While some Nintendo fans have come away from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie dreaming of a future Star Fox spin-off or a third Super Mario animated movie with an expanded character roster, one scene in the film stuck with me above all others. I’m talking about the suicide roller coaster created by Bowser Jr., one of the film’s more bizarre pieces of engineering.
Koopa architecture and engineering have long been fascinations of mine, especially since Nintendo introduced the impossible flying machines piloted by Koopalings in Super Mario Bros. 3. Over the past 40 years, Bowser’s army corps of engineers has pulled off seemingly physically and financially impossible stunts, filling huge castles with hostile architecture elements like spinning fire bars, spike traps, and lava pits, and populating them with dangerous wildlife like Thwomps and Piranha Plants. But the suicide coaster seen on Planet Bowser in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is on another level. It has awakened in me many new questions about Koopa Troopas and the nature of Dry Bones in the Mario universe.
For some answers, I turned to Koopa experts Jack Black and Bennie Safdie, who voice Bowser and Bowser Jr. in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.]
Late in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, when Bowser is reunited with his son, and they visit the massive fortress known as Planet Bowser, viewers get a sense of the structure’s scope. That includes a panning shot of an amusement park that includes a roller-coaster ride for Koopas. That coaster dunks all its riders in lava, transforming them into Dry Bones.
Make no mistake: This is a suicide coaster, as Dry Bones are undead skeleton creatures. To become undead, you must first be dead, and the Koopas submitting to this thrill ride seem overjoyed to take part in the process.
The Koopa-killing coaster immediately reminded me of the Euthanasia Coaster, a conceptual ride designed by Lithuanian artist Julijonas Urbonas which was designed to end its riders’ lives “with elegance and euphoria.” The Koopas who submit themselves to lava-dunking on Planet Bowser emerge not only undead, but rapturous. But are they euphoric because the process of becoming a Dry Bones feels so good? Or are they just such faithful servants to the Bowsers that spending eternity as a sentient collection of bones that can reconstitute itself is the ultimate honorable sacrifice?
During a recent interview with the cast of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, I asked Safdie and Black — the latter’s character becomes Dry Bowser in the movie, after an unplanned lava dip — whether they believe becoming Dry Bones feels good, and what it ultimately means for a Koopa to give up its flesh and blood.
“It seems like it’s like when you crack [your] knuckles,” Safdie said. “They reorient themselves. It looks dangerous, and then it’s like [imitates bone-pile-reforming-into-Dry Bones sound] and then they come back to life.”
Black likened the feeling of becoming a Dry Bones to “when you get a chiropractic adjustment, and it feels so good. It hurts for a second, and you’re like, ‘Oop! Am I paralyzed?! No, I’m good.'”
“That’s exactly right. ‘Am I dead? No, I’m just loose,'” Safdie responded.
There is a downside, however, according to Black, who responded to this line of questioning after eating one bite of a wagyu beef hamburger from the Hatena Burger café at the Nintendo Museum. “If you’re a foodie, it’s probably really frustrating,” Black explained, “because you’re like ‘Ooh, I’m gonna eat that wagyu [beef]’ and it just goes right through [your skeleton]. It ruins any good meal.”
There you go. The pros of burning off all your Koopa soft parts to become an undead skeleton warrior include eternal service in the Koopa-Mushroom Kingdom war, while the cons include missing out on nicely marbled red meat.
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