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Top Ten Lists

Top Ten John Williams Musical Themes

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There probably is no other person in the business of filmmaking that has more control over setting the tone than the one who composes the music.  From the beginning of cinema itself, music has been an integral part of the experience.  Silent pictures always had to have accompanying music, often played live in the theaters themselves either on a piano or a pipe organ, depending on how grand a theater was.  Eventually, Hollywood figured out how to put a synchronized soundtrack on the film itself, and this changed the way music was used to accompany a film even further.  One of the few benefits that Hollywood got out of the wartime period was that many of the great European composers of the time had moved to America to escape the rise of Fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust.  This included legendary maestros like Franz Waxman (Bride of Frankenstein), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Max Steiner (Gone With the Wind).  These artists helped to elevate the artform of composing music for film, and suddenly the most popular orchestral music was no longer being written for the concert halls, but rather for the movie palaces.  These composers helped to raise the bar of music in cinema, and many other great composers would follow in their footsteps.  Future film score composers like Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Maurice Jarre, and Ennio Morricone would continue to define the high standard of musical composition over the years, but perhaps no other film composer has left a bigger mark over the industry than a boy from Long Island named John Williams.  While John Williams certainly had the talent to become a legendary composer, he also had the benefit of becoming friends with Hollywood power players like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  In a career that spanned over 50 years, Williams would define the standard of epic musical scores in the Blockbuster era of Hollywood.  No other film composer has won as many Oscars as him (5 total) nor have received as many nominations.  He is quite simply in a league of his own, and yet he still retains a low profile, choosing to let his music speak for him.  It’s hard to encapsulate what John Williams means for the history of Hollywood as a whole, but with this Top Ten List, I hope to spotlight the individual pieces of music he wrote that have come to define his legacy.  So, here are the Top Ten Musical Themes Composed by John Williams.

10.

“SETTING THE TRAP” from HOME ALONE (1990)

There probably is no stronger example of a composer’s influence on a film than John Williams work on the Chris Columbus holiday comedy Home Alone.  Williams took what was an ambitious but still fairly small scale Christmas movie and made it feel like an epic.  The music of Home Alone is just as iconic as the comedic pratfalls that play out throughout the film, and the two often go hand to hand.  In many cases, a lot of the music in this movie have become standards on Christmas time playlists.  There of course is the slightly ominous opening credits theme as well as the rambunctious theme that plays over the McCallister family’s mad scramble to get to their airplane in time.  But for me the peak of Williams’ work on this film is the scene when Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) rushes home to set traps for the Wet Bandits, who are planning to break in and rob him.  The music of this scene just feels so grand, and it’s a perfect tone setter for the mayhem that is about to follow in the movie’s third act.  Williams also brilliantly keeps it sounding very Christmas-y, with the jingling of the choir bells underscoring the main theme.  In the movie itself, this music has an excellent interlude, as it builds from an actual church choir singing “O Holy Night.”  In the film, when Kevin leaves his pew in the church and begins to run, Williams hits you with that cacophony of a transition from the choir to the score, and it makes that moment feel so grandiose.  Really, nothing about the movie really called for a musical score this ambitious, and yet John Williams over-delivered as usual.  The whole score is beautiful, including the original choir piece, “Somewhere in My Memory,” but it’s the piece called “Setting the Trap” that really shows what John Williams was capable of as a composer; elevating a moment in a movie to iconic status.  It would be something that he would continue to deliver on in every movie he worked on over his multi-decade career.

9.

“CATCH ME IF YOU CAN” from CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (2002)

It should be noted that John Williams wasn’t just a great composer when it came to big sweeping musical moments.  He could also write subtler pieces as well that were just as brilliant.  The best example of this is the jazzy sounding main theme from the Spielberg thriller Catch Me if You Can.  This theme which plays over the opening credits is a beautiful self contained piece that definitely feels like a throwback to 1960’s Hollywood, which matches the tone of the movie itself perfectly, given that it very much is an ode to the era.  With this, it does feel like Williams returning a bit to his roots as a composer.  Before he was an award winning movie composer, Williams started off his music career as a jazz club pianist.  This was how he paid his way through college while attending UCLA and it eventually led to him getting musical internships in Hollywood that would eventually lead him to where he is now.  With Catch Me if You Can, he finally was able to tap into that past life working in the jazz clubs of LA during the 1950’s and 60’s and put it into one of his own musical scores.  This main theme is a beautiful tone setter for the film, which becomes a fun little cat and mouse game between Leonardo DiCaprio’s chameloen like con artist and Tom Hank’s hardlined government agent.  The musical piece is playful, but with a sense of underlying danger beneath it.  The music also goes perfectly with the animated opening credit sequence (a rarity for a film by Spielberg).  The rest of the musical score is standard stuff for Williams, doing a great job supporting the tone of the film.  But it’s this opening title theme that really stands out and is a great example of John Williams showing his versatility as a composer.  When you first hear this piece in the movie, you know that you’re in for a fun ride.  And it’s also a prime example of a composer never loosing the lessons that he learned in his early years when he was a struggling artist.

8.

“MAIN TITLES” from JAWS (1975)

John Williams had been working around Hollywood for a while before he had met a young rising filmmaker named Steven Spielberg.  In fact, by the time the two had met, Williams already had an Oscar on his shelf for his score adaptation of the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971).  But it would be that fateful joining of forces between Spielberg and Williams that would forever change the course of each other’s careers, and it all started with their work on the movie Jaws.  Spielberg tasked Williams with writing the music for his movie about a killer great white shark, and when Williams presented Steven with the first few notes that would become the Jaws theme, the director thought it was a joke at first.  It was just two notes, repeated over and over again, with building tempo.  But this was the brilliance behind what Williams envisioned.  Williams subtle but chilling score is meant to invoke a creature lurking beneath the ocean waves, searching for it’s next victim.  The faster the tempo builds, the closer you know that that the monster is to attacking.  Of course Williams fleshed out his theme to be more than just those two notes, with more and more instruments like horns and strings building to a cacophany of sound by the time the shark attack happens.  But what still sticks in your mind through it all is those original two notes, like a heartbeat that matches ones own thrilling reaction to watching the movie.  Spielberg of course warmed to Williams’s score, and indeed he needed to rely upon it a lot given the struggles his production team had with the mechanical shark they used in the film.  Because the shark only has a scant few moments of screen time, it’s the musical score that does most of the work making it’s presence felt throughout the movie.  John would of course win his second Oscar for this film, and his first for writing an original piece of music.  The Jaws theme is still one of the most instantly recognizable in movie history (which is true for a lot of Williams musical scores) and one of the most imitated as well.  Of course, it’s that original piece that still resonates today, and continues to make us fear going back in the water.

