Be Excellent & Party On

THE GOOD

What surprised me most is that this film seemed to listen to just about every criticism of the first film and tried to fix it. There’s barely any liscensed music, instead opting for an actual score, and it’s gorgeous; Mario and Luigi actually get to spend a lot of time together and so we watch them play off each other more; Peach isn’t merely a quote-unquote girlboss here and feels closer in line to the games while still getting badass moments; the Nintendo shared universe aspects are expanded; and most important of all, Chris Pratt’s Mario voice is actually way better. I guess he just needed to grow into the role a bit, but I actually really liked him in this one as opposed to the first film where I felt like he was just giving the weakest performance.

The new additions to the cast are great as well. Donald Glover as Yoshi stands out as the best, as he gives an insanely perfect impression that had me and everyone else convinced they just got the game’s voice actor to do the job. Glen Powell as Fox McCloud was so insanely good I finally understood why every Nintendo-loving furry is gay for him. Academy Award Winner Brie Larson’s portrayal of Rosalina was just as good as I imagined she’d be, and Benny Safdie was an unconventionable but enjoyable Bowser Jr. Every new voice is at least pretty good and nothing feels as distractingly bad as Fred Armisen’s Cranky voice.

Of course, the real highlight here is the animation and especially the action. A lot of this stuff was insanely well choreographed to the point I was reminded of old fan animations like Super Mario Bros Z; Peach vs Wart and the final battle are real highlights, and there’s a fun chase sequence with a dinosaur, and it’s all so lovingly animated that you can tell the people working on this have a real love of the franchise and all it has spawned.

But yeah, the most important thing is FUCKING WART IS BACK, BABY! MY MAN IS A BIG SEXY EVIL CRIME BOSS, WE WARTISTS ARE WINNING BIG IN 2026, PUT THIS MAN IN SMASH 6!

THE BAD

Yeah so this movie doesn’t really have a story.

Oh sure, there’s some plot beats set up. Bowser Jr. shows up, the gang gets split up and has to reunite, they gotta save Rosalina… but at about the halfway point everything kind of unravels and the movie is just speeding through everything to get to the action setpieces. Characters just do stuff not because it makes sense for their characters or enriches their storylines, but because they need to for plot reasons. At other times, conflicts are resolved within a single scene just to put characters where they need to be without wasting any time on development or overcoming obstacles. It’s all about getting to the hype moments and aura, baby!

And despite the impressive cast, most of them are sidelined something awful. As good as Yoshi is, at that halfway point he’s kind of just there and contributes little beyond the Yoshi’s Island inspired chase scene that has absolutely no bearing on the plot at large and just exists to have a scene with babies and a T. Rex. Fox got so hyped up, only to be in the movie solely as a ferryman to ship characters from point A to point B to point C and contribute little else. Luigi, Toad, and Kamek are all pretty sidelined as well, though Luigi to a far lesser extent, and then characters like Wart and Birdo only get a single action setpiece before vanishing from the film entirely. That’s all well and good, every movie needs memorable one-scene wonders, but there is a character who should be in this movie a lot and just… isn’t.

That would be Rosalina.

So with a movie called The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, you’re kind of expecting them to draw from the game Super Mario Galaxy. And in that game, Rosalina is an important figure, so you’d expect that the movie would utilize her to some great extent… right? Uh, well. I think you’re expecting too much from the people who thought there needed to be a movie where Gru voices a manchild who sounds like Randy Marsh and the obsessively controlling Shigeru Miyamoto. Rosalina is barely in the movie. That’s right, the iconic character who is a major player in the game this movie is taking its name from and who is so beloved and popular she has gotten into just about every spin-off title since her debut spends very little time doing anything at all in this film. It’s made worse because Academy Award winner Brie Larson is so clearly passionate about the character and in her limited screentime knocks it out of the park; did we need so many pointless action sequences instead of developing the character you’re revealing is Peach’s long-lost older sister? Maybe they were just worried her massive cock would be too distracting.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Look, I don’t hate the movie. I have to admit it did charm me in a few ways, but even then those ways are just the spectacle of seeing Nintendo stuff I like onscreen and hearing some fun performances from actors I like playing characters I like. This isn’t really a movie so much as it is a loosely connected series of action sequences, gags, and good animation; the story is so threadbare that it just dissipates halfway through, the characters are all incredibly one-note and don’t develop at all, and it’s all just mindless fun for the sake of it.

