A markedly different experience from The Super Mario Bros. Movie, despite sharing directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (co-directors Pierre Leduc and Fabien Polack, as well as screenwriter Matthew Fogel, are back too), The Super Mario Galaxy Movie dispenses with any of the tiresome, relatability scaffolding previously applied to this Nintendo juggernaut. Judging by the first instalment, the decision makers behind that film were convinced that audiences wouldn't be able to swallow the adventures of a stout, video game plumber unless the character overcame some trivial personal difficulties within your standard ('90s vintage) big screen adaptation. This galactic chapter though dispenses with similarly shallow attempts at insight, the film constructed as a rolling incident machine that does a better - or perhaps just more honest - job of repeatedly showcasing forty-odd years of iterative, Kyoto design. In that sense, Illumination and Nintendo's film is completely given over to the presentation of obsessively layered and rendered landscapes that suggest some, faltering means of progression. So, the industrialised swamp of Peter Jackson's Isengard is transformed into a volcanic theme park that sears cheering lackeys to the bone; a repulsive golden casino - perhaps a nod to Nintendo the company's beginnings as a playing card manufacturer - becomes an Escher etching that can be traversed in every, counter-intuitive direction. Plotted to be little more than diverting noise, this Mario Galaxy simulates something of the proudly illogical progression seen in the vintage video games that inspired it. A mode of communication in which relentless invention trumps a more careful means of ascension.
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