7.

“MAIN TITLE MARCH” from SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978)

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when super hero movies were not considered viable at the box office.  The old Hollywood thinking was that no one was interested in seeing comic book characters on the big screen.  That of course would change with the arrival of Richard Donner’s 1978 big screen adaptation of Superman.  This film would become the gold standard for many years of how to do a comic book movie right, with it’s then ground breaking visual effects and earnest performances from the likes of Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder, bringing their comic book characters fully off the page and into real life.  But, perhaps more than anything, it was John Williams’ score that really sold home the belief that a man could fly.  Williams’ score throughout the movie is thrilling and epic in all the best ways, but it’s with his introductory overture that Williams really works his magic.  His “Superman March” is an iconic piece of work, perfectly setting the tone for the adventure that we are about to watch.  It’s Williams at his most operatic as well, really emphasizing that we are about to see something truly beyond belief.  It’s placement in the film couldn’t be more perfect either, playing over the now iconic opening credits, with the names of the actors and crew members flying across the screen through the vastness of space.  Williams’ Superman theme would go on to set the bar high for all the comic book movies to follow, and only a few have ever come close to matching what Williams accomplished with his music here (examples being Danny Elfman’s Batman theme and Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme).  In fact, the music still follows the character of Superman to this day.  When James Gunn made his own Superman movie last year, he passed on having a new theme written for the character, and instead incorporated a new variation of John Williams’ original theme.  That’s when you know you’ve made an iconic piece of music, when a filmmaker has the opportunity to replace your theme with something new, and chooses not to, knowing well that you can’t do better than perfection.

6.

“MAIN THEME” from SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993)

Writing music for a movie with this kind of heavy subject matter was never going to be easy.  Steven Spielberg took on the daunting task of adapting the Thomas Keneally book of the same name that told the story of Oskar Schindler, an war profiteer who managed to save the lives of over a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust.  For the first time, Hollywood was tackling one of the worst crimes against humanity on the big screen and doing so in a stark and realistic way.  Spielberg, a Jewish American himself, had a lot of weight put on his shoulders to get this story right and fully pay honor to the survivors of this horrific moment in human history.  When it came to having music written for this film, Spielberg put his trust in his old friend John Williams.  Williams has never identified with any religious affiliation himself, but he has collaborated with many artists over the years who were from the Jewish community, including many people who either survived or fled the Holocaust.  One artist that he had gotten to know over the years was violinist Itzhak Perlman, the son of Polish Jews who fled to British Palestine before the German invasion.  Perlman had become world reknowned solo violinist, often playing many classical works along with pieces written within his own ethnic Jewish community.  Williams was looking for inspiration for his musical score for this film, one that would sound like it was representative of the Polish Jews depicted in the film itself, and Perlman’s upbringing would make him  a valuable consultant on William’s orchestrations.  Williams’ score is certainly a melancholy piece, emphasizing the tragedy that befell the Jewish people during the Holocaust, but underneath it, there’s still a stirring of hope, emphasizing the perseverance of the Jewish people, even through the worst suffering imaginable.  As part of the recording of the film’s score, Williams had Itzhak himself perform the violin solos, which are beautifully stirring on their own.  It may be a much less rousing piece of music compared to Williams’ other scores, but his Schindler’s List theme is still a brilliant work of musical composition, offering a profound and fitting tribute to those who were lost and those who managed to survive to tell their stories.

5.

“DUEL OF THE FATES” from STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)

Of course John Williams’ most career defining work would be the many amazing musical themes he wrote across the whole Star Wars franchise.  Spanning 9 films and over forty years, John Williams was the man responsible for creating the soundscape of that galaxy far, far away.  So, it may be a little surprising that one of his greatest themes in all those years was in one of the worst film of that franchise.  Suffice to say, The Phantom Menace is a very flawed movie, and one that sharply divides the Star Wars fan community.  But across all the people who love or hate the film, the one consensus that everyone agrees on is that John Williams’ musical score for the film is still amazing.  And one musical track in particular, “Duel of the Fates” is considered to be among the very best pieces in the franchise as a whole.  It’s another example of John Williams over-delivering.  The scene that this piece of music plays under is not exactly one of the most iconic in all of Star Wars.  It accompanies the fight between Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Darth Maul (Ray Park), which is a fine fight scene, but not among the greatest of all time in the series.  And yet John Williams makes this moment feel operatic with his music here.  The opening with the chanting choir particularly establishes this as something grand, and Williams just keeps building the piece to some chilling levels of grandeur.  20th Century Fox certainly knew the power of this piece of music as well, and they put it out individually as a single as a way of building hype for the film and it’s soundtrack.  There was even a promotional music video made for it aired on MTV’s Total Request Live series, showing just how respected John Williams was in the musical community that even the pop music world was paying tribute to him.  The movie may be a let down for some, but John Williams’ musical score certainly lived up to the hype.  It had a companion piece in Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) called “Battle of the Heroes,” but “Duel of the Fates” was still undeniably the highlight of the prequel era of Star Wars, and proof that John Williams still had the magic touch after so many years.

4.

“SLAVE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE” from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984)

If there was a series that John Williams was renowned for creating iconic music for as much as Star Wars, it would be the Indiana Jones series.  Just like the movies themselves, his scores for the Jones movies are incredible throwbacks to old Hollywood, with Williams taking especially heavy inspiration from the work of Max Steiner, who wrote many of the great action scores of the classic era.  While the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), is a great iconic score on it’s own, I feel like it is outdone by the absolute brilliance of the score that came after with the sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.   From beginning to end, Temple of Doom isn’t just the strongest musical score of the series, but probably one of the most complete scores that Williams has ever written across his entire career.  There is not a single weak track on that entire soundtrack, and many of it’s themes are still among the best things that Williams has ever written.  The best piece of them all is a track called “Slave Children’s Crusade,” which plays over the scene where Indiana Jones helps to save the enslaved children held captive in the mines under the titular Temple of Doom.  Even more so than the iconic “Raider’s March” that acts as Indiana Jones theme music, I think that this is the piece of music that defines what makes the Indiana Jones series as great as it is.  This is simply one of the best musical themes for a fight sequence ever composed.  The way it serves the story in the movie too is quite brilliant, with all the ups and down of the fight being felt within the music.  You also hear little references to other parts of the score depending on what’s going on in the fight itself, including parts of Short Round’s theme, Mola Ram’s theme, and even a little bit of the Raider’s March.  This music also does a great job of building up the mythos of Indiana Jones himself, emphasizing his own presence as a crusader in this moment.  It’s still a chillingly cool moment when you see Harrison Ford’s Indy appear backlit out of the mist in the caves with this music playing underneath.  In a score that’s full of some of John Williams’ best overall work in general, “Slave Children’s Crusade” stands out as something truly special and unmatched.

