One of 2023’s biggest box office hits was also one of its most colorful, as The Super Mario Bros. Movie (our review) introduced filmgoers to fantastical worlds that video game enthusiasts have been blistering their thumbs in for decades. Instead of quickly confirming a theatrical sequel, Illumination and Nintendo of America waited until Mario Day (Mar. 10) to finally let the catsuit power-up out of the bag. Game design legend Shigeru Miyamoto himself gave fans a hint of what the plumber siblings’ next big adventure will encompass, and I already have a hope-fueled theory going based on the minimalist description.
How The Super Mario Bros. Movie Sequel Was Described
Admittedly, this theory is based largely on the way in which Shigeru Miyamoto’s announcement was posted on X, so there’s a possible margin of error in terms of wording that we’ll just have to accept. But here’s the key phrasing I’m most interested in:
We’re thinking about broadening Mario’s world further, and it’ll have a bright and fun story.
When one thinks back to all of the video game territory that was covered in the first movie, from the Mushroom Kingdom to Bowser’s Castle to the various themed worlds that were shown in passing, one has to wonder how the creative team will be expanding beyond something that’s already so vast, especially accounting for the “real world” also being part of this canon. So I think we might be going somewhere off-world, as it were.
Theory: The Super Mario Bros. Movie Sequel Will Adapt Super Mario Galaxy
To be sure, more than enough Mario gaming properties exist to keep film sequels going with new locations and situations for years to come. (If we don’t have both Mario Party and Mario Kart movies within the next decade, I’ll buy my cynicsm lunch.) But what would be the easiest way to make the second movie stand apart from the first? Send the main characters into space!
It’s a spin on Miyamoto’s “broadening Mario’s world” idea, 100%, even though I have zero clue whether or not he’d be cheeky enough to use wordplay within such a big announcement. But if he IS into such things, that’s not the only clue in that sentence.
If he’s talking about it being a “bright and fun” story, I don’t think you’ll find anything brighter than a star. Or, in this case, the star-shaped Luma creatures at the heart of Super Mario Galaxy‘s story. It just fits!
The storyline hinted at above, combined with the unique gravity-based gameplay mechanics, quickly turned Super Mario Galaxy into a best-selling, critically acclaimed success, and its reputation only became more celebrated upon the release of the arguably superior Super Mario Galaxy 2. But that’s a different sequel for a different time.
The point here is that the first Super Mario Bros. Movie covered a whole lot of storytelling ground, and while a lot of studios would probably love to just fall back on what worked previously, the video game series wouldn’t be as iconic if that was how quality control worked. So the big screen follow-up needs to adhere to at least some of the games’ flourishes.
And I think the biggest and most important change that the second movie should make is to avoid another “Princess Peach in peril” crisis, since Peach’s story was underutilized, even if Jack Black’s song about her was possibly the best thing about the movie (despite its rage-inducing Oscar snub).
In any case, Galaxy would give the writers a large overarching plot and conflict to deal with where Peach and all the other royal court members can remain un-kidnapped and distress-less. Maybe she and others are back on the…real…world…dealing with other threats while Mario is planet-hopping in outer space.
I can only hope this will be the case once more information is revealed about the Super Mario Bros. Movie 2, or whatever it ends up being called. Sayyy, one way for the cinematic universe to follow the game franchise would be if the producers took an animated Japanese movie that wasn’t about Mario, and just shoehorned a bunch of Mario details into it. But that would probably be too meta to make any financial sense.
While it won’t be part of the 2024 movie release schedule, the next Mario movie is already locked in for an April 3, 2026 arrival.
