When I saw the trailers for the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, I was very worried about the actual plot. After all, it had dozens of scenes that seemingly had nothing to do with each other, plus a smorgasbord of characters competing for the viewers’ attention.

It made me wonder if the film could even handle this stuff in a satisfying way, or whether it’d feel more like a clip show than an actual movie.

Having watched it though, I can at least confirm it does somewhat make sense. The film’s got a coherent narrative throughout, and they do an okay job of tying all these disparate elements together. It’s a solid enough Mario flick, albeit one with a ton of narrative and pacing issues.

But before we get to that, let’s start with the basics. What’s the actual movie about?

Is it an adaptation of the Super Mario Galaxy 1 plot?

Kinda. In perhaps the loosest sense possible.

Since the setup can basically be summed up as follows:

After the previous movie, Bowser remains shrunk down and kept in Peach’s Castle. His son Bowser Jr wants to rescue him, and also kidnaps Rosalina in an attempt to power up the Boomsday Cannon, a weapon capable of destroying the universe.

Meanwhile the Mario bros rescue Yoshi from the Sand Kingdom after he fell into a pipe there in his chaotic escape from New York City, and Peach decides to go and rescue Rosalina on her own after learning she’s been kidnapped by Jr.

From there, Bowser Jr attacks the castle, sending the Mario bros and Bowser into the Honeyhive Galaxy, Peach and Toad learn Rosalina’s location from Wart after defeating him at a casino under the Gateway Galaxy, and eventually the bros and princess meet up again at the latter, travelling alongside Fox McCloud to defeat the two Bowsers and save Rosalina.

It’s not the most complex plot in the world, but it does its job fairly well, and works a bit like the kind of story you might find in an actual Mario game.

Unfortunately, that’s also where your enjoyment of the movie may vary. Cause you see, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is not a film for casual moviegoers. It’s not a way to introduce newcomers to the series.

No, it’s a film for die-hard fans first, and everyone else a distant second.

So, whether you enjoy the film kinda depends how much of a Mario fan you are. If you’re obsessed with the series and recognise all the characters and cameos, then you’re gonna love it. It’s basically Mario fan service (in the safe for work sense) through and through.

On the other hand, I can see casual viewers just being totally lost here. Who’s Rosalina? It doesn’t explain it much. Who are the Lumas? Same thing. Who are Wart and Mouser and Birdo and the 8-bits? Yeah, you get the picture.

It’s not completely incomprehensible, since the core plot can be summed up as “powerful deity like character captured, the heroes have to save them from the son of the last movie’s villain”, but a lot of scenes will just leave you lost nonetheless.

Pacing wise, it’s definitely a bit on the fast side. With a 1 hour 30 minutes runtime, they really had to cram in this stuff to get it all there. And well, cram they certainly did.

Indeed, it’s almost kinda surprising how quickly you blast from scene to scene here. One minute you’re meeting Fox, then you’re in a space battle, then you’re in a Yoshi’s Island meets Super Mario Odyssey pastiche… it’s relentlessly fast-paced, and it may not always be to the movie’s benefit.

To some degree, I do get why they did this. This sort of variety and pace is pretty similar to that of an actual Mario game. Something like Super Mario Galaxy or Super Mario Odyssey will indeed throw new ideas at you about as quickly as this film.

But I feel like a movie has to have different priorities to a video game. Since well, the format is very different.

In a video game, the pacing depends on the player, and the story takes a backseat to the actual gameplay. The storyline for Super Mario Odyssey would be seen as paper thin in a movie or TV show, and probably come across as about as incoherent as people say the Super Mario Galaxy Movie is.

But it doesn’t matter. The game is a fun, well-designed 3D platformer with fantastic controls and physics. In that case, the crazy level of variety works in favour of the experience. You’re always getting new toys to play with, and fun new worlds to run around and explore.

A movie can’t really get away with that. If it tries to cram in as much stuff as your typical video game it’ll feel rushed and disjointed, and the lack of interactivity means it’ll feel more like watching a series of cutscenes rather than an actual film.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is better than people give it credit for here, but it still tries to do too much too quickly, and feels like something that’d probably be better as a video game because of that.

Regardless, the characters and writing generally do work pretty well here. Yeah, they’re not crazy original. You’re not gonna see references to media from a different franchise released 50 years ago or the type of joke that requires much speaking to understand.

But you will get a fun bit of slapstick and character expression comedy here, and that’s really where the mainline Mario games seem to do so well. It’s all very Disney/Looney Tunes/Tom & Jerry esque humour, and it works well in a movie like this one.

And the casting works quite well too. Do we wish Charles Martinet or Kevin Afghani voiced Mario or Luigi? Eh, maybe.

But I can’t blame them for not going that route, just like I didn’t back when reviewing the Super Mario Bros Movie. You want voices that don’t get annoying quickly, and the ones here work well for a film where constant chatter is on the menu.

Meanwhile the other characters generally just get decent voice acting. Yoshi’s voice acting is virtually indistinguishable from the actual games, Rosalina sounds exactly like you’d hope she would, and the Lumas sound exactly like their in-game voices, except with actual dialogue. The only one who’s somewhat of a mixed bag is probably Bowser Jr, and even then, I grew to like his voice by the end of the film.

Of course, the visuals and music are as top notch as you’d expect. The original Super Mario Bros Movie looked amazing for an animated film, and put Illumination on par with Pixar and Dreamworks in terms of animation quality. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie?

