WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was released in 2023, instantly becoming a massive commercial success and presenting audiences with a whirlwind of nostalgia, colourful graphics, and comedic twists. Since then, fans have long prayed for the sequel. Their prayers were answered on April 1 with the release of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”
However, the new animated interdimensional adventure feels less like a giant leap for mankind and more like a step back for moviemaking, a common fate for many movie sequels and spin-offs. Although the visuals and music are just as stunning as the original, and the new movie’s star-filled cast made an entertaining delivery, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is in much need of more originality and depth.
The new movie attempts to revive Mario and Princess Peach’s romance, with the opening scenes revealing Mario pining over Peach, while Luigi and Yoshi tease him. Mario gifts Peach an umbrella at her birthday party, only for her to be shown missing from the party, staring off and reflecting from her castle’s roof.
However, these scenes fail to recapture the same spark that the romance in the first movie had. While the original brought a fun twist to Peach’s character and depth to their romance, thus improving upon the original game’s portrayal, the sequel’s romance lacks the charm that made the first movie so lovable, ultimately feeling as stale as 3-day-old leftovers.
Mario and Peach’s interactions are lacklustre, relying on the same concepts already seen thousands of times in other movies’ romantic subplots. Peach vents about not fitting in, Mario offers support, and yet neither of them shows any sign of taking a step anytime soon. Come on, now — this is a family animated comedy, not “In the Mood for Love.” It doesn’t exactly beg for slow burn.
Furthermore, the movie does little to further develop Mario and Peach’s relationship throughout the movie. After Peach and Toad leave the Mushroom Kingdom to search for Princess Rosalina, Mario and Peach’s interactions are limited and not meaningful in any way. By the end of the movie, they are still trapped in the limbo between friends and the next step. If they were going any slower, they’d be going backwards.
But the romantic subplot isn’t the only loose end. In fact, most of the subplots — from Peach’s struggle with feeling alienated to the destroyed castle in the Mushroom Kingdom to Peach and Rosalina’s long-lost sisterhood — are either neglected or sloppily resolved at the end of the movie with half-baked interactions and sequences.
In an effort to rapid-fire as many references as possible, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” throws in jumbled glimpses of characters and settings that feel wholly unnecessary.
The crime lord and casino owner Wart is presented in a massive display of power and significance, only to disappear from the plot after briefly alerting Bowser Jr. of Peach and Toad’s whereabouts.
The pilot Fox McCloud, originally the protagonist from Nintendo’s “Star Fox” series, is reduced to be nothing more than a cab driver for the main heroes and an object of Toad’s infatuation.
Honeyhive Galaxy and its queen bee first appear to be a new and interesting challenger, but vanish as quickly as they arrived, proving to be about as helpful as a pet rock.
Even the referenced costumes and power-ups aren’t nearly as exciting. The first movie saw beloved classics such as Fire Flowers, Ice Flowers, Cat Suits, Blue Mushrooms, and Super Stars.
However, the best the new movie can do is feebly throw together niche power-ups many casual viewers likely haven’t heard of, such as Power Balloons, Cloud Flowers, and Drill Mushrooms. It hardly generates the same excitement as watching battles from the first movie did.
Many of the attempts at humour also fell flat, resorting to cliché jokes and lazy manipulations of cartoon logic. Some are more irritating than funny, including the weird and disturbing scene involving baby Mario and Luigi giggling while crawling in and out of a sleeping dinosaur’s eyes, nostrils, and mouth.
Besides all the loose ends and unsatisfactory references and attempts at humour, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” does have a few strengths.
The introduction of Bowser Jr., the son of the beloved antagonist Bowser from the first movie, is one of them. Following the original, Bowser remains imprisoned while Mario and Luigi attempt to rehabilitate him. At the beginning of “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” Bowser is shown to have grown slightly more respectful despite his occasional outbursts.
Meanwhile, in his father’s absence, Bowser Jr. kidnaps Rosalina and attempts to build the empire envisioned in the bedtime stories Bowser used to act out to him when he was younger, detailing their potential for total dominion over the universe.
Having not seen each other in years, Bowser Jr. is determined to free his father and become someone he would be proud of.
This subplot, following Bowser and Bowser Jr., is one of the movie’s freshest concepts. It reverses the trope usually portrayed in stories about a child being dragged by their parents’ shadow.
During the first half of the movie, Bowser is reluctant to participate in Bowser Jr.’s evildoings, while Bowser Jr. scampers around mindlessly building his knock-off Death Star and scheming about destroying galaxies without asking his father how he feels. Bowser’s newfound conscience is slowly undone, and it’s altogether a very entertaining and slightly suspenseful arc to watch.
It’s one of the few parts of the movie that feels genuinely new. It successfully shows how easily people can be influenced, but is presented in such a way that is simple and fun to watch for younger children, which is fitting for this movie genre. The interactions between Bowser and Bowser Jr. are adorable and clearly made up of love, and so Bowser thus claims the title of having the closest thing to a character arc in the entire movie.
The music and visuals are still stunning as usual. Featuring grand orchestral arrangements of the classic tunes from the original games, the score never fails to thoroughly enhance scenes with just the right tune, bringing back waves of nostalgia to the original games and creating engaging and immersive atmospheres.
The animation and graphics are colourful and crisp, with dynamic and stylish renditions of vehicles, architecture, and characters. Noticeable attention has been paid to everything from strands of hair to threads of fabric. The costumes are a more detailed iteration of the original’s glamorous costumes, matching colour schemes to every power-up — from adding a pocket on the chest of Mario and Luigi’s overalls to Peach’s rose-patterned jacquard dress to artistic engravings on Rosalina’s crown and brooch.
Overall, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” had its strengths and weaknesses, but can mostly be categorized with other mediocre sequels that fail to meet the standards set by the first movie.
“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is about as original as any of Apple’s periodically released “new” features. It has loosely resolved subplots, lacklustre character interactions, and vague, checklist references.
On the other hand, it also has admittedly good music and visuals and an entertaining subplot with Bowser and his son. At best, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” can be rated a ten on the pH scale with how basic it is. It would be a terrific movie for bored kids with nothing better to do.
