Abused extras, drunk stars, and way too many cooks in the kitchen.
This is the wild true story of the making of 1993's Super Mario Bros.
If you're watching a movie made by a major Hollywood studio, there's a good chance it was
either partially or completely rewritten multiple times by multiple writers. But even considering
that standard, Super Mario Bros. had a lot of writers. To be specific, about a dozen scribes
turned in drafts, with a number of writing teams hired and then unceremoniously fired.
Early scripts were more reminiscent of the games, as they were colorful and featured many
of the villains and allies that Mario encountered throughout his side-scrolling adventures. Also,
Koopa was actually a giant spiked lizard. But when producers finally settled on a
pair of directors, they brought along their own ideas for script revisions.
The directing team of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel were best known as the creators of the
dystopian sci-fi character Max Headroom. Their ideas were the ones that mostly ended up in the
final cut of the movie. But the producers were so worried that Morton and Jankel had
so radically departed from the source material that a new set of writers were brought in to fix
it. The producers then barred the directors from even speaking to the new writers. When
the principal cast arrived on set and read the new version of the script for the first time,
they were furious. And this pretty much set the tone for the entire production to come.
There's no denying that Bob Hoskins was an ideal physical fit to play Mario. But the
role could've gone to a few different actors, all of whom are legends in their own right.
Two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman wanted the part, but Nintendo didn't feel that he
was the best fit. So producers turned their sights towards Danny Devito, though he turned them down.
Then the casting process turned towards one of the biggest names in Hollywood history: Tom Hanks. At
the time, Hanks was a rising star who was charming in every film lucky enough to cast him. Alas,
though, his two most recent films at the time, The 'Burbs and The Bonfire of the Vanities,
flopped at the box office and scared off producers. In the years to come,
Hanks would win two Academy Awards and basically become America's dad.
So things ultimately probably worked out for the best for him. But who knows what
alternate universe we'd be living in if Hanks was Mario and Bob Hoskins was Forrest Gump?
"You never know what you're gonna get."
Instead of taking inspiration from the actual Super Mario video games,
the screenwriters looked towards big-budget, adult-oriented, violent action movies. In
particular, they drew from the likes of Die Hard, Mad Max, and Blade Runner.
In the late '80s and early '90s, those three films were the cultural touchstones that pretty
much everyone was referencing when it came to blockbusters, sci-fi and action. The Die Hard
inspiration was so extreme that one version of the script even called for a Bruce Willis
cameo. The idea was for him to be crawling through the air vents above Koopa's office.
Another version of the screenplay took direct inspiration from the
Mad Max franchise by having the characters driving tricked-out post-apocalyptic cars and
participating in death races. With all this in mind, it sounds like nobody in charge of
making the Super Mario Bros. movie actually wanted to make a Super Mario Bros. movie.
Before Super Mario Bros., directors Morton and Jankel had worked primarily on music videos
and had some experience making a couple of dark and trippy features. So when it
came to the visual aspect of making a movie, they were legitimately innovative for their
time. But their philosophies might have been a little too wild for Nintendo. Case in point:
they didn't even want to dress Mario and Luigi in their classic overalls.
This was a major point of contention, with the producers demanding that Mario
and Luigi look at least a little bit like they did in the video games. Morton and
Jankel fought them tooth and nail for most of the production until they finally gave in. So,
if not for the producers' dogged insistence, the only visually recognizable aspect of
Mario and Luigi likely would've just been Bob Hoskins' mustache.
"It's sabotage!"
Morton and Jankel's arrogance effectively ruined their film careers and any chance
of making a single friend on the Mario set. The cast and crew pretty much hated the directing duo,
often resorting to calling them names behind their backs and grumbling about their bizarre
antics. Bob Hoskins believed that Morton and Jankel had no idea what they were doing,
while Dennis Hopper complained that they weren't very good at communicating script changes
At one point, Morton was looking over the extras. He thought one of them didn't look dirty enough,
so he grabbed a cup of coffee and allegedly poured it over the extra's head. Morton claimed
that the coffee had been sitting around for a while, though he also said that when the extra
complained that it was hot, he doused the extra with cool water to soothe the pain.
Then when it came time for reshoots, the producers didn't allow the directing duo
to shoot even a single new frame. Their slow disassociation from the
film reached its peak when they were also banned from the editing room.
John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins became so disgruntled during production that
they eventually started drinking Scotch to pass the time and make the dark days go by
a little easier. But as luck would have it, on one of the days they were kicking back shots,
they were called onto set to shoot a scene in which they had to drive the Mario Brothers'
plumbing van. Leguizamo was then reportedly a little shaky behind the wheel. When the directors
yelled "Action!", he slammed the accelerator, and then he quickly slammed on the brake. The
van's sliding door slammed shut on Hoskins' right hand, and then he had to wear a flesh-toned cast.
And that clearly wasn't Hoskins' only bad memory from the whole production. In August 2007,
he opened up about the whole experience during an interview with The Guardian.
To say that he didn't hold back would be putting it mildly. As he recalled,
"The worst thing I ever did [was] Super Mario Bros. It was a f---in' nightmare.
