Mario is the world’s No. 1 video game star, the face of Nintendo, the most popular video game character to exist. It’s only natural that he ended up getting a movie dedicated to him and his adventures. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an animated comedy adventure based off of the Super Mario Bros. video game series. When I first heard about this movie, I was so excited. I watched it in theaters the day it was released and enjoyed every second of it. So I was ecstatic when I heard about the sequel for the movie, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
I have been invested in the Super Mario franchise since I was a little girl. I remember when I first played the Super Mario Galaxy games. I would still deem them as one of the best Mario series games to this very day. Hearing that a new movie was going to be released in the setting of the Mario Galaxy made me really happy and I felt a sense of nostalgia. The movie came out on April 1st and I went to watch it on the second. As a fan of the Super Mario franchise and someone who played both Super Mario Galaxy games, I left the theaters feeling very satisfied.
The movie is exceptionally vibrant and colorful just like the first movie. There’s hundreds of references you can catch throughout the movie. Some being through the background, through the dialogue, through music, through background characters, and through actual plot points.
Does the Super Mario Galaxy movie stay pretty true to the games though? Well, not exactly. Although a large sum of the movie does have the cast going to different planets throughout the galaxy, it doesn’t feel like the galaxy aspect is actually being focused on. In fact, it feels a bit more like the story focuses on references to other games than actually being an adaptation of the Super Mario Galaxy games. While I do think the pile up on references can feel a bit messy, the plot still feels very fun. With the new cast and new setting, the story has a wider freedom to make the plot feel more adventurous and thrilling.
The new characters revealed in the movie include Rosalina, Bowser Jr, and Yoshi. These characters are massive fan favorites to the people who, at the very least, have played a game or two in the Super Mario franchise. The voice casting for these characters felt exceptional and each of them gave their character, I believe, a great voice. Rosalina is voiced by Brie Larson. Bowser Jr. is voiced by Benny Safdie. Finally, Yoshi is voiced by Donald Glover/Childish Gambino. As much as I love the characters, there is one character out of these three I feel deserved a bigger role and seemed to only play the part of helping someone else’s character development.
If you are a huge fan of the Super Mario franchise and watched the first movie, I highly recommend you watch this sequel. The movie looks great, it has references to games in the franchise you may have watched before, and most importantly it’s a fun watch. Even if you didn’t watch the first movie, you can still watch The Super Mario Galaxy movie without being too out of the loop of what’s going on.
