The Super Mario Bros. Movie Is Finally Out – But What IS a Mario?

“Mario, the Idea vs. Mario, the Man”

It was deeply surreal to sit in the theaters last Friday (April 7th, that is) and watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I won’t lie to you, I almost shed a tear or two. It was bizarre as the credits ended and the lights lowered and the sparse conversations died down and then the movie started up, and the Illumination logo played through. And then the Nintendo logo came up, and it had little 8-bit Mario and Luigi jumping around, and there was this pang in my chest that I couldn’t quite place, and it rose up and almost made me cry. Almost. What was it? Excitement? Nostalgia? Relief? Anxiety? Sadness? Pride? Wonder? Loneliness? Loss of memory? Inner child? Growing up? All of those things and more, two and a half decades of experiences, rolled into one complicated ball of emotion, just lightly under the surface, bidden into existence by a stupid corporate logo. And then the movie began.

I’ve been waiting for this for a while. Since 2018 at least, when it was first unofficially “announced” at a Nintendo investors’ conference. Then even more since September of 2021, when the cast was first revealed at a Nintendo Direct and we all learned in shock and horror that Chris Pratt, of all people, was slated to be Mario. The tension continued to build, with the first trailer about a year after that, though admittedly I kind of stopped paying attention after the cast was announced, so the tension kind of skipped past me. I have this complicated relationship with getting excited for things, where I’m thrilled when I first hear about it, then indifferent for a while, and then I devote my entire life to it once I finally get ahold of it, much like Elden Ring. I won’t be dedicating my entire life to the Mario Movie (for several personal and logistical reasons), but I definitely got excited again when it finally came out and I really had a chance to see it. I planned ahead. I had it on my calendar and everything. Cheyenne and I bought tickets in advance. And now? I’ve finally seen it. And it’s definitely one of the movies of all time.

You want to talk how the first day resembles the last day, well how about this one: I moved into Minneapolis in July of 2021. The Mario Movie cast was announced September of 2021. The movie released in April of 2023. I left/am leaving Minneapolis in May of 2023. In some ways, you could say that the production timeline of the Mario Movie covers my entire time in Minneapolis. All that life I’ve lived, every place that I’ve been to, the loves and the loss, the cats and the birds and the sculptures and the north shore and Nick and Cheyenne and the friends that I have and haven’t made and two jobs and a state’s worth of history and trips in between and (at least) three separate deaths of friends and family and two funerals and everything else that’s happened to me since I graduated from college the regrets that still reside in Champaign and the new triumphs and regrets of things that I’ve missed here in my time, things that I wanted to do but didn’t, things that I should have done but couldn’t, things that I never ought to have considered yet couldn’t stop myself, and my entire experience here in Minnesota? You could practically fit it within the lifecycle of the Mario Movie hype train. That is a deeply relativistic feeling; it gives me a sense of “wow, I really haven’t been in Minneapolis that long after all, I remember driving to Baker Outdoor Learning Center one of my first days and listening to the Nintendo Direct for the Mario Movie just yesterday!” and at the same time “That was in 2021? It’s been a year and a half? Where does the time go?” I’m already leaving Minnesota. My time here has come and gone. It wasn’t enough, it never could have been enough if I’d spent fifty years here. Yet it was perfect anyway, exactly the right amount of time that I needed. But it’s all over now. And the Mario Movie remains.

But it’s more than that. In some ways, I have been waiting for this movie my entire life. I’ve always been a fan of video games, for as long as I can remember. My dad had Donkey Kong Country on an old SNES, and I had a GameBoy Advance that I’d carry around with me everywhere and play with. But Mario was really one of the first video game series to affect me in a more emotional way. I distinctly remember receiving a copy of Super Mario 64 DS one year for Easter, and it blew my mind because I didn’t even know the game existed. I had actually played the original Mario 64 in my dentist’s office, years and years ago, and I’d always wondered what the rest of the game was like. But then my parents somehow found Super Mario 64 DS, and I knew what the rest of that game was like. To this day it’s probably one of the best gifts I’ve ever received, odd as that may sound. And it was incredible; Super Mario 64 DS might be the game that got me into video games. Not just as a hobby, but as something that I spent time really thinking about, and wondering what more there was. What I could do in the medium.

