The movie presents a fun but flawed sequel to its record-breaking predecessor.
First and foremost, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a children’s movie. Illumination Entertainment, the company behind the movie and most notably known for the Despicable Me film series, does not generally prioritize adult entertainment when creating their movies, and that should be remembered before seeing this movie. With that being said, adults and older teens can very much enjoy this movie so long as they do not overreach with their expectations. The movie was very amusing, and I would not consider most of the humor to be childish even if it is a children’s film. It was consistent with the first film, and if you have seen that then you have a good idea of what to expect in regards to both the comedy and quality within the film.
As a sequel, this movie does work well as a continuation to the events in the first. However, this movie does not work well as a Super Mario Galaxy movie. Though I have only played the second game, and only have witnessed my older siblings beat it, I can recognize that this movie neither lines up with the story nor the quality of the game. They completely redo Rosalina’s backstory, something very well addressed in the games, and then proceed to not give any time for the consequences of the new backstory to settle with both the characters and the audience. Peach and Rosalina are meant to be very connected in this movie, yet they do not get any more than a minute or two of screentime together, which is at the very end. In addition to this, they had the opportunity to provide Peach with a strong internal conflict about her past and Rosalina, but instead chose to have her immediately accept everything. The failure of being a proper Super Mario Galaxy movie also comes from the lack of anything galaxy related other than Rosalina and the Lumas, and even they do not get a whole lot of screentime. Rather than having the protagonists explore space and the various planets from the games (and, even though it’s from the second game, I would have loved to see the Starship Mario), the characters instead immediately go to a space hub.
The only planet they visit along their journey is a Super Mario Odyssey reference, not Galaxy. In fact, there were arguably just as many, if not more, Odyssey references in the movie than Galaxy references, with the inclusions of the reversed pyramid, the t-rex and “Jump Up, Super Star!” playing during the casino scene.
On the topic, the soundtrack in this film was infinitely better than that of the first movie. While the first movie chose to prioritize various popular songs like a-ha’s “Take on Me,” Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” and Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky,” the sequel made the decision to use pretty much exclusively songs from the games, in addition to a reprise of “Peaches” from the first movie. The movie was also able to expand on and show off Mario and Luigi’s relationship, something not done priorly due to them being separated. Even though it was fairly simplistic, it was still fun to see the brothers interact.
Unfortunately, I can not say the same for most of the other characters and relationships within the movie. As said previously, Peach and Rosalina were meant to have this big connection, but they were hardly ever shown together. A similar thing happened with Peach and Mario with Luigi repeatedly teasing Mario about his crush on her and telling him to ask her out, but he never does. Nothing really happens at all between Peach and Mario as much as it was foreshadowed throughout the movie. Despite being the character foreshadowed in the previous movie, Yoshi did not have a reason to even be in the movie. He did nothing for the plot and was basically only there so that a Yoshi’s Island reference could be included, which was an extended scene that felt very random and out of place within the overall movie. The biggest victim of this lackluster character development shown throughout the movie is Bowser, both with the Mario Brothers and Bowser Jr.. The villain is supposedly meant to be on this path to goodness, being led by Luigi’s support and the potential to be released from his capture.
Bowser does turn good, but it was all for about ten minutes total. You would think that maybe Bowser is tricking the Mario Brothers, or that when Bowser Jr. attacks them there is a misunderstanding between the brothers and Bowser leading him to turn on them, but that is not the case. Bowser Jr. simply convinces him pretty immediately after finding him. Their relationship is very flawed as well — in that it’s not flawed at all. Bowser claims that he has a terrible relationship with his son and that he is a bad father, but that is not shown once in the movie. He never does anything negative towards his son, and Bowser Jr. never shows any amount of a grudge or anger for the supposed way he was treated. The shallowness of the relationships in this film is due to both the sheer amount of characters as well as the overly fast pacing, something also present in the first movie. Each character gets very little time to have any proper growth, and the movie is having to go from each scene too quickly in order to fill it to the max with references to the games. The movie truly should have focused on the characters and settings within the Super Mario Galaxy games, its namesake, rather than trying to include all the references it missed in the first film.
I am unable to talk about the references in this movie without bringing up the excessive amount of cameos present, specifically those from the Super Smash Bros franchise. Not including the characters from the Mario franchise, there were four total, and three were shown back to back to back. Only one was in any way important to the plot, with that being Fox McCloud. I have never played the Starfox games, but I did really enjoy seeing his character and the scenes he was in. He, frankly, added more to the plot than Yoshi or Toad did and even had more runtime than Rosalina. That is ridiculous given what this movie is supposed to be, but I was glad to see a character that had an actual purpose in the film even as a cameo. However, the other cameos are pointless. Two of them are just brief scenes to have a cameo for cameo’s sake, and the other, though they did have lines, was just as pointless and felt like a direct ripoff of the DMV scene in Zootopia. I can only assume the inclusion of this many of the characters is meant to lead up to a future Super Smash Bros movie which I can not say I am excited for. Although it would be fun seeing such a big character crossover in a movie, I worry it would have an incredibly weak plot since it would be stemming from a fighting game.
I will probably never watch this movie again, but I did enjoy the one time I did. It is by no means a great film, but it is a fun one which is all I was really looking for in the sequel to the Super Mario Bros. Movie. There were some improvements from the first movie and overall both are of similar quality to each other, but I would conclude that the first was slightly better because all it aimed for was to be a fun, reference-filled movie while this one gave a disappointing and feeble attempt to add depth to the characters. Illumination will inevitably make a third one of these films, but I hope they can recognize the flaws in what they did with the characters and in making a Super Mario Galaxy movie with barely any Super Mario Galaxy. Unfortunately, I have low expectations for this since it has already made over $400 million and it has only been out for a week. If you didn’t like the first movie or Mario in general, you will not enjoy this movie. But if you at least have a fun time at the last one, then I would recommend going to see this.
