The Super Mario Bros. Movie franchise has always been about more than Mario. But according to someone who spent years inside Nintendo of America, Fox McCloud's appearance in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie may have had a very calculated business motive behind it.
Kit Ellis, former director of social media marketing and original content at Nintendo of America, floated what he calls an "extremely cynical theory" on the Kit and Krysta YouTube channel alongside Krysta Yang, Nintendo of America's former senior manager of creator relations and original content. The pair were breaking down the Galaxy Movie sequel when Ellis dropped the take.
The theory: Illumination called dibs on Star Fox
Here's the lowdown. Ellis believes Illumination pitched Fox McCloud for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie not purely for storytelling reasons, but to plant a flag on the Star Fox IP before anyone else could. His words: "I feel like Illumination is doing IP landgrabs because [the studio is] like, 'Oh, a studio got Zelda? We need to claim as much IP that might appear in a movie as possible... Maybe we'll do a movie with him later or not, but he's ours now."
The Zelda reference is pointed. The Legend of Zelda live-action movie is currently in development at Sony Pictures, a deal Nintendo struck independently of its Illumination partnership. From Illumination's perspective, watching a rival studio lock up one of Nintendo's biggest franchises while they held the Mario relationship must have stung.
So the play, according to Ellis, was simple: get Fox into a Mario movie, establish the character within Illumination's cinematic universe, and make it significantly harder for Nintendo to hand Star Fox to another studio down the line.
How Fox actually ended up in the film
What makes this theory land is the paper trail. Illumination reportedly originated the idea of including Fox, then brought it to Shigeru Miyamoto, who took it back to Nintendo expecting internal resistance. He was surprised when the team gave it the green light.
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Miyamoto himself has confirmed he anticipated "significant resistance" at Nintendo to Fox McCloud appearing in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, making the approval all the more notable.
The result was one of the film's most talked-about sequences: the Star Fox flashback, animated by Benjamin Faure, whose previous credits include Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man. Glen Powell voiced Fox after reportedly calling Nintendo and Illumination directly to lobby for the role.
The sequence landed well with audiences. Whether it was always just a fun cameo or something more strategically motivated, it worked as a piece of filmmaking.
The bigger picture for Nintendo's IP in film
The key here is that Nintendo is navigating a genuinely new situation. The original Super Mario Bros. Movie proved the company's characters translate to film in a massive way, and now every major studio wants a piece of that catalog. With Zelda going to Sony and Mario staying with Illumination, the question of who gets Metroid, Donkey Kong, Kirby, or Star Fox is very much open.
Ellis's theory suggests Illumination is playing a longer game, using each successive Mario film to quietly absorb more Nintendo IP into its orbit. Whether Nintendo is aware of and comfortable with that dynamic is another question entirely.
The timing adds another layer. Prominent leaker NateTheHate has claimed a new Star Fox game for Nintendo Switch 2 will be announced this month. If that rumor holds, Fox McCloud is about to be very much back in the public conversation, which only makes the question of a standalone Star Fox movie more relevant. Make sure to check out more:
