super smash bros movie review

Super Smash Bros. Movie: Illumination Reportedly Wants Avengers-Style Project After Mario

One of the biggest pop culture surprises of 2023 has been the explosion in popularity of video game adaptations. The most pivotal of these successes came with "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," an impressive take on the popular game series that went on to score over $1 billion globally at the box office.

Now, it looks like Illumination is aiming to double down on its bet with a far-reaching plan to create a Nintendo cinematic universe. The rumored pitch comes from Daniel Richtman , aka DanielRPK, a leaker with a solid track record in the entertainment industry. Richtman claims that Illumination hopes to move forward with a series of interconnected stories that would culminate in a "Super Smash Bros."-style team-up movie.

For those who are unfamiliar with "Super Smash Bros.," the franchise has been around for nearly 25 years and features Nintendo mainstays like Link, Samus, Yoshi, and, of course, Mario, as they duke it out to take down an interdimensional foe. While this may sound a bit tough to translate to the big screen, series fans will likely have noted that "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" has already laid the groundwork for this possibility.

Has The Super Mario Bros Movie already started setting this up?

As viewers who watched "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" will recall, the film begins with the prospect of multiple interconnected universes. This is how Mario ( Chris Pratt ) and Luigi ( Charlie Day ) end up traveling from New York City to the Mushroom Kingdom in the first place. This isn't the only way that the film has opened the door for the possibility.

"The Super Mario Bros Movie" also features a fight between Mario and Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) that could serve two purposes for this potential plan. First, it shows a brawl between two well-known Nintendo characters. Second, it shows how different characters from other games can be pulled into a story where they relate to one another.

Granted, Mario and Donkey Kong debuted in the same video game, but they are far more recognizable today for their franchises, "Super Mario Bros." and "Donkey Kong Country." With this in mind, the prospect of a "Super Smash Bros." movie does seem like a real possibility.

Whether the film would be framed as the heroes vs. the villains or with all of its roster members uniting against Master Hand is still up in the air, assuming the pitch bears out. Either way, it's never been a more exciting time for gamers who want to see high-quality takes on their favorite franchises.

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie

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Watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie with a subscription on Peacock, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

While it's nowhere near as thrilling as turtle tipping your way to 128 lives, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a colorful -- albeit thinly plotted -- animated adventure that has about as many Nintendos as Nintendon'ts.

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie Review

07 Apr 2023

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

The last time Mario — the lovably high-voiced moustachioed Italian plumber, and the most iconic name in video games — starred in a film, it bombed so badly that Nintendo waited 30 years before giving their mascot another crack at the big screen. Now something of an oddball cult classic, the 1993 Bob Hoskins -starring live-action version was both a strangely realistic take on the game (Mario is fixing broken dishwashers and worrying about paying rent) and bafflingly outlandish (it is partly set in a dino-steampunk parallel dimension), bearing only tangential resemblance to the source material. This lively new animated version, on the other hand, is deeply faithful — to a fault.

This is exactly what you might expect from a Super Mario Bros. movie. It’s like a greatest hits parade of the franchise: there’s the rainbow road from Mario Kart , the spooky house from Luigi’s Mansion , the New Donk City level from Super Mario Odyssey , the moons from Super Mario Galaxy , and more obscure Easter Eggs besides (listen out for the GameCube start-up sound). The story borrows mechanics and terminology from the game, too: there are power-ups, blue shells and a side-scrolling mission. Brian Tyler’s score never misses an opportunity to borrow some of Koji Kondo’s gloriously recognisable musical motifs, either.

It’s-a-gonna win many box-office gold coins, no doubt. But the Bob Hoskins version is far more imaginative.

It’s all laser-designed to tickle the nostalgia adenoids of Nintendo nerds. But it ultimately never feels more than just a very high-definition, feature-length video game cutscene – the bit you sit through while waiting to play the actual game. While a training montage sequence hints at the repetitive trial-and-error of the original NES title, what follows only confirms that the real joy of these games was, first and foremost, the gorgeously designed, addictively satisfying gameplay.

