The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s Best Character Needs a Spinoff (And They Can Pull From Some Excellent Games)

Since The Super Mario Bros. Movie grossed $1.3 billion at the global box office in 2023, Illumination and Nintendo have been quietly constructing a shared animated universe. The blueprint has been visible from the start, as the first film established Kong Island and gave Donkey Kong (voiced by Seth Rogen) a prominent supporting role. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie took the franchise’s connective ambitions considerably further, with a cameo from DK, appearances by the Pkmin and R.O.B, and the introduction of Fox McCloud (voiced by Glen Powell) as a co-lead with his own backstory flashback. On the Super Mario front of the franchise, the sequel expanded the core cast with Princess Rosalina (voiced by Brie Larson) and Yoshi (voiced by Donald Glover), the latter of which could arguably carry his own spinoff production.

Yoshi is one of the most recognizable figures in Nintendo’s entire library, and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie understood that weight. The film gave Yoshi a full origin, while also translating the character’s partnership with the Mario brothers with precision. Plus, while Nintendo and Illumination were considering an unknown voice for the green dinosaur, due to his limited vocabulary, Glover pitched himself directly to Chris Pratt for the role. The resulting character has been widely celebrated by fans and critics alike, which is something Nintendo and Illumination can bank on, especially with a major star such as Glover attached. In addition, Yoshi’s video games have a unique visual and tonal identity that could make his film look entirely distinct from anything the animated Mario series has produced so far.

A Yoshi Movie Could Look Quite Different From The Super Mario Bros. Movie

While the mainline Mario platformers have generally maintained a consistent visual language across console generations, the Yoshi franchise has treated each new installment as an opportunity to experiment with a completely different artistic medium. For instance, Yoshi’s Woolly World, released for the Wii U in 2015, constructed its entire world from knitted yarn, transforming enemies, platforms, and backgrounds into textile sculptures. Every element of that game’s design also reinforced the same handcrafted logic, with Yoshi unraveling enemies, stitching platforms together, and navigating environments that looked physically assembled by crosssticthes.

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Yoshi’s Crafted World, released for the Nintendo Switch in 2019, applied the same philosophy to corrugated cardboard, repurposed household objects, and painted backdrops that resembled an elaborate diorama built on a living room floor. That tradition continues with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, the ninth main installment in the Yoshi series, scheduled for release on Nintendo Switch 2 on May 21, 2026. The game takes place inside a living encyclopedia called Mr. E, and features a distinct art style resembling paper illustration, with low frame-rate animations, painterly textures on Yoshi and the creatures he encounters, and pencil-esque outlines on distant objects.

A theatrical Yoshi film that adopted a similar approach would offer audiences a completely different aesthetic than The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Rather than the polished, effects-driven spectacle of Illumination’s space adventure, a Yoshi production built around the series’s handmade visual traditions could deliver something closer to a feature-length stop-motion film. Nintendo and Illumination seem to be open to experimenting with different languages, as Fox’s backstory is depicted in 2D animation inspired by anime. So, if Yoshi gets a (deserving) spinoff movie, it would be better for the studios to lean into the tactile nature of Yoshi’s best video games.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is currently playing in theaters. 

Do you think a standalone Yoshi film could work as an animated production with a handcrafted visual style? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!