Videogame Cinema: Super Mario Bros

Videogame adaptations have been on a bit of a rise in recent years. With the Sonic movies being big hits with fans, and The Last of Us being a big hit with critics we’re seeing more and more successful adaptations of videogames to film and television.

It’s not perfect, there is still some garbage that gets made, but things are getting better. Especially with how bad things used to be. For a long time, videogame adaptations were just the absolute worst.

Part of that is the difficulty of adaptation. You’re taking an active media like videogames and adapting it to a passive media like film. Something is always going to be lost in translation when you do so even if you get absolutely everything else right.

But another reason is Hollywood never took videogames all that seriously. They were the young upstart in entertainment, offering cheap thrills compared to the more artistic inclines of the film industry. A lot of prominent members of the film industry even said videogames weren’t a legitimate form of art.

Now these people are wrong, objectionably wrong, but that was the prevailing mindset in Hollywood for the longest time. Even today it still persists in some circles. Films were a real art form and videogames weren’t. Little more than something the film industry could make a quick buck out of.

Nowadays videogames are a massive entertainment medium. In fact, videogames have grown so popular that they’ve overtaken the film industry in terms of sheer revenue gained. Now Hollywood is all about videogames as their own empire crumbles around them due to their sheer incompetence and decades of mismanagement and behind the scenes chicanery. Funny how things change isn’t it.

So yeah, videogames are taken a lot more seriously now. They’ve grown a lot as a medium, they’re telling much more in-depth stories and a lot of videogame icons have become major household names. In fact, you could argue that Super Mario has become just as, if not more recognisable than Mickey Mouse.

Speaking of Mario, he has a new movie coming out by Illumination, and it looks great. Good looking animation, the characterisation is on point. I admit I’m not the biggest fan of Illumination, but I don’t hate them like others do and the new Mario movie looks like a lot of fun and looks like a decent filmic representation of the videogame.

But it wasn’t the first attempt to bring Mario to the big screen. No there was another attempt made nearly 30 years ago. A flop so badly received it caused Hollywood to largely give up on videogame adaptations for decades. I am of course talking about the utter disaster that was the live-action Super Mario Bros movie.

Originally released in 1993, Super Mario Bros was the first attempt to bring videogames to the big screen. There had been adaptations before in Saturday morning cartoons, but film adaptations had yet to be touched. And it only made sense the first time they would do so would be for the most recognisable faces in gaming, Super Mario.

Mario was already proven a popular icon. Coming off a hit 8-bit trilogy and a 16-bit masterwork, not to mention a mountain of merchandise to go along with it, Mario was on top of the world in 1993. So a film adaptation seemed inevitable. I mean, they marketed Super Mario Bros 3 with a movie just 4 years prior so why the hell not.

Nintendo didn’t have any input over the film, mainly because they weren’t interested in it. They felt the Mario brand was so strong that they could allow for it to experiment in other mediums.

So the film rights were handed off to a company called Lightmotive who had originally pitched the idea to them, and to their credit they did start off on the right foot. Originally the film was going to be more of a Wizard of Oz styled movie with the main focus being on the relationship between the two brothers.

But during development nothing was really working. That was until the producer, Roland Joffe, decided to take the project in a different direction inspired by… Max Headroom? Yeah, you can already see where this is going can’t you.

Yep, instead of it being focused on a fantasy setting, it would instead be a cyberpunk style setting with a darker tone inspired by the 1989 Batman movie and the 1990 Ninja Turtles movie. Even hiring Max Headroom creators Rocky Morton and Annabel Jenkin to direct the project.

Several big-name actors were brought on board like John Leguizamo as Luigi, Dennis Hopper as Koopa and Bob Hoskins as Mario. Even though Hoskins didn’t even know it was based on a videogame.

Now the making of this movie was, to put it bluntly, a train wreck. The script was rewritten several times while filming, there were constant clashes between the actors and the directors, the set was very hot which made it uncomfortable to work with, it was a hellish production. So much so that Hoskins and Leguizamo both got drunk while they were filming it, I’m dead serious.

Now, there is a lot more to cover with the behind-the-scenes drama. I just you gave you the clip notes version, if you want a more detailed run down, I recommend the Gaming Historians excellent video on the subject. I’ll post a link to it at the bottom if you want to check it out.