The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing,
whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent [...] F---in' nightmare. F---in' idiots."
When bringing the Super Mario world to life, the filmmakers made the unique choice to not
include Princess Peach but instead Princess Daisy. She's played by Samantha Mathis,
who was perhaps then best known for the 1990 cult classic Pump Up the Volume.
However, those with keen ears may recognize Mathis' voice from another movie released
just a year before Super Mario Bros. That would be FernGully:
The Last Rainforest, in which she plays Crysta, the young fairy who
stands up to toxic sludge monster Hexxus and falls in love with Zak the lumberjack.
"Look out! Bless your eyes with magic sight, I give the gift of fairy size. Oop, sight!"
It's pretty impressive for someone to play two different iconic characters within a year of each
other, even if the Daisy of the video games is a little different than the version Mathis played.
Even if you find Super Mario Bros. charming despite its flaws,
you probably wouldn't mention the word "Oscars" in the same breath as this movie. Nevertheless,
it actually was a viable candidate for a coveted statuette, as it was among the
films under consideration for a nomination for best visual effects at the 66th Academy Awards.
Ultimately, however, the competition was too much for Super Mario Bros to snag a nomination,
especially considering the other big dinosaur-themed movie of that year,
Jurassic Park. Still, Mario is in good company, as other fantastical favorites from that year
like Hocus Pocus and Addams Family Values didn't make the cut either, despite also
being under consideration. A nomination would've been well-deserved, though, as Super Mario Bros.
actually pioneered some significant new visual effects technology and software.
Even though script rewrites were basically a daily occurrence on the Super Mario Bros. set,
the actors generally tended to stick with the lines they were given once they were finalized.
Even Dennis Hopper, who reportedly once spent more than three hours chastising the directors
over the constant dialogue changes, eventually chose to go along with what was written.
But Richard Edson, who plays King Koopa's henchman Spike, is one actor who essentially
threw the script out the window. Also going off script was Fisher Stevens,
who played Spike's henchman partner-in-crime Iggy. As Edson revealed in a 2011 interview,
his and Stevens' dissatisfaction with their original dialogue led to them pitching new
material to Jankel and Morton. The directors were impressed enough to give them almost complete
control over their characters, including a rap that sadly ended up on the cutting room floor.
"I missed."
"Nice job."
One of the most iconic heroic characters from the Super Mario franchise is the
humanoid toadstool Toad, but alas, he doesn't have a very big role in
the Super Mario Bros. movie. He's played by Mojo Nixon as a musician who provides
useful exposition to Mario and Luigi before being turned into a Goomba by King Koopa. He
does appear a few more times after that, but it's not a very significant part.
That wasn't always going to be the case, though. In multiple versions of the script,
Toad is a key ally once Mario and Luigi end up in King Koopa's world. In the first screenplay draft,
he was originally going to look like a three-foot-fall toadstool-shaped creature,
basically his appearance in the video games, rather than a human with a funky haircut.
A later draft reinvented Toad as being part humanoid and part chameleon, which subsequent
writers initially stuck with before downplaying his lizard features in a later revision.
If you ask anyone who worked on Super Mario Bros.,
they'll probably tell you it was a pretty rough experience. And their
opinion of the final product generally isn't so great, either. Samantha Mathis, for one,
called it "a pretty bad movie" when she stopped by the Saturday Morning Rewind podcast in 2019.
But that isn't to say that they completely hate it. Mathis also noted that she does appreciate the
affection from the fans who love the movie. And as John Leguizamo told /Film in 2022,
he's gained a greater affection for the flick for the same reason. He also
appreciated the trailblazing decision to cast a Colombian actor like himself
in a leading role. And Fisher Stevens even told Entertainment Weekly in 2021:
"I can't wait 'til my kids are old enough to watch this movie."
And visual effects designer and supervisor Chris Woods has praised the work that he
and his colleagues did for the film. Meanwhile,
Allan Apone of the production company Makeup & Effects Laboratory said in a 2011 interview,
"We achieved everything and more that we set out to do."
Super Mario Bros. wraps up most of its plot points fairly conclusively. But just before
the credits start to roll, viewers are hit with a whopper of a tease when Daisy shows up at the
Mario brothers' apartment in full-on combat gear to recruit the siblings for another adventure.
So you could easily be forgiven for thinking that there's a Super Mario Bros. sequel out
there. And you'd actually be kind of right, sort of. Super Mario Bros. 2 exists as a
digital fan comic created by Ryan Hoss and Steven Applebaum, the owners of the "Super
Mario Bros. The Movie Archive" website. In addition to Daisy and the brothers,
characters like Daisy's father King Reznor appear in expanded roles. The comic also
expands upon the powers that Daisy gets from her dimension-bridging meteor fragment.
What sets this comic apart from other fan continuations is that it has input from Parker
Bennett, who penned the film's second draft. Though the original comic remains unfinished,
a reworked version debuted in 2021 that seemingly swaps Wart out with
Dinohattan police chief Sergeant Simon, one of King Koopa's former associates.