The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the sequel to Nintendo’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie from 2023, made its international debut on April 1 this year. Ahead of the Japanese premiere of the movie, scheduled for April 24, game director and producer Shigeru Miyamoto recently participated in a joint media interview to celebrate the release. Talking to Nintendo Dream Web, Miyamoto spoke about why it took Nintendo so long to take the plunge and start producing feature films based on their IPs.
“Since we don’t know what kind of game we’ll be making next, giving our characters too complex backstories can end up becoming a constraint for us. I don’t mind the constraints when it comes to gameplay mechanics, but the reason why we avoided making movies for so long is precisely because we didn’t want to be constrained by establishing a story,” Miyamoto explained.
This checks out considering Nintendo’s focus on “play over story” and user-friendliness in most of their games. With such a huge cast of characters, it could be difficult to offer a wide variety of games and unique gameplay experiences while having to track a canonical storyline and lore over decades of releases.
Apparently, this is why Princess Peach, who’s been a key character in the Mario series for many decades, didn’t have a concrete backstory until Nintendo kicked off with producing the movies. “Working on the movies, it has become super fun to expand on the characters in various ways,” Miyamoto added. “That’s why, in future games, we want to stick to the backstories we’ve established in the movies as much as possible.”
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie explores the character of Princess Peach, unveiling one big secret about her origin (which we won’t be mentioning due to spoilers). However, Miyamoto confirms that, while her backstory was decided specifically for the movie, the plot-twist is canon, and will likely appear or be referenced in future Nintendo games.
On a related note, the live-action Legend of Zelda movie is coming to theaters in 2027, so it will be interesting to see how Nintendo adapted the original material and whether any new movie twists will impact the canon of the video game series.
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