Without that here, we’re left only with the characters, which are as thin as an 8-bit image file, and, with the possible exception of Jack Black (who brings a Tenacious D energy to his Bowser), entirely miscast. There’s an admirable attempt to explain this away, but in a world where everyone already knows exactly what Mario sounds like — the movie itself even reminds us, in a cameo from long-standing voice actor Charles Martinet — Chris Pratt ’s take simply doesn’t sound like Mario. (The Mario family as a whole, incidentally, are the most egregious Italian stereotypes to be seen this side of a Dolmio advert; how many “Mamma Mia!”s does it take to constitute a hate crime?)

This comes from Illumination, a studio that never quite earned the critical cred of rivals like Pixar or Cartoon Saloon, but through their Minions and Sing franchises have certainly figured out how to make millions of family-friendly dollars. You feel that half-term hymn sheet being sung from in the endless peril, the bright colours, the largely unfunny gags, the empty sentiment (“Nothing can hurt us as long as we’re together!”). The studio brings experience and talent; the standard of animation, crisply rendered and richly art-directed, is undeniably high. It’s-a-gonna win many box-office gold coins, no doubt. But the Bob Hoskins version is, if nothing else, far more imaginative.

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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Review: “Makes a 20-year-old franchise feel brand new”

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate takes characters we’ve played for decades and remasters them into a robust, fantastically enjoyable package

Incredibly tight mechanics for a fighter with more than 70 characters

A complete overload of fantastic single player content

The most amount of polish a Super Smash Bros. game has ever seen

Minor changes to the presentation feel out of place

Could use more variety in content

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Throughout the past 20 years, every entry in the Super Smash Bros. series has been incredibly unique. From its early days in on the Nintendo 64 with only 12 characters to more than 50 fighters on the Wii U, every franchise from Fire Emblem to Final Fantasy has meshed together wonderfully while individual fighters retain an impressive level of depth. Now, with every previous character returning, you’d think some of the novelty of having Nintendo’s superstars beat the snot out of each other would wear off. That’s not the case though, as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate manages to make a series that started in 1999, with characters and stages we’ve played time in and time out, feel like something completely new.

It’s an especially impressive feat since Nintendo hasn’t been particularly tight-lipped in the past few months. Multiple Nintendo Directs, announcements, event demos, and leaks have shown off most of what Ultimate has to offer. Yet, every character unlock has left me completely giddy. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is so smooth that the excitement and mystery of new characters remain even though the roster reveals have long since passed.

It doesn’t just stop there, either: the combination of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s incredibly tight gameplay, deep and meaningful story mode, and enormous amount of polish has created a gem that will not disappoint.

Faster than four

It’s hard to talk about a Super Smash Bros. game without comparing it to its ancestors. While somewhat similar, each game before it, Ultimate has a different speed, roster and overall feel. Some prefer the slower pace of Super Smash Bros. 64 and Super Smash Bros Brawl , while competitive players focus on the much faster Super Smash Bros. Melee and Wii U. Ultimate finds a nice home in between the all the above.

Ultimate, as you can tell from its appearance, resembles Super Smash Bros. Wii U the most. Characters move at a similar speed, albeit slightly faster with more freedom to change direction instantly. The most notable difference is how far and often characters get knocked back during a fight. Some fighters, including the likes of Robin, King K. Rool, Snake, and others, can send foes flying across the map early on in the fight. As a result, most matches move at an exhilarating pace and end quite early. When that’s coupled with crazy items and character movesets, the action can get a quite incomprehensible.

The minute-to-minute gameplay only gets more different from the Wii U version the more you play. Individual characters have adjusted movesets and various buffs and nerfs. Many changes, like letting Samus charge her beam midair, feel small on their own. Yet tweaks upon tweaks add up to something much more significant.

That doesn’t even mention the new characters who have instantly found a home in the mishmash of franchises. The Inkling Kids, Incineroar, King K. Rool, Simon, and various Echo Fighters all feel like they’ve been part of the franchise for years. This is especially so for the Inklings, whose moveset, sound design, and animations all feel like they are directly pulled from Splatoon . Their recovery is a super jump, they use a roller to squash enemies into the ground, and they’re grab is a mobster-esque splattershot to the face. Luckily, every character feels equally indented into the crossover.

