Brian Tyler Secretly Composed the 'Super Mario Galaxy Movie' Score From a Hospital Bed (Exclusive)

Brian Tyler was lying in a hospital bed, but nobody else on the team working on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie knew it. Instead of resting, the composer secretly continued writing key themes and layering in more than 300 references to classic Mario games because he refused to let fans or the production down. Find out the details in this exclusive interview.

The Hospital Bed That Fueled a Blockbuster Score

Men’s Journal: Do you feel pressure when you’re adapting the iconic Super Mario Bros. music, since you know fans have loved it for decades?

Brian Tyler: Since I am one of those fans, it's fun. It's a cool thing. The most difficult, and most challenging, but coolest task for me is really bringing it to life in a way that becomes epic on the big screen. In order to do that, I have to write new themes for the characters that are cinematic.

If you know the movies, they include music from the games and The Super Mario Bros.Movie’s main theme, which is from me. It's a cool synergy, where I'm writing all these new themes, including the main theme, Princess Peach's theme, Yoshi's theme, Rosalina’s theme, and Bowser's theme. All of these are new themes, but they have to feel like they fit inside the world of Super Mario Bros. So, when we want to include Easter eggs, there are references all over. I make over 300 references in the score to different parts of the video game series.

For me, it's fun, because I'll be writing something for a scene that's really beautiful or a heartfelt thing and the music that I'm writing is from the perspective of, “How do we make this emotionally at a scale, and audio-visually at a scale that fits a cinematic experience that's completely immersive in a way that is different than a game.”

Blending the music that I'm writing with these references to the games is something that I want to do, not just for the fans. Not just so they can hear it and go, “Oh my gosh, that's the waiting room music on this one game. Oh my gosh, I remember that when I played these moments.” But also to blend it in with the main themes that I'm writing. Either a love theme, or the main theme, or an adventure theme, or one of the main character’s themes that I'm writing. I want it to blend in a way that even if you didn't know those Easter egg references, it would just still have the same emotional and cinematic impact.

It’s never just a wink to the fans. That’s the thing I always wanted to make sure that if we're ever going to reference something, we never want it to be a wink for wink’s sake. We don’t want there to be an Easter egg that somehow does a disservice to the scene. Everything was in service to the movie and the story.

Since I'm such a huge Super Mario Bros. fan, and I've played so many of the games and know them, I love just finding ways when I see something, even if it’s something way in the background, we’ll do some reference, and somehow make it the antiphonal, so it’s a call and response type of thing. It’s the violins, or the trombones, or the horns, or the choir that will play some main theme that I'm writing for the scene. And then the woodwinds will respond with a reference to a theme of a character that's literally walking by in the background. You wouldn't know the Easter egg unless you knew. For me, that makes it double fun for the super fans like me.

Men’s Journal: I love that you were focused on the music serving the story that is being told, and not wanting to just do fan service. But I found it really fascinating that you know that there are more than 300 callbacks to the games. Is there almost a math element to getting the balance right?

Brian Tyler: Yeah. I made a grid that was absurd. It was like walking into a scene from A Beautiful Mind, with a giant grid on the board — like Edward Witten standing in front of the 49th level of some complex mathematical proof, complete with diagrams, arrows, and frantic notes. It was like, “Maybe we can do this. Well, that has a scale like this. Can I fit that in? Because I want to do a Lydian scale on this one piece, and my theme for Yoshi does this. So, can I…” I mean, it was insane.

I have to go back and look at how many more references it has than the last movie. It was in the mid-300s, or something. It's always fun when fans start to find them. But that wasn't the main drive.

When I write a score, I write it from front to back as one piece of music. I don't go scene by scene. At first, I write a suite of original music, of new themes. There was the main theme, which I wrote for the first film, and the Princess Peach theme, which I wrote for the first film. Those are the main themes of the Super Mario Bros. movies.

Funnily enough, people often now associate the Super Mario Bros. themes I wrote for the movies so much that in their minds, they reverse-engineer it and accept that memory as if it were in the video game franchise the whole time. But I actually just wrote those for the last movie. I often get kids coming up to me singing the new themes. I'm like, “That's cool.” And they're like, “How did you know that song? From the old game?” So, I'm like, “No, that's new.”

