PR in the Philippines

(SeaPRwire) –   Though it has received a number of middling reviews, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie debuted with $34 million in ticket sales and shows no indication of slowing its box office domination. Nintendo’s growing film franchise is already a huge hit, and based on plot points set up in this latest sequel, it is clear the plumber brothers will be back on the big screen before long (possibly alongside new allies pulled from the wider Nintendo multiverse).

While it draws primarily from the 2007 Wii title Super Mario Galaxy , this new sequel pulls inspiration from several other games, including Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Sunshine. The end product feels less like a straightforward adaptation of the beloved game and more like a collage of assorted influences and Easter eggs, which has its fun moments but fails to live up to the tight, cohesive experience of playing the game the film is named after. The flaws of this creative approach are most obvious in how the film handles Princess Rosalina, whose characterization is drastically altered from her in-game version, almost entirely for the worse.

In Super Mario Galaxy, Princess Rosalina is depicted as a mighty guardian of the cosmos, acting both as a maternal figure to the Lumas (childlike star creatures that assist Mario across the course of the game) and the leader of the Comet Observatory, the huge spacecraft that functions as the game’s central hub. When the game opens, Princess Peach is abducted by Bowser yet again, but Rosalina steps in to aid Mario this time around; her Lumas offer assorted forms of support, and in exchange for Mario collecting Power Stars, Rosalina agrees to transport him to Bowser’s recently created galaxy for their final showdown. Though she is not a playable character, Rosalina is a critical part of the Super Mario Galaxy gameplay experience, and her role forms a core cornerstone of the title.

But while the film’s iteration of Princess Rosalina (voiced by Brie Larson) remains the cosmic guardian and maternal figure to the Lumas, her role is switched with Peach’s. Rather than offering support to Mario, she is reduced to a flat, generic damsel in distress who spends most of the runtime held captive by Bowser Jr. She gets very little screen time, and none of the regal authority or strength she displays in the game comes through on screen. She uses her magic briefly to minimal effect, but the majority of her scenes show her locked in a cell that drains her power. The Lumas’ role alongside her is also greatly minimized.

Naturally, the most significant alteration is the plot twist that Rosalina and Princess Peach are sisters, separated when they were young during an attack by an unidentified foe. While fans have long speculated that Peach and Rosalina are related (this was Nintendo’s initial concept during the early development stages of Super Mario Galaxy), no such connection exists in official game canon. Rosalina’s established backstory in the games explains that as a small child, she built a close bond with the Lumas after their original mother vanished, a dynamic that mirrors Rosalina’s own experience of losing her mother. This twist is not inherently bad on its face, and could have been written to highlight the grief over lost family that defines Rosalina’s character, but she is given so little to do in the film that the reveal lacks the emotional weight of the game’s iconic storybook backstory.

Given that Rosalina has become a core staple of the Mario franchise ever since her debut in Galaxy, it is reasonable to expect she will appear again in upcoming installments of the film series. Ideally, the creative team will give her character far more depth and nuance then, as her backstory carries unexpected emotional resonance for a franchise that has never prioritized complex storytelling in the past.