Nintendo has always treated Mario a bit differently from most big entertainment franchises. While Hollywood loves lore, origin stories and multiverse-level backstory charts, Nintendo usually keeps things simple: here is Mario, here is the world, now go jump on stuff.
According to Shigeru Miyamoto, that was not accidental. Speaking in a joint media interview ahead of the Japanese premiere of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie on April 24, the Nintendo legend explained why the company stayed away from original feature films for so long.
The short version? Nintendo did not want movie lore to trap future game developers.
Miyamoto said Nintendo never really knows what kind of game it will want to make next. If characters are given very detailed official histories, those details can become creative baggage. He is fine with limitations that come from gameplay systems, but story rules are another thing entirely. For a company that has built decades of Mario games around play first and explanation later, that mindset checks out.
And honestly, bro, it makes sense. Mario has been a plumber, a doctor, a golfer, a kart racer, a footballer, an RPG hero, a party game menace and whatever else Nintendo needs him to be that year. If every game had to carefully obey a heavy canon timeline, the series might lose some of that chaotic flexibility that makes it work.
But the interesting part is that Nintendo’s attitude seems to be changing.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which debuted internationally on April 1 this year, is the sequel to 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. This new film apparently digs deeper into Princess Peach and reveals a major detail about her origins. We are not spoiling it here, because nobody likes kena spoiled before watching.
What matters is that Miyamoto confirmed this backstory was created for the movie, but Nintendo now considers it canon. He also suggested that future games will try to respect the character details established through the films as much as possible.
That is a pretty big deal. Princess Peach has been one of Nintendo’s most recognisable characters for decades, but her personal history has always been surprisingly loose. The games usually focus on the situation — Bowser, the Mushroom Kingdom, a new gimmick — rather than a fixed biography. Now, the movie side of Nintendo may actually influence the game side.
For Malaysian and SEA fans, this is worth watching closely. Nintendo games are already huge here, especially among Switch owners, families, collectors and long-time Mario fans who grew up with everything from the Game Boy to the Switch. If the films start shaping future games, then watching the movies is no longer just a casual cinema outing. It may become part of understanding where Nintendo’s biggest franchises are heading.
This also raises questions for the upcoming live-action The Legend of Zelda movie, which is planned for 2027. Zelda already has a much heavier relationship with lore than Mario, even if Nintendo has never treated its timeline like a strict anime continuity bible. If that movie introduces new twists, fans will definitely ask whether those ideas count in future games too.
The balance is tricky. Too much lore can make Nintendo’s worlds feel stiff. Too little, and fans who love characters like Peach, Rosalina, Link and Zelda may feel like the stories never truly grow. The sweet spot is probably somewhere in the middle: let the games stay playful, but give the characters enough emotional weight that their movies and games can feed into each other.
Nintendo has spent years proving that gameplay comes first. Now, with Mario movies becoming part of the bigger canon conversation, the company is testing whether story can level up without slowing the games down.
Source: Automaton Media