The production was a nightmare, and the final product suffered because of it. When the film released in 1993 it was savaged by critics it for the script, acting and poor special effects. Meanwhile, fans hated because it looked nothing like the original videogame.

The film ended up being a critical and financial flop, killed the career of it’s 2 directors who never worked on another movie after this, and has gone down in history as one of the worst movies ever made. But is it really?

I’ve always had a fascination with Super Mario Bros due to its infamy, and with the new movie coming out, I figured now would be a good time to finally check it out. It also helps that it just so happens to be the films 30th anniversary this year. I guess the stars were kind of aligned for this one huh.

I mean the film did gain a cult following over the years. At the very least it could be a movie that’s so bad it’s good. It surely can’t all bad right? Right?!

I mean it starts out well enough with a nice rendition of the theme from the game, really gets you into the right mood. The opening tells us that dinosaurs ruled the Earth 65 million years ago until a meteorite struck the planet.

Except some of them didn’t die because, get this, the meteorite also ripped a hole into an alternate dimension, somehow, and Dinosaurs have been living and evolving in that dimension for millions of years.

And already this movie has gone completely off the rails. Yup, instead of dealing with magic turtles and mushroom people, instead we’re dealing with dinosaurs in another dimension. We aren’t even a minute in and already everything is wrong.

To be fair though, the reason why dinosaurs are in this movie is because the most recent game in the series at that time was Super Mario World. Which did feature dinosaurs and took place on an island called Dinosaur Land.

I get why they went with dinosaurs, especially since it was the 90’ where dinosaurs were all the rage. It even released the same year as Jurassic Park funnily enough. But at the same time, it’s not like dinosaurs were a big focus in Mario. They were only in one game and even in that game the main enemy you fought were turtles.

It’s like they knew about the game to understand certain aspects of it, but they didn’t actually play it so they could get any of the details right. Which is basically what this movie is in a nutshell. The film is not accurate to the games as we’ll soon discuss, but there is still stuff from the games referenced here.

I mean it’s not like the story is all that different from the games. Ignoring the dinosaur stuff, the basic premise of the movie is that a princess is kidnapped, and the Mario brothers have to go and rescue her. Which is pretty much the plot from the videogame.

Granted it is one of the simplest stories ever told. You’d have to try hard to screw even this up, but at least they didn’t change the foundations of the plot. That remains intact. It’s in everything else where things go pear shaped.

Let’s start with the minor stuff before getting into the major problems. For starters, the names are different. The main villain is named Koopa in this rather than Bowser. Technically this isn’t wrong. Koopa is Bowser’s name in Japan, and he had been called King Koopa sometimes in the west like in the Super Mario Bros Super Show.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the character’s name in the west is Bowser. And given this is an American production, made in America by Americans, and British people too I guess, you would think they would use the name used in the American version of the name. It’s just a little confusing.

Then there’s the Princess’s name, Daisy. Again, technically there is a princess named Daisy in the Mario universe who debuted in Super Mario Land, but that isn’t the same princess this character is supposed to be. This is supposed to be Princess Toadstool, which is what Peach was named at the time the movie was made.

Also, rather than be Mario’s love interest, she’s Luigi’s. Mario already has a girlfriend in this, and no before you ask it’s not Pauline it’s a different character entirely. But yes, it’s Luigi who’s enamoured with the princess and wants to go rescue her when she gets kidnapped.

And before you say it, I do find it ironic that a few years after this movie came out, they would add Princess Daisy into the spinoff games as a love interest for Luigi. I don’t think they were inspired by the movie, but it is a funny coincidence.

Alright, let’s really get into the nitty gritty shall we. The biggest issue with this movie is the setting. What do you think of when you think of Mario? You probably think of colourful worlds where everything has eyes, with floating blocks everywhere, giant mushrooms everywhere, castles, magic turtles and flying airships and all that.

It’s a fantasy setting. A weird, colourful fantasy setting with a sense of wonder and charm to it all. None of that is in the movie. Instead, we get a grimy, run down city setting that looks more like something out of Blade Runner than Super Mario.