3.

“FLYING” from E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)

Another case of John Williams over-delivering.  Steven Spielberg’s charming coming-of-age tale about a boy befriending an alien from another world would have almost certainly connected well with audiences.  But when you add John Williams to the mix writing the music for the film, you have the makings of an all-time classic.  Williams’ stirring score for the movie is a brilliantly tender musical score that really emphasizes the child like wonder of the adventure that these characters go through in the movie.  This is certainly true with the theme called “Flying.”  Variations of this theme can be heard throughout the whole film, as it is the defining piece of the whole movie, but it hit’s it high point in the scene where E.T. uses his powers to make the bicycle of his friend Elliot (Henry Thomas) fly off the ground.  This is the famous scene where the two fly past the moon in the sky, an image so iconic that it now serves as the logo for Spielberg’s own production company, Amblin’ Pictures.  It’s a pretty grand feat when John Williams can successfully capture the sensation of flying through just music alone.  When you hear the piece hit that crescendo moment where the strings build to the moment of take off and then go into that main theme, it’s just a magical moment.  It’s easy to see why this was one of John Williams Oscar wins (his fourth in fact) and you can’t imagine the movie E.T. without Williams music as a part of the experience.  The “Flying” theme would also be a major part of the epic finale piece that ends the movie, played during the moment when E.T.’s ship closes it’s doors, with him and Elliot possibly seeing each other for the last time ever.  Not only did John Williams create a piece of music that could make us feel in awe as we watched a bicycle fly, but he could also use that same music to make us cry as two friends say goodbye forever.  That’s what makes Williams so special as a composer; that mastery he has in controlling the way we feel while watching a movie.  E.T. certainly wasn’t the only musical score he wrote that could do that, but it may have been the best example of what he could do, and it’s still one of his most iconic pieces.

2.

“WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK” from JURASSIC PARK (1993)

The year of 1993 was trully a marquee year for both Steven Spielberg and John Williams.  If they only had the movie Schindler’s List alone released that year, it still would’ve been a great year for both of them, and indeed Williams won his fifth and to date final Oscar for Schindler’s List, but the duo also had another all time classic come out in the same year.  Jurassic Park indeed is a movie that displays both Spielberg and Williams at their very best, showing just how fruitful their decades long partnership had been.  John Williams music at this point has made us travel to far flung galaxies, made us believe a man can fly, and defined the friendship between a young boy and extra-terrestrial life.  Now, Williams was about to make us gaze and awe and wonder as dinosaurs walk the Earth again.  “Welcome to Jurassic Park” is perhaps John Williams at his most symphonic.  The theme plays under the moment when Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern’s characters spot their first sightings of a dinosaur.  Spielberg brilliantly doesn’t show you what they are seeing at first, instead letting their look of amazement set the moment and then the moment we finally see the dinosaur (a brachiosaurus to be exact), that’s when John Williams’ music kicks in and it makes the scene feel all the more special.  Williams perfectly captures that moment of disbelief, that we’ve seen the impossible become possible, and it’s played with an almost comforting tone.  Of course, in the typical John Williams style, the music keeps building and building towards a crescendo and that’s where the main theme of Jurassic Park hits it’s high point.  Of course, the rest of the movie then shows us how dangerous a place the park can be, but in that first moment of wonder, Williams certainly makes us feel the majesty of what Jurassic Park could be.  It’s like he was trying to reach for something akin to Beethoven’s Pastoral rather than just the kind of music you would typically write for a theme park.  Even Disneyland doesn’t present itself to guests in such a profound way at it’s main gates.  Spielberg and Williams together have given the world some of the greatest music ever written, and Jurassic Park’s main theme perhaps it the greatest proof of their collaborative magic overall.

1.

“MAIN TITLE” from STAR WARS EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE (1977)

Of all the things that have defined John Williams career as a film composer, none stand out more than his work on the Star Wars films.  His pieces from across all the films including the Cantina theme, the “Imperial March,” the Han and Leia love theme, and the aforementioned “Duel of the Fates.”  But none of those would have become classics had John Williams not set the tone perfectly with the very first notes of the score for the first movie.  Fans of Star Wars everywhere remember how iconic those first few moments were when they witnessed this opening for the first time.  First the 20th Century Fox studio logo with the iconic fanfare, and then 10 seconds of silence as the words, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” appear on the screen. And then the Star Wars logo flashes instantly on screen with the blare of Williams’ blast of an opening note.  And as the scroll of the prologue text unfolds on screen, Williams’ iconic main theme plays out, perfectly setting the tone for what’s to follow.  It could be said that cinematic empire that is Star Wars was built on the foundation of that crucial opening scene, and John Williams was a critical part of making it work.  For a while, George Lucas was uncertain that his space opera would actually come together.  The shooting off the film was not exactly going smoothly for the still untested young filmmaker, and there were plenty of doubts rumbling through 20th Century Fox at the time that it would turn into a financial disaster.  But, Lucas managed to save his film in the editing room, and a crucial final piece would be having John Williams there to make the film feel grandiose in the final product.  For Williams, he found inspiration in the music of composer Igor Stravinsky, a composer who helped to redefine orchestral music in the 20th century with pieces like The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.  In Stravinsky’s brass heavy musical pieces, he found the kind of soundscape that would fit perfectly in an adventure set across the reach of space and interplanetary battles.  And with that huge blast of an opening note, Williams helps the movie announce itself to the world in a big way.  When AFI put together their list of the Top 25 movie soundtracks of all time, it was a pretty unanimous choice to pick John William’s Star Wars as number one.  Also, it wasn’t the only John Williams score on that list too, which tells you a lot.  Even after all the many brilliant scores he’s written for other movies, I don’t think he’d be insulted if you called him the “Star Wars” guy, because he certainly is proud of the work he’s done in the series as a whole.  It’s a central part of all the concerts he’s conducted over the years, so it shows that he himself holds a special place in his heart for the work he did in those films.