When I’m working on the score, I think, “I can really use these, and these, and these that I wrote for the first movie.” And I talked to Koji Kondo and other people who worked on the original game scores, who I know. I’ll say to them, “I was thinking of doing this," and I’d ask them, “What about this," with 317 different things I’m thinking about doing.

I want the score to be one complete unit of music, so that each scene feels like it flows to the next because it is a single piece of music in a sense, with little gaps sometimes. I wrote it for a full orchestra with violins, cellos, basses, violas, French horns, trombones, all the woodwinds, flutes, clarinet, oboe, and a full choir. I also played a lot of instruments on the score. Everything from the oud and Arabic instruments to flamenco guitar. I include metal guitar, blast beats on the drums, upright bass, six-string bass, and I play like 50 or so instruments on it myself. It's the most eclectic mix. I also include an 8-bit kind of bleepy-bloopy sounds, that are throwback references.

I started writing the music for this when we did the announcement trailer for it. But, I really started to write when I created themes for the first movie. You know what I mean? But then, I started writing the new music for this. It has new themes for Rosalina, Yoshi, and Bowser Jr. because they all needed themes that are now on the soundtrack. I love them all. For Bowser Jr., he's mischievous, and he's trying to impress his villainous dad. It's kind of sweet that he's trying to impress his dad by being the most nefarious he could possibly be. For Rosalina, there’s this beautiful family theme for someone who’s trying to find a sister that she didn't know she had, that kind of feeling. It’s beautiful. For Yoshi, he has his own really interesting kind of jazzy, funky thing, and there’s some trap in there. It's really a lot of different styles, but that is really the world of Super Mario Bros.

I was writing this music when I was actually in the hospital because I didn't want to let anyone down. They didn't know. I didn't tell them. I wrote a lot of the main themes from there.

Men’s Journal: When you were talking about working with the composers of the original music, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. How hands-on are the originators of the video game music and Nintendo itself?

Brian Tyler: I know Koji Kondo from working on the last film, and then there are other people I’ve worked with, like the composer for the Super Mario Galaxy games. I got to know them and the whole gang at Nintendo, including the head of Nintendo. I spent time with them up at Skywalker.

In fact, Koji Kondo got inducted into The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame at the 27th Dice Awards in Las Vegas. When they asked him, “Who do you want to tell the story of your life and career up on stage?” He was like, “Brian Tyler.” So, I went out there and introduced his award.

There's a lot of trust there. After the last one, Koji was like, “You know all these things, see what you come up with,” for this one.  I'll send this massive list to them of what I want to do, and pretty much they just say, “Wow. That's, that's wild. Just do your thing.” But if they see something, they’ll say, “Hey, did you know there's a character there? Why don't we make a reference there, or not?”

They know to never do a reference if it's going to steal away from the experience of the film. So, they’re like, “We came to you because you score films, and that is what you do. You know how to write music that tells the story, and adds to the emotional experience and narrative of a film. We don't want anything to get in the way of that. That's the main goal.” Which is the right thing. It's the way to go. Put the movie and the experience first. After that, you can get fancy. The whole thing's really fun regardless.

I really have to credit them for putting the story first. They trust me with a very big task that is important for the film. So I just go for it. It's a massive undertaking, but it's a blast, you know.

Nintendo has brought me a lot of joy, and now I get to join up with them. I remember playing the games with my girlfriend and my friends on Nintendo. Like Mario Kart and stuff. Those are memories from my life.

Men’s Journal: When you're working on a project like this, where you know that fans passionately love the franchise and its characters, is there ever doubt that creeps in? Do you ever worry that the fans are going to be upset if the music doesn’t have the right Super Mario Bros. feel?

Brian Tyler: Not really. I want them to love the music and the movie. But no. I have been doing this for I don't know how many movies I've done. It's 152, or something like that. I really go for it. It's just a love of the game at this point. So, I do movies that I love. I'm fortunate. I've done so many movies and shows like Yellowstone and Marshals. I have my immersive audio-visual experience “Are We Dreaming,” which I'm going to be touring, and the albums releasing. I’m doing concerts that have really been a joy. I’m songwriting and producing lots of records. Which has all been amazing. But, I don't do movies because I have to, which is a really rare thing for an artist.

