THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE (2026)

Video game movies are arguably one of the least reputable genres. Since the first film directly adapted from a game—commonly regarded as Mirai Ninja (1988)—this ground hasn’t yielded much great fruit. In fact, Super Mario Bros.(1993) was one of the genre’s earliest examples, arriving five years after Mirai. That movie is often recalled as one of the worst ever made; it essentially killed big-screen Mario adaptations until the streaming age—when cinemas are said to be dying—with The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023).

That 2023 outing was produced by Illumination, and you can see how much the 1990s disaster rankled: it took 30 years for Nintendo to license another, and when it did, it was the blandest, safest product possible. It was turned out by a studio known for high-earning yet aggressively middle-of-the-road “baby movies”. Illumination’s mascot, after all, is those gabbling yellow tic-tacs that a portion of the population (including film critic Mark Kermode) seems to have fallen in love with.

And now, alas, we have the sequel. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is pure empty calories—junk food for the mind. A princess who serves as mother to a group of cute ghosts is kidnapped by a giant robot. When trouble comes to the Mushroom Kingdom, where Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) still rules with New York plumbers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) by her side, they must go in search of the kidnapped woman while preventing Bowser (Jack Black) from escaping his imprisonment.

Despite this attempt at a plot synopsis, the film has no story or characters to speak of, even for a piece of trash churned out via corporate mandate. It looks quite good; I saw it in 3D, and the animation was eye-popping. But there’s no weight to anything. Not that I expected The Super Mario Galaxy Movie to be “weighty”, of course. I just expected it to communicate a narrative with basic stakes and arcs, the way even bland movies do. However, it barely even has a beginning, middle, and end.

The previous Super Mario movie is remarkable by comparison. It at least featured a hero’s journey of some description and a sense that characters moved meaningfully from one scene to the next rather than just marking time. It was flat and flavourless, yet its sequel doesn’t even rise to that level. It’s also an example of J.J Abrams’ “mystery box” storytelling, where you set up a series of enigmas to be solved at an unspecified later date—a sequence of “boxes” to be opened by your presumably delighted audience.

In the last film, we had the mystery of Princess Peach’s origins to look forward to; it’s kind of answered here, though far from fully. That is, of course, part of what’s drawing children back for the third film. For some reason, I was still in the theatre when the projector turned off, so I was the only one who saw the post-credits treat: a red-headed princess in a yellow frock showing up to kick some butt. I’m guessing if a fan had stayed, they’d have known who that was. It was utterly wasted on me.

This “mystery box” nonsense is the type of lazy and contemptuous storytelling that ruined both Doctor Who and, under Abrams, Star Wars, reducing both to shallow teases for the next “product” rather than anything satisfying in its own right. That this approach was once deemed new is laughable. Had these people never heard of pulp magazines or trashy serials? Judging by Mario Galaxy, the films feel at least cynically aware of how cheap and clunky they are; the producers just don’t care, since the audience consists of undiscerning children.

I was going to say “man-children” too, but from what I’ve seen, that demographic is a little more muted this time. Last time, they were dogpiling reviews before they’d even seen the movie, desperate for validation and to seem like the smartest guys in the room… about a video game movie for children. Maybe I’m wrong (perish the thought), but I’m guessing there wasn’t so much fuss when the Care Bears movies came out in the 1980s. The Super Mario films are on about the same level as those in terms of scripting and voicing, just with better animation.

I might even be willing to go out on a limb and say the Care Bears movies have better writing. Remember Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation (1986)? Of course you don’t; you’re not insane. But if you did, you might recall the giant disembodied star face that’s supposedly God, and the Lucifer-like Darkheart who appears first as a dragon to terrify a Care Bear orphanage at sea, then as a little boy at camp to tempt three wayward children. Does any of that make sense? Not even slightly. Is it more interesting than anything in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Yes!

When I say Mario Galaxy has no story, I mean that nothing is developed or consequential, even by the low stakes demanded of “baby movies”. For example, there’s a character called Star Fox (Glen Powell). He’s apparently important to the game and shows up to fill the Han Solo role: a roguish pilot who claims to just want money, then grows a conscience. But he’s almost instantly forgotten to the point where, if this weren’t a video game movie and I didn’t know he was a pre-existing property, I’d think five to ten scenes had been cut because the actor was cancelled or something.

Naturally, he shows up at the end to imply he’ll be explored in the next film, but no mention is made of the money Peach pays him, how he feels about it, or anything else. I really don’t think it’s pretentious or over-demanding to want basic arcs to be completed, even in a video game movie for infants. The film has the elements of a story and simply leaves them as such.

The previous Mario movie was criticised for its soundtrack “needle drops”, like A-ha’s “Take on Me”. Honestly, though, I missed them here. Good music is good music, and a few golden oldies might have given my brain something to latch onto. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is so empty of actual narrative content—characters with personality or a sense that something meaningful is happening—that at a certain point, I started undergoing an existential crisis. I looked into the void, and it sometimes coalesced into colour formations that looked like Princess Peach walking around a 4D casino and fighting a frog with her umbrella. Yet all of it was void, vacant of even the merest human idea. It was madness I saw in the theatre that night. A Mario Galaxy of madness.re.

JAPAN • USA | 2026 | 98 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

directors: Aaron Horvath & Michael Jelenic.
writer: Matthew Fogel (based on characters by Nintendo).
voices: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Benny Safdie, Donald Glover & Brie Larson.