Mario must use what he’s been taught to defeat the almighty Donkey Kong, and giant gorilla who is determined on pounding him to a pulp. Despite being flung across the stage and pummeled several times, he knows he must get back up, because if he doesn’t, the undefeated Bowser will take over the Mushroom Kingdom, and Mario may never see his brother again.

After much anticipation, Illumination Entertainment’s Mario movie has finally been released to the public, and much to Nintendo’s relief, it was a resounding success, grossing $400 million dollars worldwide in one week.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a fantastical combination of animation, acting, scriptwriting, and music. The movie consistently blows the audience’s minds in how its animated, rivaling the likes of the usual animation juggernauts. Its music is an amazing mix of licensed and original music, and its celebrity casting is surprisingly great.

The plot revolves around Mario, a wannabe plumber trying to make it big to the big city, New York, alongside his brother Luigi. But upon accidentally running into a mysterious green pipe, they get transported to the Mushroom Kingdom, and get pulled apart, as Luigi is instead sent to Bowser’s castle, where he’s imprisoned and held hostage. Mario must team up with Princess Peach and Donkey Kong to attempt to defeat the Koopa King before he takes over the entire land.

Illumination’s last movie was Minions: Rise of Gru, a mediocre film, only perpetuating the studio’s legacy of producing lukewarm movies at best, and glorified garbage at worst. Due to this, audiences were shocked to see that the next movie to hit theaters would be one of, if not, the best movie produced by the animation studio. The last three movies produced before the Mario movie, were Minions: Rise of Gru, Sing 2, and The Secret Life of Pets 2. The latter two generating a little over $400 million USD worldwide, with the former returning over $900 million USD, however, being widely considered by general audiences to be an unnecessary sequel made only to appease the children in the theaters.

In its opening week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie generated over $400 million dollars, and as of April 25th, it has already generated an additional $470 million dollars, earning awards for the highest-grossing film of 2023. This was the best opening weekend for any animated movie, and the most successful weekend for a video game adaptation. The movie has already reached over $1 billion USD, strongly outplaying other movies released recently, such as Evil Dead Rise, which, although it has already reached $90 million dollars worldwide in its first week, pales in comparison to Mario, which generated over twice as much money in the same amount of time.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie sets a new standard for modern cinema, kicking out generic superhero movies and helping usher in a new age for video game adaptations. In the last year alone,  four video-game adaptation products have been released, and each one of them has been a major success among audiences. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, The Last of Us, and Mario have each been praised endlessly by their fans for being accurate depictions of their favorite characters, and proper adaptations of the stories they love.

The Last of Us, starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, has been the most successful thus far, being rated 8.8/10 on IMDb, and according to Rotten Tomatoes’ “The Best New TV & Streaming Shows of 2023 Ranked”, it is ranked as #10, beating out The Mandalorian, Star Wars’ most successful TV show in the last decade

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a delightful surprise from a movie studio accustomed to mediocrity. A movie which not only blew away fans worldwide, but also set a new standard not just for video game adaptations, but also for any future animated movies, raising the stakes for Sony’s upcoming Across the Spider-Verse: Part 1, Pixar’s Elemental, and Dreamwork’s Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.