The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (Aaron Horvath & Michael Jelenic, April 1, 2026) Movie • Page 20

Great piece of cinema

 

It was a pretty simple retelling of the plot of the main Mario games with an inversion on who the damsel in distress is. There is also a naturally less harsh reaction to something new.

 

I think I owned every Small Soldiers toy before I even saw the movie and I think that's what I'm getting at when I bring it up

I do remember liking the movie but good god

 

This is true and it's not for nothing that the cartoons I remember most fondly are ones like Batman and Gargoyles that tried and succeeded in having more complex storytelling.

 

I also think there's something to our generation's general approach to consumption that started back then but that's a whole other rant

 

starting to think capitalism just might be bad

 

This also has to be understood in context of movies as a slowly dying artform itself.

Why do you like movies? Maybe it was Jurassic Park or Terminator 2 or something like that. It was something that amazed you and made you appreciate the language of cinema even though you didn't have the words to describe what you felt. Were we all consuming great stuff all the time? Of course not. I loved the Power Rangers, but if that was the general quality of what I watched when I was a kid I probably would not be into movies. The kids might enjoy Mario 2 but it is not sparking their curiosity in meaningful ways. No one will want to become a director because of Mario 2 and no one will start their path as a fan of movies because of Mario 2.

 

I wouldn't mind watching Jurassic Park again

 

I think of the 90's X-Men cartoon when I think of that. It just seemed so much more complex and interesting than most of what we were watching.

 

bluey movie is gonna blow this out of the water

 

Yes, this is also a good example.

But I don't know, is it okay for a piece of entertainment to just be that, entertainment, without striving to be something else or have some deeper meaning?

I'm thinking about old Looney Tunes or Hanna-Barbara cartoons that were nothing more than watching cartoon characters do silly things. Or the 80s cartoons I mentioned earlier that yes, were about selling toys, but were still telling an adventure that could capture someone's imagination.

I guess this has got me thinking about the larger conversation, because we're talking about what is good or not good for kids, and what does that mean exactly?

 

Im going to the midnight premier. Milo can get his own tickets who cares.

 

Yeah, the first one was bad, but not to this degree. This was really quite awful.

 

it'll be my kid's first theatre experience, i'm more excited though

 

Why?

 

So why is this one worse?

 

I just think it's so funny that people are defending stuff they admit is bad while knowing these companies have the money, the manpower and the talent to make something better but choose not to because of marketing appeal. This movie felt like an overstuffed meal that offered absolutely nothing of substance except for the fact we get to see Peach be her own hero and even that wasn't told well.

There are tons of bad movies that come out all the time and that's fine and I'm sure a lot of us like a lot of bad movies. But there's a difference between making a movie that turns out to be bad versus a company that shoves so much in your face for the sake of marketing and merchandise while having the opportunity not to do that.

Did the Mario Galaxy movie need to have Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anna Taylor Joy, Luiz Guzman, Jack Black, Donald Glover, and Glenn Powell for it to be good? No but it makes the most sense for a western audience captivated by stardom and the press it brings. The movie is just capitalism enshrined in bright colors and retro touchstones.

We should expect better from art because otherwise we lose good artists to things like this.

By the way, I want to make it perfectly clear I do NOT think this is the worst movie ever made or that this conversation could only be happening around this movie. It's only because this movie is in the conversation right now that it's being picked apart.

 

I saw this at the Universal theater about 100 feet from the Nintendo store. They really shouldn't charge admission since it is just a big commercial anyway.

 

But everything bad that you are saying here (which is correct) goes for the first one (and the sonic movies and the garfield movies and etc etc etc)

 

whoa, watch it on the garfield slander

 

Yeah, I agree. What's your point?

 

I thought you were responding to me questioning how this one is so much worse