Mario Movie Director Explains How Mushroom Kingdom Blocks Float

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a silly introduction to the Mario universe, not a David Attenborough documentary on the Mushroom Kingdom. However, questions remain, such as how do those brick blocks float?

In a recent Variety interview, one of the film’s directors, Aaron Horvath, explained that “Floatanium” (thanks, Go Nintendo) is responsible for that.

Horvath told Variety that the movie script never explained the basic principle:

“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.”

Is Floatanium Mario’s “canon”? No way—don’t expect it in a “Mario Historia” if we get one—but it’s a neat explanation. We never considered how certain blocks can float, so we can believe that the Mushroom Kingdom’s mining operation is trading rare minerals to the Jungle Kingdom and beyond.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Chris Meledandri, and the film’s cast also contributed to Variety. The full article is here.