Instead of a fantasy setting, it’s a science fiction setting out of a Cyberpunk novel. Mystical power ups are replaced with technology. Bowser isn’t a king he’s a corrupt politician. It’s a dystopian, almost post-apocalyptic setting.

What the hell does any of that have to do with Mario? Mario’s worlds are bright, whimsical and colourful. The movies setting is grim, dark and a little disturbing in some instances. It looks nothing like the videogames.

Mario and Luigi don’t even use power ups. They use technology like boots that let them jump high or de-evolution guns, which are literally just Super Scopes pain. Mario is supposed to have fantastical elements to it, this is pure science fiction.

There is one magical element in the movie. The entire plot of the movie involves Koopa trying to find a piece of the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs so he can merge the two worlds together, but it just feels out of place given the setting.

Nothing about the movie resembles the games at all aside from super surface level stuff like Mario wearing red and Luigi wearing green. Which doesn’t happen until an hour into the movie might I add. Meaning that for the majority of the runtime, the Mario Bros don’t even look like the Mario Bros. So, they couldn’t even get the surface level stuff right.

I can forgive the little things they get wrong. It’s an adaptation, you will never be able to be 100% accurate, but you at least need to be somewhat recognisable to the thing you’re adapting. It’ll throw out recognisable names, but nothing will actually resemble like the thing they’re named after.

Sometimes they’ll go so far out of there way to name drop something from the games it becomes comical. The whole movie takes place in a dinosaur city, but there’s mushrooms all over the place because the king got turned into a giant mound of fungus. And that’s why at one point, Koopa calls it the Mushroom Kingdom.

This was so silly to me I laughed my ass off. It’s such a roundabout way to use the Mushroom Kingdom moniker, especially since the setting is so alien from the original. Why even bother trying to use the name Mushroom Kingdom at this point.

I could go on about how inaccurate the movie is to the games, but you know what, it’s probably best to give you a visual representation. The one everyone makes when they talk about this movie. Here is a Goomba from the game…

And here is a Goomba from the movie…

Do you see the problem yet? If you showed me a picture of the movie version with no context and told me it was a Goomba from Mario, I’d call you a raving lunatic.

The funny thing about this film is that it resembles the game so little, it’s legitimately surprising when they use something from the game. Yoshi makes an appearance in the movie and obviously he looks nothing like his videogame counterpart, but he does use his tongue at one point to try to eat someone.

This surprised me. Imagine that, imagine being surprised that a character’s most famous trait made it into the film. But that’s how this movie is. It’s so inaccurate to the source material that anything accurate to said source material is an anomaly rather than the expected norm.

You know those AI generated images you see online of what if a movie or game was a dark 80’s fantasy or something similar to that, that’s what this movie feels like. It feels like an AI generated image of Mario as a 90’s apocalyptic sci-fi movie. Except it’s not a concept for that kind of movie, it’s a real movie that was actually made.

I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s one of the most bizarre adaptations I’ve ever seen, but I’ll give it this, at least it’s unique. it’s not like most bad adaptations where its just a bad rendition of the source material, if anything it’s more an esoteric adaptation than a straight conversion.

And its own esoteric way it is accurate to the games. As I’ve said it does follow the basic plot of the games and does reference and feature stuff from the games in it, it just has a very, very different take on them.

So is it a good adaptation? Absolutely not, but it is a creative adaptation. As bad adaptations go though, it’s far from the worst. The Last Airbender and Dragon Ball Evolution are still the kings of that mountain. So that is one thing it has going for it, it isn’t as bad as Dragon Ball Evolution. It may be damning it faint praise, but faint praise is still praise.

But let’s shift gears here. Let’s pretend this isn’t a Super Mario movie and simply view the movie on its own merits. Is the movie at least entertaining to watch? Eh, not really.

Even if you ignore the fact that it is nothing like the videogame, this isn’t a great movie. The story is paper thin and there isn’t much to the characters either.

I mean to be fair, Super Mario isn’t known for being a narratively strong series. Hell, most games use the exact same storyline of rescue the princess from a big turtle dragon. So, maybe I should cut them some slack. I mean it’s not like there was much to go off of.

But even with that excuse the writing is abysmal. There are characters and plot points that are either never explained, or when they are explained end up making things more confusing. Watching this movie is like that one scene in Futurama where Zoidberg’s house burns down.