It’s a toss-up between that, Donkey Kong Country, and, wouldn’t you know it, Super Mario World that got me into video games. Then I got a Wii, and Wii Sports was great and all, but I remember seeing a Super Mario Galaxy demo in a Best Buy. At the time, I told my dad “yeah, I might get it,” but I knew full well I’d be playing that game sooner rather than later. And then I did, and I poured even further hours into Mario’s world. Rosalina’s storybook made me actually cry (though mind you, I was, like, 9). Mario Galaxy was the very first game I completed 100%. I played Super Mario Sunshine on Thanksgiving after the Super Bowl; I looked at old Super Mario World maps in my cousins’ basement (huh; is that where my love of maps comes from?); my friends and I spent hours upon hours playing Mario Party 8 and screaming at Flip the Chimp; my cousins would race each other in Mario Kart Wii and I would always lose badly; my mother would beat my ass in Dr. Mario and then apologize for winning so hard; I’d ask my dad for help on a Mario Kart Wii track that I couldn’t quite get gold on, but later, when I realized that I could finish it if I practiced enough, that was when I stopped asking for help in games; my friends would get together and we’d scream over who threw whom off the dragon rollercoaster in New Super Mario Bros.; my sibling and I got copies of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with Lou Albano for Easter one year (happy belated Easter, by the way; weird theming, huh?) and would crack jokes about the weird episodes but also consider seriously what a Mario Movie or Mario Amusement Park would be like (a full decade before Super Nintendo World was ever announced); I think you’re starting to get the idea.

Sure, I diversified into other games, too, your Halos and Skyrims and Pikmins and Zeldas and whatever else I played back in the day. I lived and breathed these games for the better parts of my childhood. I bonded with people over these games. Friendships were made and broken with Mario in the room. Friends and family across generations spent time with Mario. Decades of my life, ages of my growth, from before grade school into high school, Mario and Nintendo games took up my time and my mental space and helped shape who I was and who I became. Sure, everyone’s got a video game that’s influential to them. But I don’t think I can overstate that Mario was more than a game for so much of my life.

Not a lot of people like Mario. No, let me rephrase that. Everyone likes Mario. He’s simple. He’s inoffensive. He’s profitable. He’s child-friendly. He’s safe. He’s one of the most recognizable figures in the entire planet, more recognizable than Mickey Mouse and far more relevant. But he’s not a character so much as a concept, a symbol, a mascot. There’s already a lot written on this, talked about it online, how it’s impossible to truly do a good Mario movie because Mario, as a character, no longer exists. He isn’t a guy, or a player, or a game; he’s everything at Nintendo. Everyone likes Mario. But I think significantly fewer people love Mario. Don’t get me wrong, the number of people who “love” Mario is still massive, far more than many other comparable characters, but I don’t think it’s quite the same.

It’s not just me that feels this way, of course. There is a veritable cult of personality around Mario 64, an iceberg and a community that it is impossible to really sum up in a few words. Tons and tons and tons of people love Mario. It would be absurd to say that Mario is an “underloved” character. But Mario takes on a whole different life when given to the hands of the creative community. But that’s a whole topic for another day, and I’m already running this thing pretty out of hand.

These days, I think it’s largely impossible for people to get attached to Mario in the same way they get attached to their favorite movie characters, or novel protagonists, or even other video game characters. It’s easy to explain why, of course. Mario has no defined personality. He doesn’t have many traits that make him relatable, or human; he’s a placeholder. He runs, he jumps, he eats mushrooms, he says “Mama Mia” and “Let’s-a Go.” But he doesn’t love. He doesn’t have fears. He doesn’t have ambitions or dreams or hopes or regrets. He simply exists. It’s hard to get attached to that. But take it down another level and he’s not even a video game character anymore. He isn’t like Master Chief or Kratos or some of the other big industry mascots who have a defined gameplay style and a personality; Mario does everything. You can slap Mario on any style of game, sports, party, puzzle, racing, hell, even turn-based strategy, and it’s still Mario. Mario has a gun in some games. Isn’t that fucking weird?

