
The sequel remained a feel-good family identity, a hallmark of the Nintendo brand, that made for an enjoyable experience.
The film follows the Mario Bros. and a few rag–tag friends as they try to save a kidnapped Princess Rosalina in a galaxy far, far away. Where in the first movie the gang defeated the villainous Bowser, who kidnapped the protagonist Princess Peach, this time he functions as an antihero after being captured and slowly coming to terms with his evil ways – until he faces the new antagonist, his son.
This contemplation of what makes the character good versus evil allows the viewer to ponder which side Bowser will really end up taking: whether his son, and the accompanying violence he instilled in him as a kid, would outweigh the growth and temperamental changes Bowser had developed.
Unfortunately, perhaps the movie’s biggest – and really only – major failure was to simplify Bowser to a cookie-cutter villain in the final section of the movie. The decision to have him choose his family could have shown the strength and failures it takes to change from a “villain.” Another option could have demonstrated how parents, whether fire-breathing turtles or otherwise, impact their children and how to combat the generational aspect of trauma, but instead, the narrative solidifies Bowser as an unchangeable evil when he decides to ultimately fight back against the Mario Bros. His internal battle for good and bad is all but gone after a short talk with Bowser Jr.
Even with the strongest acting performance in the movie, courtesy of Jack Black, Bowser’s arc falling flat remained an unexpected low point near the end of the movie.
And while functioning well as the subject of a three-hour YouTube documentary on “Everything YOU Missed in the New Mario Movie,” another low point was the inclusion of unnecessary characters that felt entirely forced into the narrative, even with its simplistic structure.
The worst offender was Fox McCloud, whose inclusion felt as though he was the only “Galaxy” and space-adjacent Nintendo character they could think to include. His insertion into the well-established gang of characters felt that the studio needed another character popular with the online community to entice fans to show up, even if he is just a flying chauffeur. The minimal elaboration on why he is so deeply invested in the Mario Bros. adventures, and the hand–wave resolution of his Arwing being fixed by Rosalina, made the “Nintendo polish” that is prevalent in their games feel underdone in the movie.
With a few plot holes and other miscellaneous missteps, the movie functions perfectly as a way for fans of the franchise to point giddily to the screen when their favorite character makes a cameo. The film is a great way to see what new lore –like Rosalina and Peach being sisters – the Nintendo universe has in store.
