Nintendo and lighting The Super Mario Bros. Movie brings Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and dozens of Toads and Kongs to the big screen in a highly referential, kid-friendly action film in which Jack Black’s Bowser is the breakthrough star. Mario and Luigi’s colorful cinematic adventure runs for about the length of a child’s attention span — roughly 92 minutes — and as the battle reaches its climax, viewers may be wondering, ‘Do I have to sit through? The Super Mario Bros. Movie credits with my kid to find out what happens next?”
Regardless of who you watch the film with, the short answer is yes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Here’s what happens.
[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for the ending of The Super Mario Bros. Movie.]
After Mario and Luigi easily defeated Bowser in Brooklyn, the King of the Koopas is safely imprisoned in a glass prison. After a brief end credits sequence, the film snaps back to Bowser well after the battle in New York. He once again sings his ode to the princess “Peaches”. This reprise performance is revealed to be performed by a shrunken Bowser on a shrunken grand piano. It’s a fun sight gag and a chance to get another shot of Jack Black for the street, but it’s also an inconsequential mid-credits stinger.
What happens after the credits is a clear setup for a Super Mario Bros. Movie Sequel or Spinoff. Once the credits roll, the film returns to the Brooklyn underground where Mario and Luigi first discovered the plumbing that leads to the Mushroom Kingdom. There we see a familiar object: a Yoshi Egg that is shaking and about to hatch. The film goes black and we hear the well-known scream of a Yoshi. (That’s “Yoshi!”)
The reveal of Yoshi as a character in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is no surprise; We see dozens of them herding earlier in the film as Mario, Peach, and Toad travel to the Kingdom of Kong. The surprise may come when a Yoshi wandering loose in Brooklyn, sending Mario and Luigi on an adventure across New York to track down this runaway dinosaur. Whether that’s actually part of the plot of the next Super Mario movie remains to be seen. But after a full-blown Koopa troop invasion of Brooklyn at the end of the film, a cute dinosaur running amok through the Big Apple doesn’t make its residents blink. Sure, Nintendo and Illumination have bigger plans for Mario and Luigi’s next adventure, but it seems all but guaranteed that Yoshi will be there.
