Have I not [done] a review of the Super Mario Brothers movie?
I guess not I've mentioned it in some of my videos, and I've talked about it off the record a lot
It's one of those conversation pieces everybody talks about this movie
But when was the last time we gave it a closer look so let's see what it was about this adaptation
[that] went so horribly wrong
This has been one of my most often requested movies, so this is very belated
But I think I just needed some time [to] get myself into the right mindset [and] view it for what it is
The last time I watched it fully was in the theater on may 28 1993
That was 20 years ago
Today Younger Generation has discovered this movie as some weird artifact from the 90s like [hey]
You know there was a Super Mario brothers movie
I've actually gotten emails like that, and yeah this movie was a big deal when [it] came out
It wasn't something that just passed by under the radar [it] had lots of promotion and merchandise
[I] must have seen that commercial on TV
like a thousand times even Megadeth had a song on the soundtrack [album] of
Course then the movie came [out] it flopped it faded into obscurity and then with the advent of the internet was resurrected
into a cult phenomenon
It was the first time a videogame had ever been adapted into a feature
live-Action film there were movies before it like tron
Wargames Cloak and Dagger and [the] [Wizard] which were movies about video games, but this was the first
adaptation [of] a specific game
Imagine if you were a screenwriter assigned to the task of adapting this and there was no
[pre-existing] example of how to make [a] game into [a] movie at face value the game is two guys running around to hitting blocks
Jumping on turtles and getting mushrooms. What do you do with that so the writers took many liberties and came up with their own story?
It starts with the super Mario brothers music. [the] only time you ever hear in the movie, and it's not a newly composed
cinematic version, but instead just the same exact 8-bit music from the original game
It's just something to trick you into thinking that the movie is going to be like the game when it [isn't] at all
then all of a sudden
We're getting an animated history lesson about the dinosaurs what the hell happened then we jump ahead to present-day
Brooklyn where we meet Mario and luigi played by Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo some people may not like the choice of casting but
Honestly, I don't think it's that bad
[I] especially like Bob Hoskins
[but] if you want to see a better movie with him see who framed Roger rabbit he is amazing in that
From what I gathered he hated this movie
[he] once said in an interview the worst thing I ever did Super Mario brothers
[it] was a fucking nightmare the whole experience was a nightmare and from what I heard in John, Leguizamo's book
He says that it was such a negative experience that to dull the pain both of them were always drinking scotch on the set
So perhaps Bob Hoskins became the real-Life Eddie valiant
The two of them almost have a chemistry together. It's no Lethal weapon
But there's something there while the video games hint that the Mario brothers are plumbers the movie makes it explicitly clear
They sure are plumbers if there's one thing the movie follows from the games
It's the thing the games play up the least it also explains
Why they're called the Mario brothers because both their last names are mario. You know what I never thought of that
Why are they called the Mario brothers that'd be like if I had a brother named Tim and we called ourselves the Tim brothers
instead of by [our] surname
It doesn't make any sense
But did we need the movie to make sense of it would anyone be confused if they didn't get that out of the way?
It's like the movies taking a stab at the games
It doesn't adapt from the games very well what they sure did a good job of parroting it Luigi has a love interest a girl
Who's digging for dinosaur bones underneath the Brooklyn Bridge?
All right, look if I try to explain all this I'll be here all day. So look she's the princess the princess daisy
Strange that Luigi has a love interest and not Mario
But in the film portrayal it does make more sense that way
one minor thing since we're on the topic of how the movie relates to the game
[why'd] they pick [princess] daisy from the game boy version Super Mario land and not the more famous Princess toadstool?
And that's right. I said princess toadstool because that's what she was called back, then I know in Japan
She was always princess peach, but instead we got princess toadstool
Very attractive name for a princess might as well be princess frog shit
Then there's a villain played by Dennis hopper [who] they refer to as Koopa
There's a couple things here that don't add up the first is Minor the name
While this is a live-action film and is a different take on it. We all expected the villain to be bowser
That's what he was always known [as] in the games
I distinctly remember the original instruction manual called him bowser king of the Koopa but here
He's just Koopa but the thing that's more offsetting is
Just look at them do these two [things] look alike
No, that's one of the common things that confuses people about this movie bowser is supposed to be a [fire-spitting] turtle dragon
Hybrid so why here is Bowser a human being well first of all he's not bowser. He's Koopa and
Second he is a reptilian creature. He's descended from the T-Rex
You know T-Rex bowser close enough right and at the finale?