Williams’ career is unparalleled as a film composer.  No other score writer has had the same level of consistent success as he has had.  A lot of that has to do with knowing the right people at the right time, and you can certainly not go wrong with having friends like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas by your side.  But John Williams has the talent to back up his place in the history of film.  Few other composers have written as many iconic pieces of work; the kind of music that you can easily identify within just a couple of notes.  Of course he’s known best for Star Wars, but he’s also the mastermind behind the iconic themes of the Indiana Jones and Harry Potter franchises as well.  After writing the score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), John Williams went into a semi-retirement.  His days of studio work are over, but he’s still open to writing music as special favors for friends, and indeed he has a new score coming out this Summer for the movie Disclosure Day (2026), Steven Spielberg’s new sci-fi thriller, continuing their long time partnership for yet another film.  At the ripe old age of 94 as of this writing, John Williams has more than earned a well deserved retirement, but it’s still nice to know that he still has that creative spark still in him, and that he’s willing to continue to compose new music even in his old age.  We’ve been more than blessed to have had someone of his caliber writing the soundtracks of our lives over these last 50 years.  It should also be noted that he hasn’t just composed for movies alone.  He’s also the guy who wrote the main theme of the Olympic Games that plays on the television broadcasts from NBC.  He also has composed unique pieces solely for orchestral concerts throughout the years, many of which he personally served as conductor for, which is another talent that he has.  There certainly are a lot of other great film composers who have worked throughout movie history, and many who are still leaving their mark on the industry today, and even they will tell you that John Williams is certainly in a class all his own.  Hopefully these picks I made for this list give you a good idea of just how prolific and versatile a composer he was and continues to be.

Tinseltown Throwdown

Tinseltown Throwdown – The Prince of Egypt vs. The Ten Commandments

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There probably is no story in scripture that lends itself more to the cinematic experience than that of the Exodus.  Well, that certainly is what Hollywood believes.  The story of the Moses and his liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt has all the hallmarks of a great epic adventure; charismatic lead hero, exotic locales, and the might of God manifesting through grandiose miracles from heaven.  While it all has the makings of a great movie plotline, it’s also important to know that the story of the Exodus is a cornerstone text in three of the world’s largest and most important religions.  Bringing these kinds of stories to the big screen takes a certain amount of care and consideration.  While biblical stories have been a part of filmmaking since the inception of the artform, they particularly became a big deal in the post-war years.  With the development of newer technologies like widescreen and stereo sound making it more possible to do large scale epic filmmaking, Hollywood was in search for stories that had the grandiosity to match the expanded limits of the technology, and the ones from the Bible fit the bill.  It also came at a time when evangelical religious movements were on the rise in America, and they saw the power of cinema as a useful tool in spreading the teachings of the Bible.  While many filmmakers working in Hollywood were for the most part secular in their work, even on adapting stories from the Bible, there were others who made a concerted effort to use their movies to push forward biblical teachings.  One of those filmmakers was Cecil B. DeMille, one of the most powerful and respected filmmakers in the business.  DeMille’s career went all the way back to the early days of Hollywood, directing his first film in 1914.  He would be one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the ones who created the Oscars) and he directed 81 movies over 50 years.  He was also a controversial figure in Hollywood, being an ardent supporter of the blacklist.  Even still, no one doubted his skill as a filmmaker, and no other movie displayed that more than his own adaptation of the biblical Exodus story, The Ten Commandments (1956).

DeMille’s 1956 version of The Ten Commandments, would actually be his second attempt at adapting the Exodus story, as he had already made the film before in 1923.  While there are some parallels between the two versions, the 1923 Ten Commandments actually only uses the biblical tale as half the film, with the second half devoted to a modern day set morality tale in which the Commandments themselves play a part.  In the 30 years between DeMille’s two films of the same name, the director had gained a lot more clout as a filmmaker and he was determined to use that to make the Biblical movie to outshine them all.  Unbeknownst to him at the time, the latter Ten Commandments would be his swan song as a director as the then 74 year old filmmaker would see his health decline in the aftermath of making the film, passing away only 3 short years later.  Despite the grueling undertaking that went into the making of the film, the results speak for themselves.  When people think of biblical epics, this is likely going to be one of the first movies to come to mind.  Everything about the movie is grand in scale, with unparalleled production values that still impress today, especially with the exterior and interior sets.  And for the next thirty years, it would set a gold standard for how to adapt a biblical story to the big screen, especially for the story of the Exodus.  But, in 1998, a newly formed animation studio saw the Exodus story as potential for their first big feature film.  Dreamworks Pictures had only just formed in 1994 and they were already aiming to take on Disney as the dominant force in the animation industry, with former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg heading the animation department.  He and his studio partners Steven Spielberg and David Geffen picked the story of Moses as their first animated feature, and their aim was to help bring a new modern sensibility to this 3,000 year old tale.  Of course, they had to rise out of the shadow of the DeMille classic and that was no easy feat.  But The Prince of Egypt became a classic in it’s own right after it first premiere, becoming the first non-Disney animated film to cross the $100 million mark at the box office, and also winning an Oscar for Best Original Song.  Both films take very different approaches to telling the same biblical story and it’s interesting seeing how both reflect the different times in which they were made with regards to both filmmaking and religion.

“Tell me this Moses.  Why is it that every time you start something, I’m the one who ends up in trouble.”

One of the biggest things that the two movies differ on is their approach to the character of Moses.  They both take on the character from the same starting point, which in fact differs greatly from the original biblical text.  While the Bible does state that Moses was raised as an Egyptian after his Hebrew mother sent him away for his own protection during a purge of newborn children ordered by the Pharoah, it remains vague about who ended up raising him.  The movies, however, state that Moses was not only raised in an Egyptian household, but in the royal court of the Pharoah as a Prince.  This interpretation mainly comes from the 1949 fictionalized novelization of the biblical story from Dorothy Clarke Wilson titled Moses, The Prince of Egypt.  Cecil B. DeMille clearly drew inspiration from this re-telling of the story, along with many other sources, to help flesh out Moses’ backstory.  It’s one thing for Moses to be an instrument for God’s liberation of the Hebrews from bondage, but it makes the transformation all the more interesting to see him begin as someone who was so close to the Egyptian throne to begin with.  Both Ten Commandments and Prince of Egypt use this as the starting point, but where they differ very much comes down to the casting of the character.  Charlton Heston had long been a favorite for the role since DeMille had work with him in the Oscar winning The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).  The statuesque actor had all the gravitas and presence to bring this larger than life character faithfully to the big screen, and he also shared DeMille’s sense of religious fervor.  For the role, Heston actually had two roles to play; one as Moses the Prince and the other as Moses the Prophet.  The latter is the performance that most people are familiar with, showing Heston at his most theatrical.  Indeed, one of the things that unfortunately has not aged well over the years is the style of performances in The Ten Commandments.    Most of the actors in the movie are hamming it up considerably in their roles, including Heston.  Some performances fair better than others, but it’s clear that DeMille was still directing his actors like he was during the silent era.  For Heston, his performance still remains powerful, but his best moments occur before he goes big as the Prophet Moses; showing more subtlety when he’s playing the Prince.  Even still, he does carry some of the film’s grandest moments, especially in the parting of the Red Sea scene.

