In a recent interview with Polygon to promote the release of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the site asked Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, about whether the wealth of cameos in the latest film could suggest a build-up toward a whole Nintendo universe, and with it the fan hope for a Super Smash Bros.-style crossover movie. And while he’s obviously not ruling anything out, it seems that’s certainly not the plan at the moment.
2023’s first Super Mario Bros. Movie, while a saccharine bombardment of fan-service, featured little outside of the core Mario world beyond his nemesis of old, Donkey Kong. This year’s sequel, however, reaches beyond, into Nintendo’s wider universe, for some cameos. With the addition of not only a range of new Mario characters including Yoshi, Wart and Rosalina, but also Star Fox‘s Fox McCloud and Miyamoto’s obsession, the Pikmin, many began to hope this could all be setting up a full-on Nintendo Cinematic Universe, and with it the hope of an Avengers-style Super Smash Bros. crossover movie featuring all its most famous games coming together. And why not? It’d certainly be…interesting to see what would happen if you combined Mario, Link, Zelda, Samus and Kirby into one ludicrous movie. However, it seems that’s not yet in the cards.
Polygon brought up this notion of an NCU to Miyamoto and Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri, and asked whether this was the direction in which things were heading. “Right off the bat,” replied Miyamoto, “I’ll say that unlike something like Super Smash Bros., I don’t think you’ll have a situation [where] all Nintendo characters would be joining.” Explaining the appearance of his favorite imaginary pets he added, “As you know, my rule is that Pikmin can appear in any [Nintendo] series.”
It seems the suggestions for including a wider range of characters were primarily coming from Illumination. Miyamoto says the studio was often asking, “What about this character? What about that character?” He described the decision to include the cameos featured in the movie as a way to “add a little bit of spice, a little bit of secret cameos here and there.”
Can we expect more of this, then? “I think there might be introductions of characters like this potentially in the future,” is all the legendary developer would say.
Meledandri doubled down, explaining that there’s no ten-year grand plan for the franchise, with instead the movies being thought about more specifically, the creators asking themselves “what would be fun within a certain scene in the movie,” which certainly explains the frenetic, exhausting nature of the films.
As for the appearance of Super Mario Bros. 2 characters like Birdo and Wart in Galaxy, Miyamoto explains that he just loves those long-abandoned characters.