Nintendo and Illumination explain why Galaxy was chosen for the latest Mario movie

Nintendo and Illumination have commented on the decision to feature Super Mario Galaxy as the second film following The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Before the project was announced, many didn’t anticipate that the Wii games would be adapted for the big screen so quickly. That’s just what we got though, and now Shigeru Miyamoto and Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri have spoken about how we got here.

According to Miyamoto, as relayed by Polygon, “we never framed it as a sequel, but we framed it as the next movie.” It sounds like Illumination presented Super Mario Galaxy as an option, and “that could work because the first movie really was about adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom and the next evolution would be to expand the world, go out to the galaxy, and it had a lot of potential”.

Miyamoto shared the following:

“In my discussion with Chris-san after the first movie, when we started talking, we never framed it as a sequel, but we framed it as the next movie. That left an impression on me. Within our discussion, from the Illumination side, the idea of Galaxy potentially came up. As I thought about it, that could work because the first movie really was about adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom and the next evolution would be to expand the world, go out to the galaxy, and it had a lot of potential…

When we were making the first movie, we discussed and thought, OK, we’re not going to try to recreate the game. That wouldn’t be fun. But then as we’re working on the movie, we realized there are parts that really align with the game itself. Likewise, when we’re working on this second movie, we didn’t want to frame it as a sequel. And yet, as we’re working through it, there were elements that we thought could be based on the first movie, and there were moments where they were a sequel, and all of it kind of fit together.”

Meledandri also noted the following:

“When we started talking about the idea, it begins our process of collaboration, where we began to discuss different possibilities. One could have assumed that we might’ve just gone to Super Mario World or Odyssey, and we talked about all those possibilities. But when we began to talk about [Super Mario] Galaxy, there were qualities of Galaxy that were immediately exciting for us; the cinematic possibilities, as well as some of the more dramatic aspects of Galaxy; just the whole feeling of the drama that’s associated with Rosalina as a character and how that’s reflected in the music of Galaxy. That feeling was something we thought could really inform a new story.”

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is out now in theaters. For more from Miyamoto, he recently spoke about the possibility of a Super Smash Bros. film, which you can read about here.