“Let my people go!”

For the animation medium, Dreamworks needed to find the right kind of actor who could bring Moses to life purely through his voice alone.  They ended up landing on Val Kilmer, who had never delivered a voice over role before.  Kilmer was already a leading man in Hollywood by this point, having just recently put in his time as Batman in Batman Forever (1995).  However, taking on a role as iconic as Moses would be risky for anyone, and Kilmer didn’t exactly leap to mind for most people.  But, Val proved that he was upped to the task, and in a way his vocal performance is one of the best parts of the film.  His performance feels remarkably natural, helping to make Moses feel like a true human individual, rather than the larger than life figure that Charlton Heston turns him into.  Kilmer’s Moses is far more soft spoken, which makes him in many ways more relatable and sympathetic.  While Heston’s Moses is going for theatrics, Kilmer’s is trying to create a better idea of what kind of person Moses would be.  There’s passion in his voice to be sure, but also a lot of heart, and Kilmer brings a lot of warmth to the character as a result.  The animators also do a great job of bringing Moses to life, complimenting Val’s vocal performance very well.  Like with Heston’s version, the animated Moses goes through a transformation, from manicured Prince to scraggly Prophet, and they both sport a similar look in the latter version with the long flowing Levite cloak.  It’s impressive knowing that this was the first animated film out of the gate for Dreamworks Animation, and sadly the start of an ever so short run with traditional animation before the success of Shrek (2001) killed it at the studio.  A lot of the reason why the animation looks so good is because Katzenberg managed to poach a lot of talent away from Disney when he left.  This included an animator named James Baxter, who previously animated characters like Belle, Rafiki, and Quasimodo at Disney.  Baxter’s contributions were especially critical in adding emotional acting into the animation of Moses throughout the film.  It’s also interesting to not that in both versions of the story, the voice of God is performed by the same actor who plays Moses, with both Heston and Kilmer pulling double duty in those two key roles.

Of course, as important as it is to get the character of Moses right in the story, it’s also important to make his adversary the Pharoah work as well on screen.  The Pharoah is never named in the Bible, but many scholars have theorized that the timeline of the Exodus lines up with the reign of Rameses II, the longest serving Pharoah in Egyptian history with an over 60 year rule.  Whether this is accurate to history or not, Rameses does make for an interesting counterpoint to Moses in both films.  But it is also interesting in how the two films differ in the dynamic between the characters.  In The Prince of Egypt, Rameses and Moses start of as loving brothers, with Moses often being the troublemaker that gets Rameses in hot water.  He’s voiced in the film by Ralph Fiennes, who does great job evolving Rameses from a loving older brother in the first half to a smiteful adversary in the second half.  Fiennes is no stranger to playing great cinematic villains, but Rameses is a more complex character than you would expect for a version of this story that is literally animated.  There’s regret in his vocal performance as he turns more venomous, hinting that a part of Rameses still wishes he could continue to love his brother even as this conflict drives them apart.  There’s a fantastic sequence of animation in the film where we see Rameses go through a whole range of emotions after Moses returns his royal sigil ring to him, signaling that their kinship has come to an end.  The way that Rameses goes from disappointment, to sadness, to pained turmoil and then ultimately vengeful hatred all through facial expression alone is a masterclass in animation, done by veteran animator Darlie Brewster.  But as strong as this version of Rameses is, there still nothing that matches the iconic work done by Yul Brynner in DeMille’s classic.  The version of Rameses in The Ten Commandments starts off as antagonistic to Moses from the get-go.  Rameses in this version is petty and smiteful from the beginning, and while it doesn’t offer the same kind of tragic arc that the animated version gives us, Brynner nevertheless makes Rameses an incredibly memorable villain.  His presence is a perfect counterpoint to Heston’s Moses, doing a whole lot more by never going over the top.  Brynner’s stoic demeanor makes his Rameses all the more intimidating, painting the character as far more tyrannical than he is in the animated version.  When you see him break and finally set the Hebrews free, it feels all the more triumphant in the film because of just how powerful we’ve seen him portrayed up to that point.

“There is one thing he cannot take away from you: your faith.  Believe, for we will see God’s wonders.”

One of the other major differences between the films is the fact that The Prince of Egypt is far more streamlined in it’s re-telling of the story than The Ten Commandments.  DeMille’s epic, like most other spectacles of the era, was produced as a Roadshow event picture, meaning it had an epic runtime of over 3 and a half hours with an Intermission.  Even with a story as monumental as the Exodus, 3 1/2 hours still gives you a lot of space to tell that story.  While Cecil B. DeMille does manage to use a lot of that runtime well, there are still moments when the movie lags, particularly in the dialog heavy parts.  Other epic movies of the era like Ben-Hur (1959) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) managed to make you forget about the lengthy runtimes by keeping things engaging and having scripts with a lot of witty, well written dialogue scenes.  Ten Commandments unfortunately is written in an old fashioned way, which makes you very well aware of how unnatural it all is, and that unfortunately causes you to feel the lengthy run time all the more.  The movie only picks up when we get to the iconic epic moments when DeMille can show off his skill at directing action.  By contrast, The Prince of Egypt manages to cover the same ground and do it all in less than half the time it takes The Ten Commandments to do it.  At a brisk 98 minutes, The Prince of Egypt manages to keep things moving by sticking to the essentials.  It does this by keeping the story focused on Moses.  Ten Commandments has numerous subplots going on alongside Moses’ story, some of which feel superfluous.  The characters of Joshua, Lillia, and Dathan for example are nowhere to be seen in Prince of Egypt, and neither is Rameses’ queen Nefetiri.  Nefetiri, played in Ten Commandments by actress Anne Baxter, is one of that film’s highlights because of Baxter’s campy over-the-top performance.  But, it is clear why Prince of Egypt chooses to exclude her, because she’s ultimately there to be the fire that fuels Moses and Rameses’ rivalry, which is not something that defines their relationship in this film.  Because of that change in the dynamic, The Prince of Egypt uses it’s time to flesh out other characters that didn’t get much to do in The Ten Commandments, like Moses’ true siblings Aaron and Miriam (voiced by Jeff Goldblum and Sandra Bullock) and his wife Tzipporah (voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer).

