The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (Aaron Horvath & Michael Jelenic, April 1, 2026) Movie • Page 14

This was an abomination.

 

The constant excuse is that it is wrong to harshly judge a childrens' movie, but we can dismiss this out of hand for multiple reasons.

1. There are very impressive films for children, both modern and classic. Spirited Away and E.T. and WALL-E are just some to name. The reason you are posting about movies on a message board is because great family films introduced you to the medium.

2. While all childrens' films have jokes and references aimed at the adults, so many of the scenes and set pieces rely on you knowing stuff from the 1980's. People who grew up with NES Mario and Game and Watch and ROB are becoming grandparents and watching their salt intake.

3. It is especially offensive considering how innovative Nintendo is as a game company. This isn't Electronic Arts or Ubisoft or any company that has a reputation of pumping out mediocre games. They have their misses but almost every year Nintendo has something that pushes video games forward.

There were a couple of chuckles but overall there was little audience reaction. Just slop to be consumed.

 

That third point definitely gets to me. I grew up on these games and now my son plays all the new games on his Switch. To see how vast and innovative the Mario games have become over the years, on top of the beautifully rendered animation, leaves so much room to play in that world.

And this is the movie they came up with.

 

The Star Fox part was the best

 

Listen here, sonny

 

Shoulda just adapted Thousand Year Door.

 

Not to dismiss your point or anyone's point about the story, but I think it's a mistake to equate innovation in game design with storytelling. Most Mario platformers only have a token plot to guide the action.

 

It isn't that Nintendo stories are good, it is about the polish of their games. They just don't care to make a movie that serves any purpose but to move merchandise.

 

Nintendo: We want you to make a Mario movie.
Illumination: We would love to make a Mario movie! What is the movie about?
Nintendo: About? It's about Mario.
Illumination: ...
Nintendo: ...
Illumination: ...
Nintendo: ...
Illumination: ...Okay then! Not a problem!

 

I read on another forum someone said Illumination basically made one movie with genuine emotion (“Despicable Me”) then realized they just needed to make everything colorful, bright and loud and went on autopilot and it’s hard to argue otherwise.

 

Pure shit

 

This sucked

 

Saw this a second time when I took my nieces to see it this evening. I wasn’t as critical to it while watching it this time around. Pretty much just put my brain on autopilot and enjoyed it more. The amount of yelling from kids whenever Yoshi was on screen was insane. Sounded like I was in a chucke cheese.

 

That's all well and good for the films, but gimme Link and Zelda in Mario Kart World, dawg.

 

Anyways, bummer to see negative comments. Is it really THAT much worse than the first??

 

Seeing it tomorrow but my expectations are is probably the same as the first one and while not ideal, I just want my son to have a good time.

 

They’re both bad. I was at least forced to pay attention to this one since we were in a theater. My son liked the part where Bowser turned to bones

 

You can really feel the TikTok-ification of movies in this one. It rushes from scene to scene so quickly, like it’s scared to linger for a second too long and risk losing the viewer’s attention.

Makes me nervous about where things are headed.

 

I think it doesn’t help that they tried to make this is a Mario World and Galaxy film. Way over stuffed when they want to keep it to a 90 minute film

 

For my part, I genuinely do think it is and I only ever thought the first one was just aggressively fine. I can at least say the first movie had a somewhat coherent narrative and arc for its characters while also doing the work of world building for the first film in a series. It wasn’t great, but it was…functional? This one is just moving parts for the sake of slotting in as many references as possible with characters disappearing and reappearing at random while racing to an abrupt finish that left me sitting there like, “oh, that’s it?” They teased Peach’s back story in the first film and led you to believe in maybe the first half of this thing that they were going to flesh that out, but then when Peach and her sister are finally reunited they don’t even slow it down to give them a scene together. It’s just over.

Halfway through my wife turned to me and asked, “do you feel like this movie is about nothing so far? Like it’s just a lot of stuff happening?” and I just shrugged like yeah pretty much.

 

Just bad all around

 

The whole point of Yoshi is that he provides something for Mario to ride but then they also wanted to have Fox McCloud in the movie so they just largely abandon that entire aspect and Yoshi is just sort of hanging around.

 

The reason it is a Galaxy film is because the people who grew up with the Wii are having kids of their own and starting to have some disposable income. It is as cynical as it can be.

 

So does he ride Fox McCloud instead?

 

I’ve never played a Starfox game but that scene made me perk up a bit. That and when they were babies, I liked when they were all being babies