Super Mario Brothers: The Movie. Is there any more reviled film in the history of video
game cinema? I used to believe - as I suspect many of you do - that this movie was so bad,
it’s the reason why video game movies are scoffed at to this very day. But that isn’t true,
and I can prove it.
It is true that Super Mario Bros was always going to fail, but that has very little to
do with the movie itself, and almost everything to do with the weird moment in American history
in which it arrived – a moment that’s had lasting effects on how we view video games.
When I started researching - well, not... not this video, but *a* video about Super Mario Bros: The Movie
I began by reading a bunch of contemporaneous reviews, to get a sense of
what critics at the time thought of it. They really dug in at the movie for being a commercial
endeavor, all about marketing and merchandising.
I was genuinely shocked by how many reviews were dismissive of it for being a video game
movie. This is the first *ever* movie based on a video game property, so where did this
reputation even come from?
It wasn’t until I read this review, by Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune, that I understood
what was happening.
"REMEMBER TRON?"
One of several early 80’s game-themed films, TRON was… pretty well received by critics.
It did well financially. Why this dude hated it is a mystery to me. Unless it’s not about
TRON or Super Mario Bros, or movies at all. Unless... it was actually just about
video games.
The mid-80s to the early 90s saw a huge wave of concern about what media children were
consuming, and just how badly it was smooshing their gooey little brains. In hindsight, some
campaigns were pretty unfair, like Dungeons and Dragons being blamed for promoting murder
and witchcraft. Others were probably pretty close to the money, like Janet Mangini’s
case against R. J. Reynolds for using their mascot Joe Camel to appeal to children.
These were the two types of complaints lobbied against children’s media. Either it was
training children to be violent, or it was brainwashing them into being consumer-robots.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because this is something Western civilizations have been
struggling with since childhood was invented!
Which was about 300 years ago by Enlightenment-era philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
What’s different about the late 80s and 90s… uh, the 1980 and 90s, is that legislative
acts were actually passed to address these concerns. Like the Children’s Television
Act of 1990, which regulated how much ad time could run during kids shows, and provided
grant money for educational television. This act was notoriously ineffective; Studios would
argue that all their cartoons had moral value. GI Joe? Socially redeeming. The Flintstones?
That’s educational! But the fact it passed at all is noteworthy.
As those movie reviews suggest, video games - and any associated movies or media - were
thought of as “bad commercials”. There was a vague concern that it might be addictive
or nebulously harmful. But they weren’t a huge priority. Games weren’t super violent
or explicit. It was fine! Video games are totally fine for children
FINISH HIM.
AHHHHHHHHHHH! GUH.
Then. In 1992, Mortal Kombat arrived, and it immediately created controversy by
being Mortal Kombat.
- Newscaster: You can knock your opponent’s head off. Complete with electronic blood n’guts.
- Originally an arcade machine, the game came to home consoles in late 1993, after Super
Mario Bros: The Movie had already been released. This is when the real pushback started, because
it was the first time a lot of parents - like Senator Joe Lieberman - got to see Mortal
Kombat first-hand. Although sanitized, the Nintendo version turned the SNES into a trojan
horse, sneaking in ultra-violent content in Mario’s hollowed-out torso.
Mortal Kombat, alongside FMV movie-game Night Trap, arcade game Lethal Enforcers, and future
Karl Urban vehicle Doom, became the subject of congressional hearings led by Senators
Lieberman and Herb Kohl in December 1993.
- Joe Liberman: The game narrator instructs the player to finish — and I quote, “FINISH”
his opponent. The player may then choose a method of murder, ranging from ripping a heart
out, to pulling off the head of the opponent with spinal cord attached.
- To avoid a government-controlled ratings board, a number of game companies formed a unified
rating group, which we know today as the ESRB. They also formed a trade group, the Entertainment
Software Association, which is responsible for political lobbying and hosting a small
regional con called E3.
But more importantly, these congressional hearings were like a massive switch flipping
video games from “DUMB COMMERCIALS” to “DANGER DANGER DANGER.” Outside of games
media, this danger-shroud was the only cultural framework used to talk about video games for
a good long time, especially in the 90s and 2000s.
- This Freaking Dude: And I’m definitely not gonna let, uh, Mass Effect, in my house.
