The Loud Nothingness of the Mario Galaxy Movie

I watched the Super Mario Galaxy Movie today.

I think. I mean, I watched something for sure; I went to the theater and sit down and saw things happening on the screen. That is a thing that I did and that happened, but the only thing that separates the timeline where that didn’t happen and this one, is that in the other one I’d have 90 minutes safe on my mind instead of them being swallowed up by the never-ending void.

You’ve probably heard or read a similar jumble of words somewhere else, likely charged with more vitriol and energy —and the fact this film managed to produce strong feelings in anyway perplexes me, but I’m getting ahead of myself—; there has been a lot of buzz about the film that’s getting awfully close to describing an impending cosmic apocalypse, which I get is a response to seeing a modern blockbuster that’s about to make a bajillion dollarinos, but that doesn’t escape the ouroboros of its own discourse.

We once again find ourselves in 2023 and boxing with one another over what critics say and what kids can tolerate while the sane ones are left clawing at the walls, and this was to be expected, even if my own circumstances have shifted. I’m coming out as a Mario Movie 2023 enjoyer, the pack-in opinion of European white guys everywhere, but I truly mean it when I say that film made me feel something, a small spark of sincerity and wishfulness to make something fun hidden in layers of brand identity built on top the mismatched carcasses of every Mario game that came before it. In retrospect it was crude, infantile, but for all its faults, it never felt cynical.

I went into the Mario Galaxy Movie with extremely low expectations. Most of the movie had been shown by then and I still had no clue what the plot even was, what the action pieces could amount, where it was going with all of this, and if any part of it really wanted to aspire to something similar to what Galaxy ever was and is. The first half an hour does a really good job making you think it really was going somewhere, as simple as that way could have been. By the end, if we moved at all, it was backwards.

You can think what you will of the Mario Galaxy Game, an experience that takes at least a dozen more hours than its faux adaptation; that it’s beautiful, simple, creative, touching, uninspired, unfocused, magical, anything, whatever you want. But be it even in a negative light, you come out of it with something, anything. Galaxy is an experience that even those who leaves indifferent cannot escape from its allure, it traps people, it gives them something to ponder, and you can laugh about that fact or the people that supposedly give it more depth than it warrants, but fuck man, they felt, they cried, and even those who said that didn’t will, without a shadow of a doubt, remember Mario Galaxy, because for all its possible faults, it still had a storybook close to the heart. It still knew how to stick with you even at its most silent.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie never shuts the fuck up. Never. There’s always a set piece, always a joke, always an action sequence to stimulate your neurons just enough, and it is LOUD. And it is a well put together product, well animated and expressive in the details, I don’t mean to obscure that fact, but it would be noticeable even if I tried. But for all of its screams, its wahoos and its references, all of its attempts of secular amalgamation, the end result is… nothing. There’s no end result, actually.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is miles worse than a failure and way less interesting to talk about than one. It doesn’t even earn the title of slop, because that would mean there’s anything to pick up with a spoon. It is, in the most literal definition possible, a movie where things happen; it toys with the puppets of characterization and arcs —y’know, movie stuff!— before getting tired and throwing it all in the bin and moving on. This is ‘’Random bullshit, go!’’ the film, more interested of you knowing what the Star Fox brand is than presenting Estela and her connections to the casts as something to pay mind towards or the Comet Observatory as an actual place, or, y’know, even fucking calling it by name.

Nothing matters in the infinity of the cosmos, for this movie proposes the brave idea that it will all vanish in memory and none of it really amounted to anything. Every character gets lobotomized half way through and they don’t accomplish anything (I’m half sure you could take out Mario and Luigi from the movie, and little would change), names are a luxury and a they are thrown or forgotten once their use has ran its course. It is a maddening watch, more anger worthy if it wasn’t so uninterested with itself, so unconvinced in its own potential to even say a re-treaded message. It has nothing to say, only to show, and what it shows is well animated, but it means NOTHING.

‘‘Kids will enjoy it!’’ is a belief that sickens me, ‘cause I picture the millions of kids that grew up with Mario Galaxy, the game, and all of them had something about it stuck on their mind. I can hardly imagine many children will think about the magic of the Mario Galaxy Movie three days after watching it. When everything is so loud, even the most beautiful melody blurs together into mush.

I was gonna end by saying there still was some potential in here, but I’m not even gonna bother with something the film itself didn’t even feel compelled enough to toy round with before it got sleepy and started remembering this is a thing for kids to watch without saying anything and for adults to point at the stuff they recognize. It doesn’t even have a proper ending, it just

I watched the Super Mario Galaxy Movie today, and nothing about my day would have been different if I didn’t. I feel silly for ever caring for these rendentions of the characters, ‘cause they clearly will never amount to much past this point, not even managing to fill the blanks the lack of interaction leaves. This is a movie for literally nobody, not even itself. Its existence was only a matter of obligation, not compromise, and by that point, might as well be nothing in totality.

Thank you so much for reaching this point.