Take the meteorite for example. How can it merge the worlds together? I don’t know because the movie never explains why. It’s just a mystic rock that fell from the sky and somehow split dimensions.

The reason Koopa needs Daisy also makes no sense. Apparently, she is the only one who can put the meteorite piece in its place. Except she isn’t because Koopa’s girlfriend ends up doing it but gets fried for it. Daisy is the only one who can do it without getting fried. So, why did they need Daisy? Just get the rock and have one of the expendable Goombas put it in.

Hell, that plan makes way more sense. That way you wouldn’t involve Daisy at all who, being the princess of the dinosaur planet, would be a threat to Koopa’s rule. By including her, they’re actually undermining their own plan.

Daisy isn’t even aware of her heritage until she’s kidnapped. She was raised on Earth in an orphanage. So again, including her only makes things more complicated for Koopa. My God, they actually screwed up a kidnapping the princess plot.

How the king was turned into fungus also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Koopa did it via de-evolution, but since when did dinosaurs evolve into fungus? That doesn’t seam right to me, but I may have to do more research to me.

The city itself doesn’t make much sense. The planet the dinosaurs are on is nothing but desert. Where did they get the resources to build a major city like this? Especially one with technology more advanced than our own.

In fact, what power source are they using? Are they using oil? Doesn’t oil come from dead dinosaur bones. Are dinosaurs using their own dead ancestors for fuel. That’s fucked up.

Then there are the parts of the plot that are completely unnecessary. There’s an entire sub-plot with a character named Big Bertha that feels completely superfluous. You could cut it from the movie and miss very little.

There’s also way too much wandering about in this movie. The entire middle section feels like it’s characters going from one place to another with no clear direction on where the story is going. Things happen but nothing of actual substance transpires.

So the plot is a complete mess. Its somehow too simple and too convoluted at the same time with too much meandering about. Sadly, the characters don’t fare much better. None of them are particularly bad or unlikable, but that’s because there’s nothing to the characters at all.

The characterisation is just kind of flat. Characters don’t develop much through the course of the movie. The only character arcs I can think of is Daisy discovering who she really is, and Mario learning to be more adventurous and open to strange occurrences, but neither are developed very well. It’s still better than what poor Luigi got though, which is nothing at all.

I do find it funny though that in the movie, Mario is more cautious while Luigi is more adventurous. Especially since those roles have been reversed in years since the film’s release.

I will say that I did like the relationship between the Mario Bros, but that had more to do with the actors than the script. I like Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo in this, they have decent on-screen chemistry and I do buy the two as brothers even if they look nothing alike. It’s just a shame the script gives them nothing to work with.

And I might as well bring it up here because you almost have to when talking about the movie, this is what introduced the idea that Mario and Luigi’s last name is Mario. So their full names are Mario Mario, and Luigi Mario. I hate and love how dumb that is. it’s so stupid it’s kind of charming.

As for the side characters, they don’t fare much better. Koopa’s girlfriend is set-up as a rival for Daisy but it’s not developed very well. Big Bertha as a character is never explained, I still don’t know what her deal is, Iggy and Spike are annoying comic relief characters, don’t get me started on what they did to Toad.

The only character I remember much of is Koopa, and that’s because I have no idea what the hell Dennis Hopper is doing half the time. He plays Koopa more like an OCD riddled politician than a threatening dictator. It also doesn’t help that he looks like the dollar store version of Max Headroom.

It’s an incredibly odd performance. But I’ll give him this, at least he’s entertaining. He’s got so many weird mannerisms and line deliveries it’s hard not to laugh at him. Which is good because the actual comedy in this is pretty frigging weak.

Most of the time when they try to be funny the jokes end up falling flat. There’s a weird running gag of Koopa trying to order a Pizza that, well to be honest I don’t know what it is. It’s set up as a joke but there’s no actual punchline. What is the joke, I legitimately do not know.

The comedy and tone of the movie are also at odds with what the movie is trying to do. I thought this was going to be more like Batman 89 or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yes, those did have comedy elements, but that was to add levity, it wasn’t for the whole movie.