[he's] [apt] with a devolve gun the guns in this movie are
Snes super scopes that have been painted anyway this gun
It makes him Devolve back into his reptilian self
Man that effect is still cool some of the weird CG effects in this movie do heighten its enjoyability
He turns into his true form as a T-rex and there you have the closest he ever gets to resembling bowser
Speaking of devolving. There's a scene where he crosses over into our dimension and devolve some guy into a chimpanzee
They could have had him turn into some kind of primal
Prehistoric ape done with animatronics or costume, but instead they used a live
Chimpanzee kind of cheap that he turns into an animal that's still around today [as] for the king who once ruled this world
He was devolved back into fung that's right
His fungus has spread all [over] the city [and] tries [to] help the mario brothers till he's evolved back and turns out to be lance
Hendrickson as far as Dennis hoppers performance goes I don't know what it is. There's something. I like [about] it
I can't explain it [and] I think it's just because in the 90s. He was in speed. He was in waterworld
He was always playing the villains so I just thought of him as the quintessential bad guy
And I'm unable to distance myself from it
[I] look at the movie, and I just think it's fucking Dennis hopper
There's a running joke where he's waiting for a pizza, but it's not a joke because there's no payoff
It's like saying why did the chicken cross the Road?
and
then offering no punchline as a
Kid I was confused, but now I think I finally get it
It's funny because it's so unfunny and that's the way the whole movie is it's just this awkward
Tone and it's hilarious for that reason [Koopa] has two henchmen iggy and spike who are also descended from dinosaurs?
Iggy's name comes from Bowser's offspring and Super Mario Brothers [3] and spike comes from
That thing so random
They're both idiots played for comic relief sort of like the burglars and home alone, but that's giving it too much credit
How come every movie I'm talking about is on this shelf?
Okay, [I] think now [that] I introduced all the main characters. I can finally start telling you about the backstory
Okay, so get this in a nutshell. There is a meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs
But this meteor
Split the world into two parallel dimensions in one dimension you have
Primates and in the other you [have] the dinosaurs now
the primates evolved into people and the dinosaurs evolved into
These cold-blooded reptilian people that lay eggs and all that so anyway
Bowser belongs to the Koopa belongs this dimension and wants [to] cross over and merge the two dimensions into one
so he can take them both over and
To do this he needs a piece of the original meteor that caused the dimensional split princess daisy has been keeping its
So that's why Koopa captures the princess and that was the biggest part of the game
Bowser captures the princess and the Mario Brothers have to go rescue her so they got that part right and they tried to
Elaborate on it to make a whole movie based around it. It's conventional, but it works
it's like in Star [Wars] when Darth Vader captures Princess, Leia
Because she has something he wants back in this case the plans to the death star [the] [part] that throws me off is
What's with all the dinosaur stuff?
Why is it such a big part of the movie the closest that comes to having any direct tie-in is with Yoshi?
Technically Yoshi can be considered a dinosaur. So it makes enough sense that his live-action counterpart would be just that a
Generic looking dinosaur although the animatronics are pretty cool
You know how today [everything] [is] always about zombies and aliens well back then in the [early] 90s
Everything was always about dinosaurs. They were everywhere
Super Mario brothers was released at the height [of] this dinosaur craze
Just a couple weeks before Jurassic park came out and when Jurassic park came out
Everybody forgot about the Super Mario brothers movie pretty quickly. So how else does the movie relate to the game?
Well the goombas are the complete opposite instead of big heads with small non-existent bodies
They have small heads with big bodies
It almost seemed like a conscious decision to make the movie as different as possible from the game. They're voiced by the
Unmistakable Frank Welker Goombahs aside, I really love these faces
I don't know how to put it that just cracks me, huh?
Remember Big Bertha the Giant fish from Super Mario Brothers 3 well in the movie
She's a bouncer at a bar who steals the meteor piece and wears it around her neck
Mario tries to get it back by dancing with her to distract her and then
What the hell is that something? You expect to see in the Super Mario Brothers movie?