It’s also interesting that even with the length of time that The Ten Commandments has, it still rushes through some of the iconic moments in the Exodus story.  The 10 Plagues are surprisingly glossed over in the film, with only 3 actually shown on screen; the Nile water turning to blood, the fiery hail, and the angel of death.  The Prince of Egypt on the other hand not only shows every single plague, they also do so in a 2 1/2 minute song sequence.  That’s the other big difference between the movies; The Prince of Egypt is also a musical, very much in line with the Disney Renaissance era revival of the movie musical format.  While a lot of the songs (featuring lyrics written by Stephen Schwartz, the future creator of Wicked on Broadway) are pretty strong throughout, “The Plagues” is a particular highlight, and does what a lot of great musical storytelling can do which is to deliver a huge amount of story in a quick amount of time.  The animation in that sequence is also some of the best in the film, especially that iconic split screen between Moses and Rameses at the end of the song.  But, even as The Prince of Egypt uses it’s musical sequences to condense the story down to it’s bare essentials, it also speeds through moments that have more weight in the Ten Commandments.  While their Red Sea sequence is impressive, the version of the scene in DeMille’s film just feels more epic.  It perhaps has to do with the fact that the sequence involves physical actors contrasting with the visual effects.  The parting of the sea was a breakthrough moment for visual effects back in it’s day, winning the film an Oscar in that category.  While it’s easy to pick out the seams now, the effect still feels grandiose, and the movie allows for the scale to be felt.  The Ten Commandments was shot in the Vistavision process, the closest thing that the 1950’s had to what we know now as IMAX, so this was a sequence that demanded to be seen on the biggest possible screen.  In animation, this same sequence gets stylized to match the visual aesthetic of the film, and as a result it makes the sequence feel less tangible.  A lot of Ten Commandments appeal comes from the fact that a lot of the sets were really built to scale in the movie.  DeMille even went as far as to shot several sequences in the real Egypt.  And you definitely get a sense of wonder when you see the Exodus realized with a cast of literally thousands of extras.

“So it shall be written.  So it shall be done.”

There have been other adaptations of the Exodus story, including a rather boring one from Ridley Scott called Exodus: God and Kings (2014).  To date, the ones that are of any note are Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments and Dreamworks’ The Prince of Egypt.  Where DeMille’s epic film version excels is with it’s ambition.  It is quite literally one of the biggest and boldest movies ever made; a great final hurrah from one of Hollywood’s pioneers.  It does suffer from the fact that a lot of it’s elements (particularly the dialogue and some of the performances) have not aged well over the years.  Compare this with another Charlton Heston led epic movie, Ben-Hur.  Ben-Hur touches on religious themes too, but does so with subtlety in it’s performances and more natural sounding dialogue.  Ten Commandments looks amazing, but feels like a relic of it’s time because no one in it acts or sounds like real people.  Meanwhile, The Prince of Egypt does the best job it can to bring this story up to date with cinematic standards of today.  It’s animation is world class, and remarkably refined for a first feature from a newly formed studio.  It also gets the point of the story across much more efficiently.  What it ultimately comes down to in the long run is personal taste.  I get the feeling that more religious minded people may prefer The Ten Commandments, because it does come across like a cinematic version of a sermon at times.  And more secular audiences probably prefer The Prince of Egypt with it’s more universal themes that transcend the story’s religious roots.  The Ten Commandments stands as a more important part of movie history, but The Prince of Egypt is ultimately a better movie overall.  One thing that I especially like about the approach that Prince of Egypt represents is the fact that they treat the story of Moses as a very human story rather than a religious one.  At the end of the credits, the movie lists passages from the Bible, the Torah and the Koran all mentioning Moses as a key scriptural figure in all three religions.  It shows that they weren’t treating this movie as a tool for evangelizing their audience, but rather reminding us the importance of telling stories across generations that help to inspire harmony among all people.  DeMille wasn’t using his film to place one religion over another either, as he consulted many religious scholars across the spectrum of faith during the making of his film, but he was still ultimately making the movie for the purpose of instilling lessons from the bible on his audience.  The Ten Commandments is monumental, but also anchored by it’s own pious shortcomings, while The Prince of Egypt succeeds by accomplishing more through doing less.

“Look at your people, Moses.  They are free.”

Movie Reviews

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – Review

It’s strange to think that even just 10 years ago that it was considered cinematic suicide to make a movie based on video games.  Hollywood for many years before had tried to take their shot at capturing the zeitgeist that was the video game boom, but any attempt only resulted in colossal failure.  One of the earliest attempts was an adaptation of the Super Mario Brothers video games from Nintendo in 1993.  That film, starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper went completely bust at the box office and went on for years as being the cautionary tale that prevented movie studios from ever making a movie based on a video game ever again.  While there were some smaller attempts to bring video game movies to the big screen, especially in the horror genre like the Resident Evil series, the big studios pretty much refrained from ever trying to tackle video game adaptations again.  That was until the last few years, and specifically with the little blue blur that is Sonic the Hedgehog.  The Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) movie didn’t become a reality very easily, as it famously had to be put on hold and fixed in post after the negative reception to Sonic’s CGI model was shown in the first trailer.  In this case, the studio making the film (Paramount) learned a crucial lesson that when the audience asks for authenticity in the adaptation of their favorite video games, it’s better to take their inputs seriously.  Sonic’s new CGI model was made more in line with how he looks in the games and the troubled film managed to become a surprise hit, even before Covid began to shut everything down.  Since then, Sonic the Hedgehog has spawned a franchise of two more films (and a third one on the way), with each one becoming bigger than the last.  What was learned from the Sonic experience was that it was better for Hollywood to not try to force these game franchises to be more cinematic, but to instead embrace the wild and colorful aesthetics of the games that audiences already love.  And since then, video game movies have boomed and become a new craze in Hollywood.  The Sonic movies continue to do well, and just last year we saw a huge box office run for A Minecraft Movie (2025).  But as far as video game movies go, no one has represented the recent boom better than that lovable Italian plumber, Mario.