At first glance the visuals seem almost identical to the Wii U entry, with Pac-Man and King Dedede looking similar to their appearances on the last-gen console. That familiarity gets shredded after you see the background and extra detail in the classic Corneria or the brand new Moray Towers. They look far more impressive than any previous console could handle.

Despite the initial feeling of familiarity, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate grows to feel like something all its own. You can still find 8-Player Smash, a Classic Mode where you take on fighters and the Master Hand, as well as a ton of customizable options for multiplayer battles that range from making characters huge to starting a match in Sudden Death.

Spirit of smash

World of Light, Ultimate’s new single player campaign, is arguably the biggest addition to the series, adding a twist on the traditional fighting game campaign. After the short cinematic featured in a recent Nintendo Direct , I was dropped onto a hand drawn map after the souls to every character except Kirby were taken. The whole goal is to travel around the map, which combines areas after different games, and save the other heroes by beating them senseless.

The mode offers two hugely unique mechanics new to the series. The first are Spirits, or non-playable characters who determine your stats and unique attributes in battle. They can range from the recognizable faces of Eevee and Revolver Ocelot to more obscure folks like Sebastian Tute from Wii Music. They’re split into primary and secondary roles, the primary ones determine how much base attack, defense, speed, etc you’ll have while secondary ones grant powers like the ability to resist lava damage. Over the course of the campaign you can level up Spirits to increase your stats as fights get more difficult.

Fights to unlock Spirits usually have special conditions and add-ons that share similarities with the Spirit’s original game. For example, the process to unlock WarioWare’s Dr. Crygor included taking on the good doctor (played by Dr. Mario), his creation R.O.B., and Wario himself. There are quite a few creative ways the game uses items, stages, assist trophies, and its expansive roster to create memorable little battles.

However, I do wish they came with more variety here. The only option is to fight, there aren’t any Target Smashes, Home Run Contests, or any other fun takes on the franchises platforming roots. That lack of variety extends to the rest of the game too, as the only mini-game present is a short platforming session in the classic mode..

Beauty and the brawl

Super Smash Bros. is no stranger to polish and incredibly high standards of development, but Ultimate takes accessibility and showmanship to a new level. It boasts a huge number of changes, big and small, that ties it’s features together in a shiny package. After 20 years the series finally features a tournament bracket, custom rulesets, the ability to change any level into a flat or Battlefield-esque surfaces, and a number of other ease of use options. These changes make Ultimate that much easier to get into-- it even lets you unlock characters in a single mode after a few hours in-game.

Beyond the logistical and customization improvements, Ultimate has a lot more style than previous games. Characters smoke like Atlantic salmon when they get launched off screen, cameras go to extreme nostril-flare closeups whenever a final blow gets struck, and slick character cards with smoke of their own drop before each match.

Some of these changes are a welcome bit of relief from Nintendo’s stubbornness while others feel like overdoing it. While much of the change in Ultimate points to Nintendo wanting more intense, blow-for-blow fights , some of it feels fake. The final smash close ups sometimes come early when the fight isn’t over yet and the smoke gets somewhat excessive. It’s a small problem that can be overlooked easily, but doesn’t feel nearly as natural as the “Go Samus!’ cheers that came from Melee’s imaginary crowd.

It’s almost the ultimate package

Even still, having over 100 stages, multiple campaigns with the World of Light and classic modes, tons of collectables, and other things to dive into would make 10-year-old me go absolutely wild. Nothing feels tacked on or incomplete either, as every new addition feels as natural as Mario and Pikachu.

The amount of content in Ultimate blows most other fighters out of the water. The fact that every match feels like a fair, if chaotic, fight is incredible, especially with a roster of more than 70 superstar characters. While some of the polish doesn’t hit the mark completely and and the absence of a variety of single-player modes is disappointing, Ultimate is a fighter I’ll be playing for years to come.

Aron Garst is a journalist and writer exploring the future of games and interactivity. Follow him on X at @GarstProduction.

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