Remember the thwomps the living blocks that try to crush mario in the movie
Swamp is a brand name given to Rocket boots a powerup that never existed [in] the games the stores are full of them
So can anybody just grab these boots from the stand and go flying off and are powered by things that look like Bullet bills
So there's your bullet bill reference the only thing in the movie that does what it's supposed to
Basically is a bomb yes there actually is a bomb [in] the movie, and it's pretty much like in the game
Except it's wearing reeboks
so other than a bunch of references the movie has almost nothing to do with the games and
Seem to not take any faith in its source material
Understandably this disappointed many of its hardcore fans
Nintendo didn't have any creative input on the project
It was one of those rare [moments] when somebody else entered into an agreement with Nintendo and was able to do something like this
This was a mistake that could never be repeated today people take video game movies way more seriously
and if [Nintendo] had produced the film themselves
Maybe it could have been done properly and in 20 years since they've never tried again it
Scarred them that much I was wondering what Shigeru Miyamoto thought of this movie
So I was able to dig up a comment. Where he said
The movie may have tried to get a little too close [to] what the mario brothers video games were and in that sense it became
A movie that was about a video game rather than being an entertaining movie in and of itself to [a] certain extent
I think that's true, but I [think] that it is its own movie
And if it were any more different from the game it would have shared no connection with it whatsoever except for the title
it's kind of like the American Godzilla movie from
1998 Where Tristar acquired the rights from Toho to make this travesty which had nothing to do with Godzilla
And was more like any other generic reptilian monster movie when I saw the Super Mario brothers movie as a kid
I
Wasn't so concerned about it being like the game
There were no other video game movies to compare to and all the years since being critical of it
I've actually forgotten how much I wanted it to be different from the game. It's like going from the Batman TV show
To the movie it was a fresh new approach
And that's how things keep us interested as we grow older
We need them to become more badass
The same goes for Ninja Turtles most of us first got hooked on the animated series
Which was more kid-friendly than the comics then the movie came out and blew our fucking balls off it was
Darker and for Lack of better words. It's just badass
So I expected the super Mario brothers movie to be a badass version of the games
sure, it was a little darker and a little more adult in tone, but
Misguided
[so] what was misguided about it was the source material too difficult to translate into a movie
It was done fairly well and all the different
Animated Super Mario Brothers TV shows so maybe you can say it just didn't translate well to live-action
[I]
Think the biggest problem is the setting it's not set in any kind of environment that we recognize from the games and keep in mind
[Super] Mario World was out by now
They had plenty of time to establish
The familiar Fantasy landscape at the games and the movie just completely threw that all out the window
[sure], they have interpretations of all the characters [and] certain references, but without the world you have nothing
That's not to say I didn't like the world that the movie created
It's a dystopian futuristic city reminiscent of blade Runner
[I]
noticed the Blade Runner
Similarity on my own but then I found out that lots of [people] have compared to blade Runner and the production designer
Was David L. [schneider] who just happened to be the art director on [Lane] Runner
Super Mario Brothers has a surreal quality that makes it unique
Can you think of any other movie that has so much fungus and I have to mention the ending?
It's a cliffhanger was there anyone else out there who actually thought there was going to be a sequel
There wasn't so how does this movie hold up after 20 years um?
About the same it's a terrible adaptation
But if you can distance yourself from it being a super Mario brothers movie you can get some enjoyment out of it
It's definitely watchable. It's not a total bore
It's not a great movie by any means, but it's not as bad as its reputation
Maybe it shouldn't have been called Super Mario brothers and just been its own movie
But then again, if it wasn't called Super Mario brothers, we probably wouldn't be talking about it today
So the name if anything just helps preserve this movie
it's a time capsule [the] 90s remember that thing I used to have one of those hours [of] fun and
On a more serious note in the alternate dimension a damaged world trade Center can be seen
Watching it today gives us a grim reminder to what happened in 2001
But also a reminder to the more carefree and innocent time when we were naive enough to think nothing like that could ever happen
only in the movies
so you [can] see this movie through a
Nostalgic filter or through a critical filter that the internet's helped with I say see it for yourself
See it for what it [is] and always trust the fungus