By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Right now, there’s a lot of buzz about Hollywood box office earnings. Some movies that are supposed to be great are doing well, like The Mandalorian & Grogu: despite being the first Star Wars film in seven years, it had a very poor opening weekend anywhere live-action film in the franchise. If you look at marketing costs, it probably won’t do enough (reportedly, at least $500 million) to break even. At that time, the terrible type is cleansed: with Back rooms20-year-old Kane Parsons became the youngest director to reach number one at the box office. Currently, Infatuation grossed over $224 million and was made for only $750,000.
With these movies making so many headlines, you might not have overlooked another movie that made amazing box office history. The Super Mario Galaxy movie quietly became the first film of 2026 to make over a billion dollars. This was a sequel Super Mario Bros. Moviewhich went on to earn a total of $1.4 billion. The sequel may reach that point, and it has already proven to be the most successful film of the year. That’s good news for big fans of the plumber. But it’s bad news for everyone else, because the success of this subpar sequel ensures that the cinematic slop is here to stay.
(Good) Mario Lost
To start this off, I need to rip off the band-aid with a hard truth: The Super Mario Galaxy movie it’s bad. Like, really bad. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently has a critical score of 42 percent. In general, critics have griped about the overall feeling of weightlessness and purposelessness in the film, and that the storyline was put into the animation as an afterthought. This is much lower than Super Mario Bros. Moviewhich had a critical score of 59 percent. Fans are also disappointed: while the first film has a fan rating of 95 percent, the second has a low rating of 88 percent.
Why the success of The Super Mario Galaxy movie did you take me out? First, it’s always bad to see crappy movies making money left and right because it’s a reminder that genuinely good movies often suffer at the box office. For example, Masters of the Universe was an attempt to revive He-Man (Mario’s traveling companion from the ’80s) for modern moviegoers. It’s a film that critics have liked better than any Mario film (it has a critical rating of 67 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but it grossed less than $30 million in its opening weekend. Considering its budget was $170 million, there’s a good chance this fan-favorite film won’t get a sequel.
A Failed Cinematic Universe
That’s a shame because, while He-Man isn’t new territory, it’s a revival of a franchise that almost never had a movie. 40 years. Accordingly, it felt like a fresh-yet-honest labor of love from creators who truly love it. Now that The Super Mario Galaxy movie grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, we’re likely to get a lot of movies exactly like it: fast-paced sequels that lack all the charm and appeal of the previous film. Infatuation again Back rooms they may prove the work of original, low-budget horror movies, but studios chasing billions at the box office will churn out their own sequel slop as bad (or worse) than The Super Mario Galaxy movie.
While the success of this underrated movie is bad enough for other IPs, it is arguably the worst for its own. Although not perfect, Super Mario Bros. Movie it laid the foundation for an entire cinematic universe with its cool characters, engaging plot, and memorable moments (like Jack Black’s mind-boggling “Peaches”). By comparison, The Super Mario Galaxy movie it has tired characters (except for Star Fox), a paint-by-numbers structure, and a few memorable moments. Worse, the few memorable moments we get are tied to forgettable action sequences. Be honest, now: how bad is this the second time Mario movie is, can you imagine how bad the third and fourth will be?
Get in, Get out
It’s hard to say without sounding like an old man yelling at the clouds (to be honest, one of those clouds it was to throw me spiky dudes), but The Super Mario Galaxy movie it symbolizes everything that is wrong with Hollywood. It’s not a bad movie, but it just doesn’t come off shut up with its full power. Even so, it made so much money that the studio (and countless other studios chasing riches and fame) will put as little effort as possible into a sequel that’s more extreme than anything original. However, why should they make any extra effort? We vote with our dollars, and when people pay top dollar for low-tier slop, they get more in return.
Get in, sneak out. Sorry, movie lovers: thank you Super Mario Galaxy Movie, your good movies are in another castle!
