To celebrate Mario Day on March 10th (so they were a day early), Nintendo Direct posted the final trailer for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the sequel to the hit The Super Mario Brothers Movie and having nothing to with that live-action 90s movie that stole the names and nothing else. We ignore that movie around these parts, though I do understand why it developed its own cult following…which does not include the actors.
I still have yet to see the first movie, which is now supposedly free with ads on Fandango, so I really want to get a Finally Watched article out of it soon, before this sequel comes out. We’ll have to see what my schedule does. I had my own thoughts going in, including what I wanted to see, but they didn’t ask me. I still have some misgivings, not in the quality of the work because I have yet to hear a bad word from the fans, but versus what I wish they had done. The Nintendo Direct also includes some minor information about the movie, and is still a short video, just under eight minutes.
In addition to the trailer, each of the celebrity cast who aren’t the actual game voice actors because Hollywood get to tell you how excited they are because they got paid to. No, I don’t think they hated it. Jack Black just always comes off as exaggerating, and we’ll get to the rest after we see the trailer. So let’s see the trailer.
So according to the Brothers’ voices they solved one problem I had after the trailer for the first movie: it’s about both brothers working together. I was disappointed hearing that Luigi played the damsel in distress role–yada yada modern Hollywood female characters so on and so on–which if you look at my second article linked to up there I solved that problem while still having Mario and Luigi working together, with what I thought was a good character arc. I don’t expect this movie to follow it, either, but it is interesting that the movie NOT called Super Mario Brothers is the one with both working together. At least we’ll finally see my boy Luigi in action.
Maybe it’s my biases, but I have trouble believing Bree Larson, voice of Rosalina instead of one of her actual VAs, Mercedes Rose from the actual Super Mario Galaxy games, or current primary Laura Faye Smith, is a heavy Mario player. Donald Glover being a Nintendo superfan? Mmmmmmmaybe? It’s hard to tell because Hollywood actors and directors too often prove they aren’t when you see the end product. I’m not sure why Glover is playing Yoshi. From what little research I pulled off he doesn’t even have an English VA, the only credit I could find being Kazumi Totaka. I didn’t even think Yoshi talked in the games. If anything, he might have been too verbose in the Super Mario World tie-in cartoon. I’m assuming he’ll say more than the high-pitched “Yoshi” all the time, so that’s kind of off. Maybe it will work better when I actually see it. We don’t get to hear Bree’s Rosalina here and she didn’t say much in the last trailer I reviewed, so I can’t judge anything until I see…something.
It’s nice to see Wart, from Super Mario Bros 2 (the American edition, anyway–long history) actually get some attention in this. You can count the number of games he’s in on one hand, and oddly one of them is a Legend Of Zelda game. He’s had less appearances outside of the games, popping up a couple of times in Valiant’s Super Mario Brothers comic and a manga pop-up thanks to “Super Mario USA” getting a Japanese release. On the other hand, that was the problem I had looking at trailers for both of Illumination’s animated movies–the references. I would rather see each game get their own movie instead of blending everything together. There’s so much to work with. Imagine Mario, Luigi, Peach (though still Toadstool in those early games), and Toad traveling through a dream world trying to stop Wart and find their way home. Or see what the Japanese game has to offer, but there are reasons Nintendo Of America went with the reskin of Doki Doki Panic. Still, have to make the parent company and Japanese fanbase happy along with the Western one, and only the die-hards and nostalgic old fogeys (hi) even remember Wart and the second game.
So I’m neutral-ish when it comes to this movie. Maybe finally seeing the first one will improve my point of view, but as it stand I’m not completely sure about it just because I’m kind of set in my ways. I’m glad we’re seeing the brothers together, but it feels like they’re moving too fast to get to the current hotness and leaving other games behind for brief cameo memory fodder, and I’m not familiar enough with the whole franchise to be as excited simply because I don’t have access to all the consoles and games Mario and Luigi has been part of. I own four Mario games: two on NES, one on Game Boy Advance, and one of the CD-i games (look, I didn’t know Hotel Mario was going to be lame!), and have played a couple more elsewhere but never finished any of them. Plenty of other fans are excited and I hope their right. Hollywood needs a win right now, or at least needs to stop sucking. I’ll probably see it eventually, but I want to see the first movie…first. By the way…
…what ever happened to the Koopa Kids/Koopalings?
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