For Fans of Super Mario

Every five years or so, a Mario game resets what a three-dimensional platformer can feel like. Super Mario 64 did it by inventing the genre. Galaxy did it by bending physics into poetry. Odyssey does something subtler and perhaps more impressive: it makes the whole world feel like a toy you have never seen before. The capture mechanic, letting Mario possess enemies and objects, turns every enemy into a puzzle and every environment into an invitation. The moment you possess a Cheep Cheep and discover the underwater kingdom has been redesigned around your new form is the moment you understand Nintendo is still operating at a level no one else can match.

Both Mario and The LEGO Movie operate on the same fundamental premise: the world is made of pieces, and the point is to rearrange them. Chris Miller and Phil Lord's film builds its comedy from the same place Nintendo builds its level design, from the joy of an unexpected combination and the surprise of a hidden layer beneath an obvious surface. Emmet's journey from instruction-follower to master builder mirrors the arc of any Mario player who graduates from linear runs to secret exit hunting. The film is also, quietly, one of the best arguments for why games are an art form.

Mario games are not easy, but they never feel cruel. The player learns through pattern, through repetition that does not feel like punishment. Celeste internalises this completely. Every room in Madeline's mountain climb is a self-contained puzzle, small enough to retry in seconds, difficult enough to demand attention. But where Mario keeps its emotional register light, Celeste turns the platformer into a meditation on anxiety and self-compassion. The two games feel like siblings: one pure exhilaration, one exhilaration earned through vulnerability.

Disney's 2012 film is set inside a universe of classic arcade games, and it earns every wink at gaming culture by making the emotional stakes genuine. Ralph's desire to be the hero rather than the villain is the same ache that drives every player who picks the underdog character. The film's visual imagination, building distinct worlds out of the logic of different game genres, is exactly the kind of lateral creative thinking Nintendo applies when it builds a new Mario world. It also contains one of cinema's better arguments that the role you are assigned is not the role you are limited to.