He’s everywhere, and he’s so bland. He’s just kind of there, hanging out, raking in piles of cash. When people play Mario Kart, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a single person willingly choose Mario. I haven’t even ever played as Mario in Mario Kart, until just last month, when I actively decided to go against my usual Waluigi-Ludwig-Link rotation. The game is named after the guy, and he’s barely there. I’ve gone twenty-four years without playing as Mario in Mario Kart, and that’s because saying you like Mario is the Nintendo equivalent of saying you like cheese pizza. It’s the default, and I don’t believe anyone truly likes the default of anything. No one’s ever actually a cheese pizza kind of guy, you know? You have a topping preference, even if it’s too weird to admit in general company. At the very least you prefer a special kind of cheese or a weird sauce or a specific kind of crust. It’s either that, or you don’t actually like pizza that much. That’s all there is to it. No one actually likes just plain cheese pizza. Mario is the plain cheese pizza of the video game world. For a time, I didn’t want to admit to myself that I liked Mario as much as I do. I kind of still don’t.

But I do like Mario. Maybe even “love” Mario, as nebulous as it can be to “love” a non-existent video game character with very few “human” traits. Again, Mario is not a person; he is a vessel for movement. He is a placeholder for your actions. He is a brand to slap on any style of gameplay you can imagine. But even then, Mario is a part of my identity, my history, for better or for worse. I’m a Mario guy, in a way. I mean, deeper down, I’m more of a Pikmin or Zelda guy, I guess, but at some point, I had to admit to myself that I do really, really like Mario. Mario has been with me my entire life, not quite a real thing and not quite someone I would borrow money from or ask to pick me up from the airport, but I like Mario.

But what do you do when you outgrow that? Do you ever truly outgrow it? Are these things always with you? How can you really be sure of that? In high school, my tastes changed, and even though my friend group still spent hours on the weekends playing Super Smash Bros., and even though I kept up with every mainline Mario game, I drifted away from the plumber. Recently, though, I’ve struggled with returning to games that were seminal to my childhood; namely, Pikmin and Super Mario Galaxy. I’ve played the games, and from a design standpoint, I recognize their strengths and weaknesses and why they’re such incredible games. But now, they don’t have the same oomph they used to.

When I played Super Mario Galaxy on the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection Nintendo put out a few years ago, I was saddened to find that it didn’t hit me as hard as it did when I was little. I was startled. What happened? The game’s the same, but I’m different now. Am I… old? Have I lost the whimsy and wonder that I used to have? Am I cynical and sad? Am I incapable of feeling joy? This is a thought that I’ve been struggling with for reasons entirely unrelated to Mario; this persistent, nagging doubt that I don’t actually ever feel my emotions, I just kind of “have them.” And worse, I’ve recently been afraid that I’m losing my memory of these games, losing my memories of the experiences that made them so important to me. That I’m losing what matters from my childhood, not the games themselves but the context around it, the friends, the family, the emotion. If playing these games, like smelling a scent from your childhood, can’t drag them back out of the depths, are they gone? Have I lost them? Did I do something wrong, by not remembering? Do I need to remember harder? Why aren’t there any emotions attached to these memories? To play Mario Galaxy and not be hit by that wave of nostalgia, of memory, of emotion, what the hell is wrong with me? If I lose Mario, then it means that I’ve lost so many things that are much, much more important.

And yet, I had to take some comfort in one of my most recent Mario memories. When I played Super Mario Odyssey when it first came out in 2017, I was alone in my freshman dorm room struggling to survive my first year of college and I found the wonder of Mario again. I had taken the bus to the Savoy Walmart (quite a trip from the University of Illinois campus, mind you) to pick up a copy I had pre-ordered. I didn’t want to wait for the bus to play it, so I took an Uber home. And I played it for about three hours straight, with a stupid grin the entire time. That’s the reason why he’s still Nintendo’s number-one. Even in the deeper parts of depressive episodes, I was still able to find the joy and wonder in these simple games and the expressive, meticulously-crafted movement that brings an otherwise bog-standard character to vivid life. He takes a nap and snores if you don’t touch the controller; he sits quietly and listens to Rosalina talk. He taps his toes in time with the music. He smiles. He is bright and cheery. He runs and jumps and twists and turns and he wants to save the princess. He has something I don’t: happiness enthusiasm joy Italian accent childlike wonder. He enjoys every minute of it. Because we want to save the princess. And because we enjoy every minute of it. Mario is a brand because Nintendo makes him be a brand, but when he’s in a game, a real Mario game, he becomes a character because we let him be, as players.

