The Super Mario Galaxy movie script was rewritten for Japan

Both Super Mario movies premiered in the United States, taking several weeks to open in Japan. In fact, the Super Mario Galaxy movie has only been in Japanese theaters for a little over a week, after most of us got it on April 1st.

Now that Japanese fans can watch the film, there's a good chance that what they're watching is a little different than what we got in the English version. That's because, according to Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, the script was written entirely for Japan, rather than just localized.

The Super Mario Galaxy movie was not localized in Japan, Miyamoto reveals

Bowser Jr poses with a paint brush in the Super Mario Galaxy movie.

Miyamoto made the comments in an interview with Crank In, as translated by Automaton.

“Since this is a project made in both Japan and America, we didn't want the Japanese version to be just a localization of the English version, we wanted to write and craft it properly in Japanese,” says Miyamoto.

He praised Makoto Ueda, head of Europe Kikaku, the theater company handling the Japanese script.

“I want Mario and company to speak with the natural dialogue you hear in one of them [Europe Kikaku’s] stage production, but localization changes the rhythm of dialogue,” explains Miyamoto. “Jokes are different in Japan and abroad, so we want to make the dialogue feel as natural as possible.”

This is a much more dramatic approach than what we see in other media like video games. Here, viewers often push back against rewriting between different regions, especially when Japanese games are dubbed into English. However, localization is very important to be accurate, as direct translations often do not work and will lose the intended meaning. But as Miyamoto points out, another option is to start from scratch, build the script separately and not worry about matching the original intent.

That being said, the story should follow the same general beats wherever it unfolds as in the case of the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Because Miyamoto also said that the Peach lore established in the film will be canon in the games as well. Yes, that means Peach and Rosalina are sisters moving on.