SPOILER: This column contains potential spoilers for “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”
“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” works as an adaptation to the game it's based on. As a film, it’s messy, plotless and all over the place.
The movie is a sequel to Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which narrowly beat out the sequel’s global opening, though both have been massively successful.
To start out with the positives, the movie shines in its action scenes and visuals. The animation team at Illumination brought each character to life beautifully, animating each one in a very expressive way.
Every new location the characters travel to is vibrant, elaborate, and colorful.
My favorite was the casino that Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) travel to near the beginning of the movie. The exterior of the building is themed like a question block from the games, and on the inside, gravity is warped in a way where the characters can walk on the walls and on the ceiling. The characters that run the casino, such as King Wart (Luis Guzmán) and Birdo, are directly pulled from the game “Super Mario Bros. 2.” Also heard inside the casino are jazzy renditions of iconic Mario tunes, such as “Jump up, Super Star” from “Super Mario Odyssey.”
Another noticeable improvement over the first movie was its music. A common complaint of Illumination’s first Mario movie was its reliance on licensed music. Fans wanted to hear more orchestral renditions of Mario’s iconic songs instead of ‘80s pop hits. In this most recent film, I only noticed licensed music used once for a cutaway gag. The rest of the soundtrack for this film is comprised of beautiful renditions of music from the games.
While the movie succeeds as a showcase of all things Mario, it falls short in its plot. The movie fails fundamentally in this regard, as the events of the film don’t play out in a coherent way. Half-way through, it becomes noticeable that the objective of the script isn’t to tell a story, it’s to see how many references to the Mario games they can cram into its 90-minute runtime.
The writers blocked out little to no time to flesh out any of the characters or their motivations. It feels a little absurd that the main character, Mario (Chris Pratt), had no defined character arc for this story; he starts and ends the film in the exact same state. With the sole exception of Bowser (Jack Black), every single character in the movie is static.
A common rebuttal to these arguments is to say something along the lines of “It’s a kids movie!” or “It’s a Mario movie, what did you expect?” However, the fact that a movie is both made for kids and is an adaptation of an intellectual property is not an excuse for bad writing.
“The Lego Movie,” for example, is a movie made for kids that makes plenty of references to the brand it is adapting while still trying to tell an engaging story. The movie builds on Lego’s brand identity of being a creative toy by telling a story about what it means to be creative and how to collaborate with others to make a difference.
In the first Mario movie, there was at least a notable change in the characters from the beginning to the end of the story. I wasn’t expecting a lot from the sequel, but I expected at least a simple theme or lesson. With a story this aimless, the film feels like a product first and foremost.
If you aren’t a fan of the franchise, I’d say this movie is worth skipping. However, if you’re a fan of Mario, there is something still novel about seeing the world of the games brought to life on the big screen.
