Super Mario Galaxy – One Thing That Bothered Me

 Please note that this is written by someone who only had enough passing knowledge of the Mario to get the references in the first film. This is written by a film-goer, not a gamer.

It should go without saying, but as I’m mostly complaining here, I should say that this movie is incredibly good. For me, because of subjectivity explained in what I write below, it is not as good as the first movie. But you should still go see it – like right now!

First, I want to put two of my more neutral thoughts down:

One: I surprised myself by not being one hundred percent on board with Bowser returning to villains after reforming. This is not like me at all! I guess he’d just too likeable as a good guy!

Two: The mid credits scene – I don’t get it. I don’t get what the point of it was, what we are meant to think, or what the direction was intended to be. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it actually verged on creepy.

Now on to my main point and problem: Peach and Rosalina being sisters.

I’ll start by saying it isn’t the principle of it – although, I do feel bad for the Peach and Rosalina shippers! – but more that the film caused me not to like it.

Let’s get the biggun out of the way. The ending felt like it was trying to be Frozen. I mean, wasn’t it close enough having princess sisters without that hug shot feeling it had actually been copied straight out of it?

I think even the fans of Frozen are getting sick of Frozen now. Maybe I’ll get into it properly another time, but Frozen was always destined to date very quickly, or at least not become timeless like the classic Disney movies. It relies too much on a modern audience who are into trope subversion for one thing.

But whatever you think of Frozen, the fact is many of us have been overexposed to it, and Frozen’s influence on creative works that followed it has not been such a good thing. Unfortunately, it is also very obvious when Frozen is an influence too, taking you out of things as much as politics, and causing that overexposed feeling to carry across to the material influenced by it.

Funnily enough, I was still sort of okay with what they were doing until that hug made it painfully obvious, and took me right out of it, sort of making me feel a bit nauseous – an overreaction, I’m sure, but that’s what happened!

This is made worse by the ‘I knew you would come’ line that comes after it. Apart from being cliché and cringy and a few other words I could think of, it really doesn’t hit. It takes too much thinking to get it that it loses its impact, like a joke that has to be explained. It also feels like it comes out of nowhere. When you think about it long enough you realise that we are meant to see that Rosalina got her call for help sent to Peach because she was her sister, rather than (or as well as) because she was the nearest princess. This detail is the sort of thing you might come to understand after a re-watch, but not this way. Also, it’s pretty obscure, unlike other hints of a connection between them. An easy one to overlook.

Okay, here’s another problem. This sisters thing limits Rosalina’s character now and going forward. At the beginning there is a lot of potential, but by the end any development has had and could have is all in relation to her being Peach’s sister, rather than herself.

Also, if we go back to Frozen for a moment, by indirectly comparing Peach and Rosalina to Anna and Elsa, it is sort of being implied that they are as shallow as they are, when you were able to assume otherwise before the reveal. Yes, Anna and Elsa are shallow. There is nothing beyond what we are shown in them in Frozen, something that isn’t the case for other, older Disney characters.

A big thing for me – that I don’t know if anyone else experienced – was that the first shot of them together gave the impression of a mother and her daughter. You know, that storyline we all know whether it’s Prince of Egypt or Meet The Robinsons where a mother is forced to abandon her child to save them.

Yeah, Rosalina looks like she’s Peach’s mother, which makes the later sister reveal problematic. Maybe they didn’t age Rosalina down enough or something. Maybe it was the nature of the shot, or the expression on Rosalina’s face.

This shot happens quite a long time before the sisters reveal – or at least it feels that way! – which means you basically think the mother/daughter thing is where they’re going with it for far too much time. When the real reveal comes along you feel confused, disappointed, and a reduction of investment into the whole film. And of course there’s that whole needing to fulfil audience expectation or they will be left unsatisfied, as well as the simple fact that when people expect one thing, they will very often hate the alternative, no matter what it is.

It also takes away from the key emotional moments between them as you still don’t know how you feel. I had a similar, but thankfully more short-lived and less impactful experience, with My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic’s A Canterlot Wedding, after having read something that spoke of Twilight Sparkle having a sister – not a brother – in these episodes. Fortunately, the intro gave enough time after the brother reveal for me to re-orientate myself. This never happened with Galaxy.  

It would be fair to say that this whole sisters thing would be the reason I chose not to re-watch the film. It sort of spoils the whole thing, and, as I said at the beginning, not because they are sisters, but, I guess, because the WAY they are sisters (if that makes sense!). I will not being going back to the cinema to see it again at any rate, something I wished I’d been able to do (potentially more than once!) with the first film.

But hey, this is the only problem I have with the movie – unless I think of more things later! So it’s doing pretty well!