Nintendo partnered up with the wildly successful Illumination animation studio (the same people who brought us the Minions) to bring their flagship franchise to the big screen.  The match seemed pretty ideal.  The Mario Bros. games are bright and colorful with simple aesthetics that appeal to a broad audience, which is pretty much the in house style of Illumination as well.  What did surprise a lot of people, however, was the announcement of an all-star voice cast to play the roles of the iconic role of Mario and company.  Some of the casting made sense, like Charlie Day as Luigi and Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, but others left people scratching their heads; none more so than Chris Pratt cast in the role of Mario himself.  Pratt is no stranger to voice acting, with some standout performances in The Lego Movie (2014) and Pixar’s Onward (2020).  But he was certainly not what everyone expected when they thought of a voice for Super Mario himself.  Even still, the movie hit theaters in the Spring of 2023 and it shattered multiple records at the box office.  The movie would go on to gross over $1.5 billion worldwide, with a full third of that coming from the North American market alone, where it crossed the half billion mark.  With The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), Hollywood now could see that video game movies indeed had huge box office potential.  Pretty soon a huge number of other video game adaptations were put into production, including a long awaited live action adaptation of Nintendo’s other massive franchise, The Legend of Zelda.  But, the question for the Mario series was where it was going to go next.  The Mario game series itself has gone through numerous phases itself, as it’s expanded into so many different worlds ever since Mario jumped his way through the Mushroom Kingdom in the original NES classic.  So, for Nintendo and Illumination, it made sense to look at the game that more than any other expanded the reaches to the world of Mario; Super Mario Galaxy.  The interstellar adventure took Mario to many far flung worlds across the universe, and this seemed to be the ideal place to go for a movie sequel.  The only question is, does The Super Mario Galaxy Movie succeed in opening up the possibilities of the Mario movie franchise, or does it double down on some of it’s shortcomings.

The story takes place some time after the events of the first movie.  Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) have settled themselves in the Mushroom Kingdom and now spend their time helping the citizens of that world with their various plumbing related problems.  On one mission, they come across a pipe located in a desert pyramid that seems to have been taken over by a mysterious creature.  Upon investigating, they learn that the creature is a little baby dinosaur named Yoshi (Donald Glover), who becomes instant friends with the brothers.  Meanwhile in another far off part of the galaxy, the home of the mystical star Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) is attacked by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), who’s on a mission to steal Rosalina’s power and rescue his father Bowser (Jack Black), who is still imprisoned in the Mushroom Kingdom for his crimes.  One of Rosalina’s star children makes it to the castle of Princess Peach (Anya-Taylor Joy) and tells her that Rosalina has been kidnapped.  Without telling Mario about what has happened, Peach goes out to search for clues about Rosalina’s disappearance, along with her resourceful companion Toad (Keegan-Michael Key).  Mario and Luigi are left to look after the Mushroom Kingdom, which includes keeping an eye on Bowser, who swears that he is reformed.  Unfortunately for them, Bowser Jr. sneaks his way into the Mushroom Kingdom and ambushes them, leading to the destruction of Peach’s castle.  Mario, Luigi, and Bowser manage to escape, but they now have to catch up to Peach so they can warn her that Junior is out looking for her too.  Peach eventually learns that Rosalina is being held captive at the Bowser Planet and she needs to hire a pilot to get her there to attempt a rescue.  Thankfully one is available named Fox McCloud (Glen Powell).  Will Peach and the Mario Brothers manage to save Rosalina in time, or will Bowser Jr.’s plan for the destruction of the universe bring an end to all of them.

To be frank, I was not a fan of the first Mario Bros. Movie.  I felt that it was overstuffed with too many game Easter eggs that was made to satisfy the hardcore fans of the game, but lacked a coherent story to make all of those references resonate.  I cared very little about what was happening, because the movie never allowed for crucial things like character or world building to take hold in the experience.  More than anything, it failed at being anything more than just a glorified commercial for the games.  When they announced that they were making a sequel (which was a no-brainer given the box office success of the first) and that it would be based on the classic Galaxy games, I thought that this made a lot of sense, because the Galaxy games did such a good job of expanding the reach of places that Mario could go to.  My hope was that with this expanded universe that we would actually see more creativity in the storytelling and have a more coherent plot overall, instead of things just being a collection or reference and gag set-ups.  Sadly, the Mario Galaxy does not improve on any of the problems of the first film.  In fact, it just doubles down on not caring about the plot at all.  The Super Mario Galaxy Movie just moves along from scene to scene without regards to things like theme, character motivations, or just tone in general.  Stuff just happens, and that’s pretty much the overall experience of the movie.  The film seems more concerned about throwing every possible reference to the games that they can think of purely to get a reaction of recognition out of it’s audience.  It’s the most “member berries” movie that I have seen in quite some time; even more so than the first film, which at least had to do some work in order to lay the rules for the world they were creating in the film.  For me, this film represents all that I dislike about the house style of Illumination.  They are gag factory more than anything else, with story being an afterthought.  Sure, this makes their movies appeal to the broadest possible audience, and they have the box office success to show for it, but the stories in their movies always ring hollow because there is no thought put into them.  They are the anti-Pixar in this manner, and it makes it all the more frustrating that this is the approach they are taking to bringing the world of Super Mario to life.

One of the clearest examples of the story not meaning anything to the makers of this film is the lack of care put into establishing the characters and why they are important.  The introduction of Yoshi in particular felt rushed and wasted.  Pretty much the way that it goes down in the movie is that Mario and Luigi find Yoshi and he takes a liking to them and now he’s just a part of the team.  This abrupt approach is even called out in the movie by one of the character’s who says, “Okay, so he’s just a part of the group now.”  It’s like even filmmakers knew how lame this intro was.  Mario meeting Yoshi for the first time should feel special, and it sadly is not.  This is a recurring theme throughout the movie, where so many things that should carry a weight of importance just don’t.  Now of course this a Mario Bros. movie, so we aren’t exactly dealing with Shakespeare here.  But, there have been plenty of other animated films made in the past that managed to find some emotional depth in places you’d never expect; The Lego Movie being a prime example.  The Illumination Mario movies just never allow for any of that because they are too busy trying to cram in gags and Easter eggs to please the die hard fans.  They don’t want us to feel, they just want us to react.  Are some of the visual gags clever?  A few do get a laugh, and some of the video game references are clever.  But, that’s all that this movie ends up being.  It makes it all the more disappointing given that there was a lot of potential with this movie.  The galaxy is literally open to explore endless possibilities.  But what we end up getting is movie that never fully commits to a plot thread or a creative vision.  What it just does overall is remind you how much better it was when you were playing the games that these movies were based on, especially the classic Mario Galaxy games.  At least with those you could self insert your journey with Mario’s as he travels from world to world.