The movie like a dystopian sci-fi movie, but is written like a goof ball comedy. The music doesn’t help matters either as it sounds like something out of a Nickelodeon sitcom. It sounds so out of place given the movies darker tone and setting.

The tone for the movie is all over the place. A lot of that is due to the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. The actors were clashing with the directors who themselves were fighting the studio heads and producers. Everyone wanted a say in the final product and their different philosophies were at odds with each other.

One side wanted it to be darker, the other wanted it to be comedic. The result is a disparate mess of a movie with clashing tones and ideas that don’t mesh well at all.

I need to make one thing abundantly clear here, Super Mario Bros is a kids movie. Like the games it’s very clearly intended for younger audiences around 7-10 years old. And what’s weird is that this is the kind of kids film I usually enjoy. Films with a darker twisted age that aren’t afraid to show their audience something that will give them nightmares.

Normally I would be all for this kind of movie, but it simply doesn’t work here. What separates Super Mario Bros from other dark kid’s movies like Secret of Nimh and The Never Ending Story is that those were dark thematically as well as visually. Super Mario Bros is dark purely on the surface. It’s all style and no substance, which makes the darker imagery hollow and empty.

It’s goofy tone also prevents things from getting too scary, which means it never challenges younger audiences like a lot of great kids movies do. Don’t get me wrong, not every kids movie needs to do this, but they do need to at least take the audience seriously. Something this movie simply doesn’t do.

So yeah, Super Mario Bros is not a good movie. But is it at least so bad it’s good? When I think of a so bad it’s good movie I think of stuff like Plan 9, The Room, Birdemic or anything made by Neil Breen. Movies so incompetently put together you can’t help but laugh at the sheer ineptitude of it all.

Super Mario Bros never quite reaches those same levels. The fact it mostly goes for comedy doesn’t help much. Trust me there is nothing worse than having to sit through a bad comedy.

I’m in a weird position with this movie because I actually wish it was worse. It’s not good enough to be legitimately entertaining, but it’s also not bad enough to be ironically entertaining. It just sits in the middle of being straight up bad.

That said occasionally it is quite funny for how weird it is. There’s a scene where the brothers are mugged by an old lady who then gets thrown into traffic, another has Luigi making the Goombas dance in an elevator. And of course you have Dennis Hopper, who is pretty consistently entertaining with his performance.

So, it has its moments, but I don’t think these moments are frequent enough to make it a great so bad it’s good movie. You can do much better, or would that be worse in this instance?

If I’m being honest this movie isn’t really that bad. It isn’t good, but it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and there are some things it does pretty well.

Dennis Hopper non-withstanding most of the actors do a serviceable job, and as I said I like Bob Hoskins as Mario. Even if he is a little miscast. His Brooklyn accent isn’t bad, but it’s still obvious he’s putting on an accent. But Hoskins is charming enough in the role that he gets away with it.

The other actors also do a good job. Leguizamo is great as Luigi, he definitely works as the plucky younger brother, and while Daisy is a bit boring as a character, Samantha Mathis does a decent job with what she’s given. Even though the shoot was hell for everyone they kept it professional with their performances. Except for Hopper, and God bless him for it.

And even though I ragged on the setting, I will say the sets at least look pretty good. It’s generic cyberpunk stuff, but I do like the cyberpunk aesthetic. And while the computer effects have aged horribly, not that they were great to begin with, the practical effects still look pretty good.

I cannot call Super Mario Bros a good movie, but is it one of the worst movies of all time? I’m going to have to say no. There are much worse films out there, even among videogame adaptations. At least the film is an interesting kind of failure.

I can see why the movie has a cult following. As an adaptation it’s almost like nothing the source material, but if you squint hard enough it is possible to see it as a legit adaptation of the source material.

As an esoteric adaptation of the games it is a fascinating watch. I don’t find the movie very entertaining, though it has its moments, but I would still recommend it if only for a learning experience. To see a very different way of adaptation. Even if don’t like it, I am at least glad it exists.

The new Mario Movie is set to debut in a month at the time of this writing. While I don’t know how the film will turn out, it certainly looks like a lot of fun based on the trailers. At the very least it looks closer to the games than the live action movie. So that means it must be better, right? Right?! Please be good.

The Gaming Historians video: https://youtu.be/Ve26GpPDTgY