Just because we’re in what’s can only be described as the golden age of video game adaptations, it doesn’t mean that filmmakers hoping to bring pixilated worlds to the big screen should rest on their laurels. However, there’s always the danger that a new release will forgo such necessities as plot and character in favour of vast amounts of digital pizzazz. Take the Super Mario Bros. Movie for example – while big, colourful and loaded with a borderline offensive amount of nostalgia, it may have made a bazillion dollars (or thereabouts), but it was also weirdly hollow and empty for an animated movie released in these times of game-changing animated releases.
But now that the franchise is expanding to take in an entire galaxy now, can the continuing adventures of a squat, Italian plumber and his eccentric friend group manage to even try and ground the eye-searing phantasmagoria, or will we get another round of a film passing off lots of noise as plot? Let’s-a-go and find out.
After the defeat of shelled despot King Bowser, the kingdom of Princess Peach is relishing a period of calm serenity, but out in the reaches of space, Bowser Jr. is making an epic play for power in order to free his father. Starting off by targeting and capturing Princess Rosalina, Peach’s long lost sister who has magical, god-like powers, Bowser Jr. hopes to be a chip off the old block by powering a Bowser-themed dreadnought with her cosmic mojo.
Meanwhile, back in the Mushroom Kingdom, dimension hopping plumbers Mario and Luigi have added absurdly cute, monosyllabic dino, Yoshi, to their group and are celebrating the birthday of Princess Peach. However, while the Princess is growing antsy about her mysterious origins, she realises she could get answers if she frees her long lost sister. Leaving her kingdom in the care of mustachioed drain unblockers, Peach and Toad venture into the great beyond to get some answers.
However, while the Peach is away, Bowser Jr. will slay and after a devestating attack on the castle, the gang realise that they too need to head out among the stars to help save the galaxy. But as the group heads out to explore new planets and make new friends the larger galaxy to save the day, an imprisoned, seemingly reformed Bowser has a choice to make when his megalomaniac son stages a daring rescue. Caught between being a reformed citizen and a doting father to a frenzied, would-be planet conquerer, what way will the scorned, notoriously short-tempered lizard go with the future of the universe at stake? It’s time to level up as the Super Mario Bros. embark on an adventure that has the entire galaxy to play with.
I admittedly had my issues with The Super Mario Bros. Movie when it came out. While I certainly wouldn’t begrudge making a children’s movie that plays to children, in a time when Pixar, Disney, Sony Pictures Animation, Dreamworks and various other animation houses are changing the face of how we view modern animation with films like Spider-Verse, Hopper, The Wild Robot and Flow, to skew your film exclusively to sugared-up tots, or middled-aged Nintendo fans desperate for in-jokes felt frustratingly regressive. Well brace yourself, because after taking a sizable haul at the box office, the Mario movies have seen to ensure that they haven’t learnt a single lesson and doubles down on the exact things that peeved me so much the first time round. For a start, the filmmakers have convinced themselves that the louder and more random the film gets, the better it is – but while the lavishly animated giant robot attacks, fast-paced fights, vast spacecraft and various exploding things are admittedly impressive as they sear their rainbow colours into your eyeballs, it has all the depth of a dried up puddle.
Let me give you an example of how bad the storytelling is by going through how fan-favorite Yoshi is introduced into the franchise; he literally just shows up. That’s it. No big build up, no connection to the wider overall plot – they just find him in an upside-down pyramid and they become friends. The presence of the egg poopin’ dino doesn’t even give our heroes the secret edge they need in the climax, he’s just inserted into the film (voiced by Donald Glover, for some reason) simply because fans want to see him and it’s this sort of non-existent plotting that drives the rather pointless engine that makes The Super Mario Galaxy run.
If you’re under the age of ten, or you’re a die hard Nintendo nut, the movie spoonfeeds you plenty of noisy action and blink-and-you’ll miss them references to stoke the nostalgic fires your happy place, but if you’re a grown adult who isn’t armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of Nintendo’s entire history, you’re pretty much left our in the cold. But what truly confuses me is why the filmmakers think that kids barely born a decade ago is going to give a shit about a forty year old references to old Nintendo tech (remember R.O.B. anyone), while expecting aging Nintendo fans to stomach the truly atrocious plotting and character work. Literally neither Mario, Luigi, Toad or Yoshi has any real effect on the plot whatsoever other than react to the next vapid setpiece, and the lost sisters plot concerning Prinesses Peach and Rosalina is so undercooked it’s in danger of spreading semolina. Additionally, I swear all the voice performers sound a little bored, as if their artistic souls where being cheese grated down by the big, easy Nintendo payday (at least the actors in the live-action Sonic series have to show up in person), but there are a couple of good points on the horizon.
For a start, despite having a subplot that feels it was written by a malfunctioning ChatGTP, Jack Black’s Bowser is still a major highlight, embracing every line reading with gusto as he plays with being torn between his old, toxic, macho lifestyle and his reformed new-man persona and a set piece that sees a panicking Toad try to save baby Mario and Luigi from waking a tyrannosaurus is the exact sort of perky humour the movie should have lead with. Similarly, there’s some genuinely impressive moments from a fight scene in a gravity defying casino that sees the best parts of Matrix Reloaded’s Burly Brawl and Christopher Nolan’s physics defying Inception come together to give us something quite dazzling. However, stealing the film wholesale with an anime-style intro is Glen Powell’s swaggering Fox McCloud, which makes me desperately want a Star Fox movie, like, yesterday. But despite these blips, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie just feels like one big shameless, cynical cash grab designed not to Bob-omb at the box office.
If you’re OK with an onslaught of Nintendo nostalgia replacing any sort of serious plotting, you might be alright with the second, rainbow coloured Mario movie – people were literally pointing at the screen repeatedly during my showing. But for anyone that wants their animated movies to actually have a plot thicker than a sheet of paper, this Galaxy lacks a lot more than just gravity.
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