One of the ironic things about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie being so reliant on nostalgic references to Mario’s legacy is that the best sequence in the movie isn’t about the fireball-slinging plumber at all. Unlike Brie Larson’s Rosalina, who is sidelined for much of the movie, Glen Powell’s Fox McCloud is frequently a scene stealer despite not even being from the same franchise. The coolest segment of all is one completely divorced from the Mushroom Kingdom, occurring as the deep-space daredevil recaps his backstory for Peach and Toad.
When Peach and Toad meet Fox for the first time in the Gateway Galaxy, the movie momentarily shifts into an incredible-looking, 2D anime art style. The anthropomorphic pilot regales the two with his tragic backstory, which includes being pulled from his home dimension to the Mario one and being unable to find his way home.
Does The Super Mario Galaxy Movie do much with this plotline? Absolutely not. Fox is here to look cool and promote his rumored upcoming Switch 2 game. We get no time for significant reflection when there are keys to be jingled. However, the brief retro anime-style detour did more to make me want a Star Fox spin-off more than a Mario Movie 3. Unlike the rest of the Mario Galaxy Movie, this sequence wasn’t just a hollow reference to something I knew from the games. It looked truly incredible and original, and got my mind racing as I wondered what a full movie or animated series of this style might look like.
Benjamin Faure, who worked as a supervising animator on the movie, led the 2D Fox intro sequence. His past animation credits include the original Super Mario Bros. Movie, but also a fair bit of work in anime like Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen, so it’s no wonder the sequence looked as sick as it did. Faure said in an X post that he was “truly honored” to bring the scene to life, and also gave a shoutout to original Fox character designer Takaya Imamura for giving the world the fox pilot to begin with.
⭐️[The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ]⭐️
I had an incredible time working as a 3D supervising animator on the movie and was truly honored to be in charge of the 2D Fox intro sequence 🦊🎬. Getting the chance to bring both 2D and 3D animation to life on this project made the whole… pic.twitter.com/hA9EUJeE8Y
— Benjamin Faure (@Bfaureart) April 7, 2026
While Faure has been responding to fans who have been singing the scene’s praises, it seems like he’s not able to talk more in-depth about the creation of Fox’s intro at this time. Hopefully we hear more later down the line, whether that be in an art book or in the special features for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s home release.
In the meantime, I hope Nintendo and Illumination see the response to Fox’s dazzling intro and do more with it. Illumination’s house style looks gorgeous (even if its movies are still broadly bad), but seeing the team shake it up for something like this would be dope.