I started with nothing, with absolutely nothing, with less than nothing. I made a decision at one point. I had an option to take a desk job, or I was offered to do my first movie for one dollar that would take 10 months of work. I was in debt, living above a garage, my car got broken into, and all my gear got stolen. So either I took the job, which was the smart choice, or am I going to take the big swing for a dollar while probably going into a bunch more debt that I might have to pay off for 20 years. It was so bad at the time. I had just graduated from Harvard, but didn’t go there for music.

It's a crazy story. I had a five o'clock deadline to tell the people at the movie whether I was going to do it, and a five o'clock deadline to take this office desk job. At first, I said no to the movie at three minutes before five. I said, “I can't do it.” But then I changed my mind with like 30 seconds left, and called them frantically thinking, “Are you still there, pick up the phone, pick up the phone.” When they answered, I said, “I'm in.” Bang. That was when my life just split off into another lane. I’m very fortunate. You know? John Williams heard my music. Then Steven Spielberg did, and just on and on from there. It's been an absolute dream. So, I count my blessings that I can do music now by choice.

So when I work on a movie like this, I just do it because I love it. Hopefully, that translates to the fans. The detail, the effort, the love I put in is what matters. You know? So, I don't really worry about it. I just hope that fans have the joy that I had when I walked in the theater when I was a kid. I'd see Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and stuff like that and I loved the music.

Men’s Journal: Music in movies is such a powerful thing. That becomes so obvious when you see edited clips of movies with the music, and it feels so different.

Brian Tyler: It’s insane.

Men’s Journal: Of course, sometimes having no music is a great music choice in and of itself.

Brian Tyler: That’s a great point.

Men’s Journal: You were talking about hoping that the music for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie brings fans joy. When you think about this movie, are there any specific aspects of the scores that bring you joy because you take more pride in them?

Brian Tyler: I would say the whole thing. But more than that, it’s a couple of things. These scenes are so beautiful, and sometimes it becomes music and visual-centric. There's a star shower in the second movie, and it's just a beautiful and mesmerizing moment. Even the characters in the movie are just enchanted. Musically, I'm really proud of that.

The other thing is the overall storytelling through the music. It's almost a quasi-musical because the music is present pretty much throughout the whole film. Even when there’s dialogue, it's almost like it's a song because the music is supporting it. That is something you do more in an animated film. It becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

That's why I approach it as one part. I want the whole thing to feel like an experience, not a series of scenes or a series of pieces of music. The interesting thing is that you want to feel immersed, and you don't even realize that you've been influenced by the music in a way. That's why I'll go to the theater on opening night, or opening weekend, and hang out in the lobby and be there when people are leaving. I listen, and I hear people humming some of the themes, including maybe The Super Mario Galaxy Movie theme, which is track two on the soundtrack, which is out today. It is a really enchanting, magical, heartfelt musical journey of finding someone you love, and searching, and it has this aspirational, kind of, wonderment to it that hits pretty hard and feels good.

Hearing them humming it shows that the hearts of these characters become really alive and that you can relate to them. So it'll be nice and really, really cool, I think, to go and hear people react. I'm going tonight. It'll be a blast to see people's reaction. I also love the feedback that I get from people who send me messages about things like them getting married, graduating, or just marking some part of their life to a theme that I wrote. Those are the things that really are special to me.

I recently had someone wait to meet me with a book at a public event. She came up to me, and I said, “Hi.” Then, she said, “Hello, I'm going to film composition school in college now, and I started by listening to your music when I was a little girl. I was fascinated by your Marvel movie music.” Then, she showed me a book where she had written down information about my music from the movie Thor. It was a breakdown of the music in different scenes. She wrote out the music notes from all these themes that I'd written through the years. And as it goes on over 10 years, what she wrote gets better and better, and she's able to notate it. Now, she's studying to be a film composer at USC.

That's the kind of thing that I go, “Wow, the music connects beyond. It’s a movie that's going to have this huge impact because it changes people in ways that I don't even know. That's how Star Wars affected me. The music from all these things, like Alfred Hitchcock films and Aliens. I was affected by so many films. It left me trying to find things like, “What is that piece in The Elephant Man that really affected me as a child?” Or it’s like, “Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings, wow!” After learning that stuff, I became a film composer, a musician, and a composer.

With a movie of this size, there's a fractalization of what happens. How I wrote a certain piece could end up changing one person, and it's like the butterfly wings metaphor, because the music creates these fissures and fractalization of affecting people. Sometimes I get to see that from the outside perspective. But the first step to having that effect is having a movie that's great. I know we have that with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.