But back in 1993 when Super Mario Bros: The Movie hatched, video games were still wholly
dismissed as pure child-seeking cash grabs. And that perspective had a clear, negative
impact on the film’s production. Producers Roland Joffé and Jake Eberts, and directors
Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel wanted to make something edgy, something adults would
like. You can get away with that now - in fact, I’d argue you have to make video game
movies for adult audiences, because it’s too tricky to wade into the dark waters of
what’s acceptable for children.
But at the same time, studio executives who visited the repurposed warehouse set did not like
the adult vibes of the story. A week before production kicked off, the screenplay writer
behind the various adventures of Messrs. Bill & Ted was brought in to write a new kid-friendly
script for the Super Mario Brothers.
The production still had piles of cement and fetish-wear that they couldn’t afford to
throw out, so everything had to be retrofitted to the sets and props they already had. Every
day, new script pages were coming in from various sources - the directors, other screenwriters
brought in to fix it, the actors ad libbing scenes because, you know, shoot your shot.
All in an attempt to make the damn thing work.
But the real question is: did it work?
Well, despite the review quotes that I cherry-picked and took out of context at the beginning
of this video, the reviews were mostly middling to positive. The critics agreed that the actors
did a great job, and the visual design was great. Its biggest flaw seems to be its weirdness.
And the movie *is* weird. But it’s also the kind of weird movie you’d expect based on
the people who made it. Directors Jankel and Morton were often dismissed as untested - just
music video directors. But they’d made two seasons of Max Headroom – considered the
first, and by some to be one of the best, cyberpunk shows ever made.
- Max Headroom: Have you any idea how s-s-successful censorship is on TV? Don’t know the answer?
Hm. Successful, isn’t it?
- Not only that, but David L. Snyder, the production designer, had previously been nominated for
an Oscar for his art direction on Blade Runner. It had the cinematographer from Road Warrior,
and the composer from Back to the Future. The movie had an undeniably impressive pedigree.
The point is, complaining that the end result was weird cyberpunk mush is like putting vegetables
and broth in a pot and complaining when you get soup. And I think because of the dismissive
cultural context this movie was released in, it was never going to get a fully fair reading.
- Bowser: Monkey!
- While I have you, there’s one other myth I’ve heard about Super Mario Bros:
The Movie that I want to deflate. The legend goes that the movie babombed so hard, it made
Nintendo extremely cautious and controlling with their properties. It is true that a John
Woo-helmed Metroid movie never got off the ground due to Nintendo’s reluctance to cede
power over Samus’ backstory. But that’s not because of Super Mario Bros.
First of all, Nintendo wasn’t all that interested in The Movie in the first place, success or
failure. They assumed the Mario franchise would be fine regardless of how the movie
did, and they were correct.
Second of all, here’s Donkey Kong Country, a motion-captured animated series released
just three years after the SMB movie. It ran for two seasons, and was popular enough that
elements from the show later appeared in the games. Like with SMB, Nintendo didn’t have
any input on the show, according to DKC director Mike Fallows. Just another instance of Nintendo
saying “go for it, kid.” It’s much more likely that nobody in Hollywood wanted to
produce Nintendo-licensed media - and that probably *was* because of Super Mario Bros.
What actually changed Nintendo’s stance on licensing was Gail Tilden, former VP of
Brand Management at Nintendo of America and the personal engineer of my Nintendo childhood.
When she was promoted to that position in 1998, Tilden knew that the media market was
globalizing at a dramatic rate. She understood that in this new profoundly interconnected
world, media produced for the USA could impact other markets, and vice versa. So she led
the drive to make Nintendo’s branding consistent across the globe, which meant no more passing
out licenses to whoever came trick-or-treating.
None of this determines whether SMB is a good or bad movie. That’s subjective, and it’s
always going to be influenced by cultural tastes and standards, as well as personal.
For instance I, as a modern audience member with a penchant for weird cyberpunk bullshit, really enjoy it.
But the good news is, you don’t have to take my word for it! Reviews are meant to
guide our opinions, not define them. We all know that some media ages poorly. The flip
side is, somethings we consider garbage but haven’t actually experienced for ourselves might have
redeeming qualities. If you haven’t seen Super Mario Bros: The Movie, try it out for yourself and let us
know in the comments what you think.
Or you can just take my word for it that it’s a great movie.
(aggressively '80s dance music with a horn burst and a drum backtrack playing)