The Super Mario Galaxy Movie needed more characters, fewer NPCs

The Mario sequel is a little too faithful to its video game roots

For those who have been playing Nintendo games for decades, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a who’s who of cameos. Wart, Birdo, R.O.B., the literal T-Rex from Super Mario Odyssey, and even Fox McCloud pop up in a movie custom-made for Easter-egg hunters. It makes for a fun guessing game — a “Can you name these video game characters?” TikTok reel stretched to 98 minutes. But all that fun comes at the expense of coherent storytelling. While The Super Mario Galaxy Movie sure has a long list of characters, most of them are NPCs.

In gaming lingo, an NPC denotes a “non-playable character.” That’s a broad term covering anything from plot-important sidekicks to run-of-the-mill shopkeepers, but the acronym has earned a more derogatory connotation in recent years as it has entered Gen Z slang. In real life, NPC is an insult aimed at people who lack independent thought and simply do what they’re programmed to do. It’s a hell of a dunk, but one still rooted in old-school video game fundamentals. Characters drive the action; NPCs repeat their canned lines to make sure those characters get to where they need to go next.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s struggle to create memorable characters starts to make more sense when you put it in the context of that structure. In some ways, it may be the most faithful video game adaptation of all time. The story begins when Bowser Jr. kidnaps Princess Rosalina, who gets very little screen time past the film’s opening sequence. Word gets to the Mushroom Kingdom, so Mario and the gang set out on an intergalactic journey to save the princess. From there, the gang hops from planet to planet, each one laid out like a level. A casino, a spaceport, a prehistoric world — each one is a little set piece with its own distinct theme and design, just like your average Mario game.

And on each of those planets, the cast meets an important NPC who helps them progress to the next location. R.O.B. gives Peach literal directions. Fox McCloud holds the keys to the fast-travel station. Wart and his crew of Super Mario Bros. 2 baddies are mere sub-bosses. Super Mario Galaxy’s Queen Bee (Issa Rae) is less a character and more a quest step: “Win the queen’s favor to move on to the next world.” All of them have a function within the story, but it’s hard to call any of them characters. Who is Wart, and why does he rule over a topsy-turvy casino? It doesn’t really matter; his thing, just as it is in the game he originates from, is just that he burps bubbles.

In theory, that video game structure could work. After all, lots of Hollywood blockbusters adopt the language of games. If you’re comfortable with being a little reductive, many of the Star Wars movies could also be described as heroes traveling to different levels and interacting with the local NPCs. In its best moments, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie works as a proud kids’ comedy where every new cameo kicks off a new character’s contained vignette. R.O.B. does its best impression of Zootopia’s slow-turning DMV sloth, in one of the movie’s best jokes. Mr. Game and Watch makes for a genuinely funny deus ex machina.

But the lack of real character work outside of those moments makes the glut of cameos feel intrusive. Take Fox McCloud, for instance. Star Fox’s furry hero, voiced by Glen Powell, is a principal cast member. He even gets an animated backstory sequence that explains the setup of the game series he comes from. (Necessary context for kids, considering there are 10-year-olds out there who have never known a world where Star Fox is an active series.) Despite how much screen time Fox gets, he doesn’t have anything resembling an arc. He makes a few wisecracks, ferries the gang across the stars in his Arwing, and quietly disappears when his services are no longer needed. His role is about as substantial as Queen Bee’s: She’s a non-character who enters and exits her one scene without a single defining characteristic.

That problem even extends to the main heroes. Rosalina is a damsel in distress who only exists to establish a detail about Peach’s backstory that doesn’t deepen her character in any notable way. Yoshi, who doesn’t say anything but “Yoshi!”, is Groot minus the emotional range. I can hardly remember anything about Luigi this time around, other than the fact that Charlie Day gets in the movie’s best line read at the wire. (“Well, the castle… it died.”) Even Mario himself is entirely stagnant. His only bit of development centers around him getting the courage to ask Peach out, a detail that’s introduced early on, then completely lost in the candy-colored noise. Everyone is an NPC dragged along by the plot.

It’s a strange decision, considering that 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, for all its faults, was invested in building characters. Mario follows a clear hero’s journey that makes him easy to root for, even though his arc is basic. Anya Taylor-Joy reclaims Peach’s independence by playing her as a queen trying to maintain control of her kingdom amid chaos. Most notably, Bowser stands out as a memorable villain because Jack Black so effortlessly oscillates from a dastardly bad guy to a big ol’ softie. He’s the star of the show.

It’s unsurprising that Bowser is the only character in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie who shows anything resembling growth, going from a reformed ally to a family man so loyal that he’s willing to go back to the dark side to support his twerp of a son. The scenes between Bowser and Bowser Jr. are the only moments in the movie with any real substance or heart. And even then, their thorny relationship gets sped along in the little screen time it is afforded. We can’t let their dynamic breathe; we simply must make room for Queen Bee!

If all you want from a Mario movie is to see a sequence of levels splayed out across a giant screen, that’s exactly what The Super Mario Galaxy Movie delivers. Maybe that’s why it’s dividing critics and general audiences, if user reviews can be considered a reliable snapshot. Cinephiles and gamers have a very different idea of how the works in their respective media are structured. Where critics see a storytelling mess devoid of substantial characters, players see a typical adventure full of quest-givers and bosses. Hopefully, whoever writes and directs the series' inevitable threequel can find a way to bridge the gap between those audiences a little better, before introducing even more heroes to a story that doesn’t have time for all the ones it already has.