I play different game for different reasons. I’m sure I could work the idea of the Magic Circle in here, of how we give and take with video games based on the contexts around them and how we interact with their worlds, and how those worlds interact with us and our social surroundings. How much of ourselves we’re willing to give to a game and how much we’re prepared to get back. Some games ask a lot of us; our time, our money, our emotions. I adore Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch, but I find them exhausting to play because they are deeply emotional games, and purposefully so. I love stories, and I got to the slower, more thoughtful games for that. I play different games for different experiences, and they ask different things of me each time. I don’t think I’ll ever start another file in Skyrim or Elden Ring because it will take me twenty hours to get to “the good part.” And I will never really be good at something like Ultrakill; I just don’t have the time anymore. But I think it’s the games that ask very little of us, or perhaps we think they ask very little of us, yet give us so much more, that can be elevated beyond their status more unexpectedly. Dark Souls expects a lot out of you, and it’s got the design cred to demand it, so it’s natural that people fall in love. Mario Galaxy, on the other hand, has all that design cred, but asks for so very little out of us, as players. It gives more than it gets, perhaps. But if you choose to give it more, then there’s all the more impression it’ll make on you.

I find Mario games beautiful because they embody simplicity and wonder. I find them memorable because they show love and passion. And I love them because they mean so much to me; because they came to me at the right time in the right place to make the right impression. It could have been something else, but it was Mario. And if I were to lose that, to lose that emotional connection, or forget it, or simply just move on to a different part of my life, then what does that mean for Mario? What does that mean for me? What else have I lost? When will I feel happy again? When will I feel wonder? Will I ever feel that? How much of that do I want to lose, to forget, what am I willing to give up in exchange for new experiences, things that perhaps matter more? Should I remember more? Is it natural to lose it? Do other people go through this? What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I feel anything? How much of that forgetting, of that flatness, of that lack of emotional response, how much of that is me and how much of that is the mental illness? Will I get ever get it back? Should I want to get it back? Is this a necessary part of growing up, of maturing? Do I have to shed these treasured relics to move on? Is it right to do that? I thought I already grew up; how much more do I have to go, and how much more will I lose? What will I gain, and will it be greater? How much of ourselves do we ever really change, and how do we know if that change is for the better? How can we ever really be sure we’ve grown at all?

Mario is not real. Mario is not family. Mario is not home. Mario is, of course, a stand-in, a touch-point, for those things that are far more important. But Mario is more concrete than some of these abstracts. Maybe he helps me find them. In this way, Mario is both a strange high water mark and an uncomfortable gauge of where I am as a person. A yardstick to my childhood, measuring and telling me that I’ve passed the point of no return, or if there’s still someone clinging tightly to my leg in a crowded mall. Or perhaps it is telling me nothing at all, and I am the one who asks the questions, and the only thing that it can really tell me is “You are here. This is what you are feeling now. It’s-a me, Mario.” Mario does not change, and there is some security in this constant. No matter how far I go, there is still something to come back to, at least a little bit. As much as my memories will change and fade, Mario Galaxy is the same now as it was when it came out over fifteen years ago. I, however, am not.

So, yes, I did see the Mario movie. I did feel something tense up in my chest when I watched it. And I did, overall, like the movie. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t offensively unfunny, or cringey, or tacky, like I’ve come to expect from Illumination movies. I chuckled. The visuals were fantastic, the movie was packed with dense scenery, the soundtrack was killer (except when it was old 80’s music; I would have preferred they left out “Take on Me”). I loved finding all the references and easter eggs, and there are a handful of deeper cuts that were neat to pick out. It was clearly done out of a place of love and passion. I really appreciate Jack Black’s Bowser; I think he kind of stole the show, to be honest. And without spoiling anything, I get why it had to be Jack Black. No one else could be Bowser like they’d written him for that movie. I didn’t like Fred Armisen’s Cranky Kong; I thought he made a really poor Cranky Kong. He’s not the Cranky Kong I know, and if you want a better explanation of that, watch this review. Donkey Kong does the Seth Rogen laugh, which is jarring. I like Movie Peach. She’s a good interpretation of a different Peach. Chris Pratt as Mario is just kind of… eh. He’s better than he sounded in the trailers. I would have genuinely preferred Charles Martinet. But that only would have worked if they made it right.