So many people defend it for that reason alone. “Why can’t movies just be fun?” “Why does everything need a deep story?” “The games aren’t that deep, who cares?” Well, let me address each point:

1. Movies can be fun. But movies also need to be good. Fury Road is fun. John Wick is fun. Disney movies like Hercules, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King are fun. South Park, Beavis and Butt-head, and The Simpsons all have movies that are fun. But guess what? All those fun films have a plot. They have stories, character development, a message, just some sort of substance to elevate them into be worthy of the cinematic medium. A video game can get away with just being simple fun, especially Mario games as they were created during the infancy of the gaming medium when simple entertainment was really all that mattered. A movie cannot; even films touted as mindless spectacle try to have some semblance of story, even if it’s a big stupid mess or incredibly shallow. The best Michael Bay movies make a cursory attempt to make you care for the characters before the explosions start happening, Independence Day has very simple and stock characters but makes things work due to sheer spectacle. Being fun isn’t an excuse to be lazy.

2. A deep story for these films is something literally no one has asked for. Mario isn’t exactly known for its stories outside of the RPG spinoff games, and I doubt anyone is expecting that level of quality from Illumination no matter how hard Shiggy cracks his whip. I think what people want is a simple yet effective story. It can follow cliché plot beats and tropes so long as there is some substance and the characters are done well; the first Mario movie, for all its faults, actually pulled this off quite well. It is no masterpiece, but it is a fun and simple adventure story with entertaining characters and a few sprinkles of interesting characterization and story. This means the sequel has literally no excuse when it lacks those things.

3. Games and movies are two different mediums. If you’re going to adapt one to another, you need to work within the limitations and strengths of said medium or don’t bother. The Arkham games are as good as they are because they adapt Batman and his style of combat beautifully for a gaming experience; you will feel like the Dark Knight as you relentlessly combo a room full of goons into unconsciousness. And the Harry Potter books work well as movies, as the filmmakers are able to excise the extraneous nonsense and subtle bigotry of Rowling’s books to deliver a cinematic experience. This movie is simply not putting in the work to adapt Mario’s world for movies. It’s just throwing things on the screen for you to point and clap at without really giving you anything more than that. These sequences would be so much fun to play as in a cinematic action game, but here? It’s just like Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch: All style, no substance. Maybe you might be able to settle for half-assed attempts at adaptation, but as someone who was eternally wounded by Eragon as a child I have zero tolerance for them. If you’re not going to commit to bringing things to the screen in a way that makes them work within the medium, don’t fucking bother.

It’s just astounding how willing people are just to accept a subpar product because it has a bunch of things you like in it. The reaction to this film reminds me a lot to the Snyderverse fans, where they love the hype moments and aura to the point of overlooking the glaring flaws like bad characterization and lack of a compelling narrative. And then this gets used as some sort of anti-woke milestone in the culture war, a film that made millions without being “woke.” I mean, it makes sense that the right would celebrate a film devoid of artistic value that does little more than pander to nostalgia, since those are cornerstones of conservative art, but even then I think it’s sad they’re trying to claim a fucking Mario film let alone one that prominently features a black actor, a few Jewish actors, a trans character, a gay furry icon, and Academy Award winner Brie Larson. The fact that them trying to tout this as a win for their side isn’t even the most embarrassing a brutal loss they faced this year is hilarious, though.

But again, I don’t hate this film. I’m not immune to the jingling keys, I was happy to see Wart and Birdo, I was happy to see Fox and R.O.B. and Mr. Game & Watch, I liked the Bowsers, I liked the ham-fisted references to the games… I just really wished there was more substance to everything. I wished there was a story I could care about, I wished there was something to make the action feel worthwhile beyond just spectacle… seeing how this movie improved in so many ways over the first one only to just take thirty steps back hurt.

I want these movies to be good and to succeed. No one wants to hate on Mario, least of all me. I want him to have the kind of cinematic treatment he deserves, not some half-baked cinematic cutscene simulator. The score it has is fair enough, but for me this is closer to the bad side of mid than anything. It’s not without its charm but it is extremely disappointing. Hype moments and aura can only get you so far; as Zack Snyder has learned time and time again, if you don’t have a good story to back those things up, people will eventually leave. I don’t want Mario to end up in the cinematic dumpster with Rebel Moon and Dawn of Justice. Please, get some actual plotlines for Daisy’s big debut.