Ordinarily, we don’t receive new information about a movie when there’s one week left before its premiere date. By that point, all the major cast members have been revealed, all the trailers are out there, and usually, the pre-release red carpet sneak preview party has already happened somewhere in LA. But The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is going to be a bit…unconventional.
Five days before its April 1 release, Illumination and Universal chose to reveal a supporting cast member that hadn’t been in any of the trailers. It’s a real curveball, as it’s not even a character from the Mario games. Actor Glen Powell (Top Gun Maverick, Running Man) has been cast as Fox McCloud, central character of Nintendo’s Star Fox series and not somebody who traditionally tangles with Bowser Jr.
This does NOT appear to have been a spur-of-the-moment decision. Powell was ready with a zany announcement clip he uploaded to his own Insta this morning. The guy is in a Fox MCloud jacket jumping around to the 8-bit Super Mario Bros theme. Probably took some time to set up. They always intended to reveal Fox just before the movie came out, no earlier.
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It was revealed earlier that ROB the Robot is in the movie, who is also technically a Star Fox character in addition to a peripheral designed to get mid-80s Americans to buy video game consoles again. As left field as this announcement is, we might’ve been able to figure it out before it was SPELLED out.
Powell joins a bulging cast list that now includes Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Jack Black as Bowser, Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach, Keegan-Michael Key as Toad, Brie Larson as Rosalina, Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr, Luis Guzman as Wart and Issa Rae as Honey Queen, leader of the Honey Hive Galaxy. And don’t forget Donald Glover as Yoshi!
In my opinion no one asked for, it might’ve been better to keep this one under the “M”-badged hat until opening day, to give folks something to talk about. Because I doubt this movie has a cameo even crazier than Fox in its back pocket, unless there’s a post-credits sequence teasing an animated Smash Bros adaption.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opens in theaters April 1.