But what do I mean by made it right? That’s my big complaint with the Mario Movie; despite its incredible, bank-breaking, explosive success, it wasn’t enough. Things happened for no real reason, or just because they had to; Mario and Peach meet for all of thirty seconds before she’s like, “ok, you’re in,” and then their relationship never develops further. I felt like the first part of the movie, in the real world, was the best-paced part of the movie; everything else happens too quickly, and it’s all shoe-horned in because that’s what you had to do. Things skip from scene to scene with no apparent sense of storytelling weight. It’s a Mario movie; you have to do this or that. They had to have carts. Nothing was unexpected; you could have plotted out the movie and if you saw the trailers, you’ve basically seen it all. And then it was over. And as much as I enjoyed myself, as much I did genuinely like the movie, I couldn’t help but think… “is that really it?”

Mario deserves more. Not just because of how huge he is as a character and icon, but, selfishly, of what he means to me and people like me, who grew up in an age of video games and got emotionally invested in things that had no business being emotionally entangled. Because I feel like I deserve more. Why would Nintendo go with Illumination when they could have gone with Pixar or Dreamworks or, hell, even Studio Ghibli? Why would they settle for 92 minutes when they could have easily fleshed out a few scenes, added some much-needed dialogue, given Luigi some more screen time, and made it something packed to the gills with wonder and imagination and more heart than it already has? Why would you skimp on Mario? Why would you skimp on me? After all this time I’ve spent emotionally invested, why would you give us this?

Maybe Nintendo was cautious, after the beauty/disaster that was the 1993 Bob Hoskins Mario Movie. But they should have had a slam dunk with this 2023 one. An even bigger one than they got, anyway. A critical, emotional, historical, artistic slam dunk, instead of just a monetary one. This was a movie that should have been for adults and for children. If I was in charge, this would have been a project that could have really grappled with what it means to love a series and a franchise that is simultaneously both the world’s most inoffensive entertainment and one of its greatest innovators. Of what it means to have over forty years of history and legacy, of people who have grown up knowing nothing but Mario. This movie had spectacle, but it needed more inventive, more interesting, more joyful spectacle. Give me something like How to Train Your Dragon, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Into the Spiderverse, My Neighbor Totoro, Toy Story, hell, even Shrek a little bit. That’s what Mario is. Not something that’s rote, paint by the numbers. I wanted something that would speak to me. But I knew that was never going to happen, and frankly, it’s absurd to ask for it otherwise. So I’ll be happy with what I got instead.

Am I ashamed to admit that I love something so childish, that it takes up so much of my mental space? A little bit, yes. Maybe I still have some growing to do. But that’s video games for you. The world’s biggest entertainment medium today, for people of all ages. Yes, Mario is a product. Mario makes money. Mario is a toy, a thing for children. Mario isn’t a character, really. Video games are toys, they’re entertainment, they hold no inherent value other than as a way to waste time. And I’ve wasted a lot of time thinking and whining about what all this bullshit means to me. But that’s how it is with every movie! Every novel! Every TV show, comic book, piece of entertainment media that we love, that we cherish, that get us talking and thinking and imagining and wondering and wanting to build a better world. These things matter because we let them matter. People crave stories; it’s in our DNA. Stories socialize us, teach us, make us better people. They reach our hearts, we build memories and relationships around stories. Mario has no story, but for me, the story of Mario is the story of my life that I’ve built while interacting with these games. They are tangential to one another. Everyone has something like that, has their own Mario. I have several; it isn’t just Mario. But of all of them, I think Mario’s been with me the longest. So it’s surreal to see this movie; I’ve been waiting so long. And now it’s over. What do I do now?

Mario is a franchise. But I like Mario. And I wanted more, so much more, out of this movie. I knew I wouldn’t get it. And that’s ok. I’ve still got plenty of food for thought, twenty-four years-worth of it and counting. I don’t think Mario’s going anywhere.