The Super Mario Bros. Movie is jampacked with details and easter eggs that any aficionado would jump at, but not everything the team behind it wanted to mention could make it into the final cut. Case in point – why do blocks in the Mushroom Kingdom float off the ground, anyway? Aaron Horvath, one of the directors of the film, explains in a much larger Variety interview:
“Our idea was that there’s a mineral that’s natural to the Mushroom Kingdom, which we call ‘floatanium,’ because it sounded funny to us,” Horvath says. “The Toads mine it and transform it into these blocks and use them for construction purposes.”
So there you have it. Almost 40 years of mystique explained in only a couple short sentences. The blocks float because they’re made of stuff that floats. Though this of course raises more questions: why do the blocks float in such fixed locations off the ground? Is there a reason more Toads don’t live in structures made of the blocks? Is this mineral a material condition by which we can develop a dialectically material framework to understand why Bowser invades so much? Well, it is just a video game (movie). Maybe we’re alright not knowing.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is out now.
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Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