The sad thing about the shortcomings with the story is that it wastes what is definitely a talented team of animators.  There are certainly far fewer complaints that I have with the overall look of this film.  Illumination has done a good job of translating that Nintendo style into their own.  Mario and his friends always look on model and always are animated with a lot of personality.  The film also does well in creating a sense of scale for these films.  The Mushroom Kingdom is a wonderfully realized place, and it’s great to see how the animators take things that were originally two dimensional in the old platform games and give them weight and texture to help make this a fully lived in world.  They also do well in crafting the many different new world that we visit across the galaxy.  Mario Galaxy was already a very well detailed game for it’s time, and the movie does a good job of recreating iconic places from the game, especially Rosalina’s space ship/palace.  One thing that I wish they had played around with a bit more is the gravity mechanics that were such a big part of the game.  One of the great innovations of the Mario Galaxy game was the way that gravity worked as a part of the game play experience; where you could jump from one small planetoid to another and the pull of gravity would allow you to make that leap, as well as be able to fully run around the planet, including the underside where you’ll be upside down.  The movie doesn’t get to play around with that game mechanic too much, apart from a scene where Peach and Toad arrive at an underground casino, where characters are walking around the space on the floor level as well as the walls and ceiling, similar to how it worked in the game.  It makes the scene one of the few highlights, and I wish there were more moments like that.  It would’ve been neat to see Mario and his crew make these leaps of faith in empty space to go from one tiny planet to another.  The animation team should be given better material to work with, because they clearly are doing their job right.  For whatever reason, the film’s directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic (who have returned from the first film) just don’t have the drive to do much more with the Mario Bros. property than what they have.  They follow the Illumination formula to a fault and if there was ever a movie that demanded some bold creative choices, this is the one.

The movie’s cast is also a mixed bag.  One of the things that I think is another of Illumination’s faults is that they tend to value marquee names for their voice roles over actors who would be clearly better as the character.  In some of the cases, they do get it right here in the Mario movie.  Charlie Day is honestly the best possible choice for Luigi, and Jack Black was the biggest scene stealer of the first film with his hilarious take on Bowser.  Both Day and Black return here, and are still doing great work as these characters, especially Jack Black who continues to be the MVP.  But, I’m sorry, Chris Pratt just doesn’t work as Mario.  His performance just lacks what the character needs, and all I hear is just Pratt reading the lines and not trying to get into the character of Mario, and it’s distracting.  I was hoping he would improve between movies, but alas his Mario still feels out of place with the rest of the movie.  Illumination also extended it’s search for marquee names for all of the new characters too.  Brie Larson, who is a Nintendo fan girl in real life, does make for a good choice as Rosalina.  She brings a warmth to the character that is welcome.  The only problem is that she isn’t in that much of the movie, acting mostly as a human McGuffin to motivate the plot and not much else.  Perhaps the best new addition to the cast is Glen Powell as Fox McCloud, aka Star Fox.  If his presence here is a slick way to back door pilot a Star Fox movie spin-off I wouldn’t be upset because I thought Powell did a great job embodying the character, tapping a little into his Top Gun: Maverick (2022) experience.  Benny Safdie is a little surprising as Bowser Jr., because he’s trying to put on a cartoonish, juvenile style voice to play the part and it’s not what you’d expect from an actor like him.  He does alright, though I would’ve liked to have heard a bit more menace in his performance.  But of all the new cast in this movie, none is more baffling than Donald Glover playing Yoshi.  You would never in a million years know that Childish Gambino was playing Yoshi in this movie unless you saw his name in the credits.  He’s just doing an impression of the high pitched Yoshi voice that we all know from the games and that’s it.  There’s no trace of Glover’s actual voice at all in the film.  It sounds fine, but I have to ask, why?  It just read to me that Illumination was just looking for another celebrity name they could throw on the marquee, but I worry that it sends a bad precedent because chasing after celebrity names takes away chances for professional voice actors to have the opportunity to have their name on a big movie like this.

Frustration is honestly the feeling I get when I come away from these Illumination Mario movies.  They have the potential to be really good and do justice to the source material that they are based on.  But Illumination seems to be an animation studio built more around commerce than creativity.  Their movies are meant to be easily digestible by the broadest audience possible, and they offer nothing more than than.  But, the Super Mario games deserve so much more than that.  Nintendo’s Game studio has always given Mario and his franchise the greatest amount of care, because he is the face of their company.  That’s why the Mario games always represent innovation in the gaming community, because they are the ones where Nintendo tests out all of their newest game mechanics.  They know that Mario games sell well, and that’s why they trust their little plumber friend to be the best showcase for all the new innovations.  The Mario Galaxy games, with their breakthrough gravity mechanics, was an especially great demonstration of Mario’s ability to change the direction of gaming in general.  Mario is a character that deserves to have movies that reflect that sense of innovation.  But Illumination never makes anything that innovates in the animation industry, unlike it’s contemporaries like Disney, Pixar or Sony.  They just deliver us the movie equivalent of empty calories.  Sure, the movies look nice thanks to a talented team of animators, but that’s all the movies offer.  All I can say is thank God they are not giving this treatment to The Legend of Zelda, which is one of my favorite video game franchises.  That is getting the live action treatment, which it honestly needed to do the games justice.  There’s nothing wrong with doing an animated version of Mario Bros., but I feel like an animation studio such as Illumination, which has some low standards when it comes to quality of story, is holding the Mario franchise back.  Imagine Mario with this kind of animation, but backed up with the strength of story like what we saw with The Lego Movie.  Sadly, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie does nothing to improve on the last film, and may in fact have even dropped the ball even more.  But, of course nothing I say will make much of dent on what will likely be a huge box office win for both Illumination and Nintendo.  If what you want is a nice easy to digest movie based on the Mario Bros. games, you may end up getting what you wanted in this movie.  But for me, I would’ve rather spent my time playing the video games again.

Rating: 5/10