By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
Why Watch This Movie With Your Students
Here's what your students naturally take away from the movie, whether through themes, values, ideas, or perspectives.
🍄 Centers on perseverance in the face of doubt and teasing. Mario is doubted by his family and a former employer, and hears plenty of insults along the way, but he keeps trying rather than letting it stop him. The movie ties his eventual success directly to that persistence.
👑 Gives students a proactive, capable female lead. Princess Peach leads her kingdom's defense herself, training Mario and organizing allies rather than waiting to be rescued. She is shown as brave and relentless, putting her people's needs ahead of her own throughout.
🤝 Builds its plot around teamwork between unlikely allies. Mario, Peach, and Donkey Kong all have different goals and personalities but have to work together to stand a chance against Bowser. The movie treats their cooperation as essential to the outcome rather than optional.
👬 Follows two brothers separated and determined to reunite. Mario and Luigi are split apart early on and spend most of the movie trying to find their way back to each other. Their reunion and combined effort is what ultimately turns the final battle.
🔥 Introduces a clear antagonist with an understandable goal. Bowser wants to force a marriage on Peach and conquer her kingdom, giving the story a straightforward villain whose motivations are easy for students to follow. His defeat comes through the heroes' persistence and cooperation rather than luck.
🎮 Adapts a widely recognized game franchise into a new story. Students familiar with the games will recognize characters, settings, and references pulled from across the franchise's history. It offers an accessible way into discussing how a beloved game gets reimagined as a movie.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG.
📋 A free editable parent permission slip is available for this movie. It explains the educational benefits of watching movies in class and includes a space for parental consent. → Download Free Permission Slip on TpT (Free resource)
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Cartoon action violence throughout, including a couple of scenes that younger or more sensitive students may find intense.
- Some mild name calling and bullying between characters.
- There is no strong language or sexual content in the movie.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
📚 English Language Arts Teachers. The movie takes a story students already know from gaming and reshapes it into a traditional narrative with a clear protagonist, antagonist, and resolution, giving an ELA class real material for discussing how adaptation changes a story. The guide is built for ELA, with differentiated comprehension questions at multiple levels and writing tasks that push students into character analysis and narrative construction rather than simple recall.
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers. The movie's visual storytelling, physical comedy, and straightforward plot give students plenty to follow even before dialogue is fully understood. The multiple choice comprehension set works well for ESL and ELL students, offering an accessible way into the story alongside the full sentence question sets.
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons. Every activity in the guide is self contained and organized in sequence, with answer keys included for both sets of comprehension questions and the word search puzzle. A substitute teacher can run the full session without having seen the movie beforehand.
🏠 Homeschool Parents. The movie's accessible story and recognizable characters make it a flexible choice for home learners, especially those already familiar with the games. The guide covers comprehension, a storyboard and synopsis project, and a character profile writing task, all of which work well for a single student working independently.
💙 SEL Teachers. Mario faces real doubt and teasing from his own family and a former employer, and the movie ties his eventual success directly to his refusal to give up, while Peach models leadership and putting her people ahead of herself. The guide does not include a dedicated SEL activity, but the comprehension questions keep students engaged and accountable while those character traits play out on screen.
🌟 Supporting All Learners Movie guides can be a wonderfully calm fit for students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities. The structured format gives every student a clear purpose during viewing, easing uncertainty and allowing them to engage at their own pace. If you teach in a special education or learning support setting, you may find this guide a gentle and practical resource. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 12-page classroom-ready resource.
Part 1: Comprehension Questions
Two full sets of differentiated comprehension questions in chronological order, 35 questions requiring full sentence answers and 35 multiple choice questions with 3 possible answers. The multiple choice set also works well with ESL and ELL students. Answer keys are included.
Part 2: Storyboard and Synopsis
Students draw a nine scene storyboard of what they consider the most important parts of the movie, with a brief description for each scene, then use the storyboard as a guide to write a synopsis of the movie.
Part 3: Character Writing and Word Search
Students choose one of the listed characters, or another character of their choice, and complete a character profile covering a description, background, likes and dislikes, one change they would make to the character, and a favorite scene the character appeared in. A word search puzzle includes 15 words to find, 5 of which require clues to be answered first, with an answer key included.
“My students were so engaged with this. This saved me so much time. Thank you!”
— Joan E.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
A movie is not a break from learning. It reaches students through sight, sound, and story at once, engaging the brain in ways text alone does not, and the structured work around it is what turns the viewing into a genuine lesson. You can read the research behind this on the Why Movies Work page.
- A Teacher Notes and General Directions page opens the guide with a brief overview of everything inside: what the movie is about, then each part of the guide in order with a short description of what it entails. You know what to expect from the whole resource before you hand out a single page, so you can pick up the guide cold and teach it the same day.
- Answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets, so grading is quick and you are not rewatching the movie to check answers. Some guides also include example answers for the creative and written activities.
- Print and go: classroom ready, with no additional preparation needed. Print one the morning you need it and the lesson is ready.
- Substitute and first-timer friendly. A guide can be handed to a substitute or picked up by a teacher covering the topic for the first time. Nobody running the session needs to have seen the movie.
- Differentiated comprehension sets. Most guides include two or three question sets at different difficulty levels, and most include a multiple-choice option that works well for ESL and ELL students. One class set covers your strongest readers, your strugglers, and your language learners without separate prep.
- Activities that go beyond recall. Each guide includes structured activities that ask students to engage with the movie, not just watch it, ranging from creative and written tasks to discussion and critical thinking questions depending on the guide. That variety matters in a mixed classroom: a student who freezes on a written question set may show real understanding through a drawing or a creative task, and a confident writer gets room to go beyond recall. For the teacher, it turns a movie session into work that can actually be assessed: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