That makes the Super Mario Bros Movie look amateurish by comparison. The film is incredibly well animated with some of the most beautiful backgrounds and animation seen in the medium, and it is a visual treat that even the least familiar viewers will enjoy.

And to be honest, it kinda reminds me of Nintendo’s actual games too. Yes, they’re not going for that ultra-realistic look many PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X games might be aiming for. They’re not something like Crysis that melts your PC because it’s going overboard with detail and visual effects.

But they get the art style so, so right, and it makes every game they make look incredible because of that. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom with their beautiful vistas and amazing cel shaded fantasy stylings. Luigi’s Mansion 3 and its Pixar style visuals that could probably work as a Halloween spinoff in this film series. The gorgeous arts and crafts aesthetic included and refined in the Paper Mario series.

Nintendo’s games have graphics that fit the feel of the game perfectly, and which show you just how pretty the medium can look if you don’t fight for realism at every turn.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is exactly the same way, and it looks astounding because of it.

Meanwhile the soundtrack has to be one of the best ever found in a Nintendo production. Yeah, the Super Mario Bros Movie was a close contender here, that’s for sure…

But the Super Mario Galaxy movie just goes even further than that. Every scene has a fitting Mario song remixed and reused perfectly for the moment, and there are some really unexpected deep cuts because of that.

The Super Mario Sunshine boss theme? Yeah, it’s in here. All the Mario castle themes? Yeah, they’re present. Just about every song you can remember from the Mario Galaxy games, 3D World and Odyssey? Eh, why the hell not.

And while the average movie tends to throw in random pop songs like they’re going out of fashion, the Super Mario Galaxy Movie sticks to its guns throughout. They don’t throw in whatever’s trending in a vague attempt to appeal to casual moviegoers. They understand that the Mario games have iconic soundtracks and stick to that brief throughout.

Which after the last movie, is much appreciated. I’d rather not see another fantastic Mario remix replaced by Take Me On a second time here:

Still, that brings us to the more… controversial aspects of the film. Ones which anyone interested in avoiding spoilers should skip over.

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If you don’t want any spoilers, click the link here:

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Basically, the main plot twist is that Peach and Rosalina were sisters, and the latter sent the former away to live in the Mushroom Kingdom to protect her from their enemies.

The Mario community is at best very divided on this idea.

And I can’t blame them. It’s a huge change to the Mario canon, and one which feels almost out of left field compared to the others in the film.

It’s the kind of change that makes it crystal clear that the Mario movies are in a different universe to the games, and which shows that Nintendo and Illumination are willing to take liberties with the characters and setting beyond just “they look and sound a bit different”.

But is that really a bad thing?

Did people really expect these movies to follow the games to a tee?

Because that’s not really Nintendo’s style with adaptations. They don’t expect them to follow the plot of the games that closely, nor prevent them from taking some… interesting creative liberties.

For example, the Great Mission to Save Princess Peach has the titular character given a fiancé, which angered half the fanbase. The Mario manga puts Mario and friends in games like Donkey Kong Country and Wario Land and adds a ton of random changes that make no sense at all. The Super Show had elements of the franchise, but switched up so many things about the characters and their backstories and personalities that much of it feels like Mario in name only.

And the less said about the live-action movie or the German Club Nintendo comics the better. Imagine if the Mario Galaxy Movie revealed the Mario universe was created when the dinosaur destroying meteor blasted reality in two! Or that Wario was created in a lab experiment and did deals with Satan!

It’s an adaptation. Adaptations tend to make crazy changes. Best to not get too caught up in the details or assume they say anything about the source material.

So, I’m not all that bothered that they changed it.

Similarly, I’m not bothered by Fox McCloud’s screentime here either. Yeah, he might technically show up a bit more than Rosalina.

But at the end of the day, both are still clearly supporting characters, and neither get more than about 15-20 minutes of screentime total. It’s not like Fox is usurping anything. He just appears in different parts of the movie to Rosalina.

Plus, it’s not like Rosalina had that massive of a role in Super Mario Galaxy. Out of the 20 or so hours most people played that game for, she showed up in maybe 30 minutes of it.

She just appears to be a bigger part of the game because her story is a bigger part of Galaxy’s own story, especially given that 90% of the experience involves a fairly standard ‘rescue Peach from Bowser’ plot.

Which probably sums up the issue many people may have had with the movie. They expected something entirely different from a Super Mario Galaxy story than Nintendo themselves did.

For those fans, Rosalina and her backstory was meant to be the central premise of the film, and the rest of the space adventuring stuff was meant to be added on top of that. Because Rosalina’s storybook played a big role in Galaxy, they expected that to be what the whole movie would revolve around.

But Nintendo (especially Miyamoto) would disagree with that. For them, the whole ‘Mario stops Bowser from creating his own galaxy and ruling the universe’ part was the core of the Galaxy experience, and the Rosalina stuff was mostly a side story.

The Mario Galaxy Movie basically tries to smash the two together, putting Rosalina in place of Peach, and angering people in the process.

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Regardless, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is decent enough for what it is. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you’re not acquainted with the series already, and it definitely rushes the pacing in a way that feels like they tried too hard to convert a video game into a film…

But it’s visually and musically stunning, and a generally amusing popcorn flick nonetheless. It’s not an artistic masterpiece and it won’t win any awards for great writing or acting, but it was never really intended to do so anyway. It was intended to convert the feel of a Mario game into a fairly basic action pic, and it mostly succeeded at doing so.

7/10