There are a lot of good reasons that movies adapted from video games are often viewed with skepticism, and the 1993Super Mario Bros.movie is one of the earliest and best examples. The movie was a flop at the time, losing millions and ensuring that Nintendo would drop the idea for at least a decade, but it did manage to get a few important details right. Its legacy lives on with cult-film status and a dedicated fan following in the present day.
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Doing the same thing and expecting a different result seems to be the thing in big-budget Hollywood productions these days, and it looks like Nintendo is jumping on the bandwagon with a remake that is scheduled for release in 2023. Hopefully, this new version will be able to correct the mistakes of the 1993 attempt and remember the things they got right, even if they weren’t enough to save the movie.
7The First Video Game-Movie Adaptation
The revenue from console sales made this an idea whose time had come, and even though the box office returns and critical reviews were miserable, future attempts atadapting video games for the screenwere inevitable. It did more for the hyper-realist genre and the combination of fantasy and horror than it did for video game adaptations.
Modern attempts likeHaloseem to get a decent initial reception on streaming services before deflating, but so far anime has a better track record for adaptation. The upcoming film seems to have learned its lesson in this regard, relying on animation and fantasy as opposed to a real-life setting or a science-fiction-based one.
6The Casting
Dennis Hopper as an understated but menacing Bowser was perfect, Bob Hoskins interprets a believable real-life Mario, and then this movie gave us John Leguizamo’s career. All of the above makes this movie worth it, even if it was an embarrassing mess in every other way.
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The majority of criticism for the movie back in the 1990s was directed at the storyline and editing, citing a messy plot and choppy pacing, never mind the tonal problems. It was trying to be a movie that would make sense to adults but wouldalso be fun for the kidsplaying the games, and the result was that it didn’t make sense to anyone.
5The Effects Are Mostly Real
This wasan era when CGI was in its infancyand special effects consisted mostly of plasticine and miniatures, which means that what viewers see on the screen is almost totally practical effects.Super Mario Bros.was one of the last movies to use it almost exclusively.
Sometimes this looks great, like using an actual physical puppet for Yoshi as opposed to a cartoon, but it’s hard on the actors when the same rule is applied to riskier scenes on the set or when the realism is shattered by something that looks too much like a Halloween costume.Mortal Kombat, another infamous live-action video game adaptation, was made only two years later and uses CGI animation as much as possible to avoid that same trap.
4Filled In The Lore
This video game is about plumbers fighting amphibious animals, so why not? The explanation of dinosaurs covertly surviving and evolving into an intelligent species isn’t even that silly. Voyager stole this idea years later for one of its most iconic episodes, “Distant Origin.”
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Not all video games need a backstory, and the early days of side-scrollers had little to offer in the way of lore or character development, but the same isn’t true for a movie. The characters need some kind of stakes or motive, but there’s also the issue of combining that with a believable explanation as to why there would be a race of humanoid dinosaurs under a modern city.
3Fanservice
There are a lot ofeaster eggs scattered throughoutthe film that only gamers would recognize, from the iconic outfits to the reptile references. The reaction to them on the part of fans hovered between appreciative and hostile, although it’s entertaining to find them no matter how the viewer feels about how they were used.
Their last name Mario, for example, which makes them the “Mario Bros.,” didn’t land as a joke or even a complete sentence. An example that works, however, is when Luigi accidentally walks through a wall to find Mario on the other side of it, an allusion to either the Warp Zones or secret places in the game where the players could walk through the wall.
2The Soundtrack
It’s not just the licensed pop music, which includes tracks from Queen and Megadeath, but also the original score that was composed by Alan Silvestri. The latter is only available in unauthorized copies and was never included as part of the soundtrack that sold for retail.
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The songs on the soundtrack are part of what makes the movie a cult classic. The early 1990s didn’t always sound good, but the Roxette tracks along with the one-hit-wonder “Rock The Dinosaur” at least made them fun.
1A Post-Credit Scene
These aren’t the same as bloopers or edited footage. A post-credit scene refers to a short bit, often only a few seconds long, that follows the credits and can make inside jokes, hints at upcoming films, or obscure references. They’re all the rage in today’s movies,popularized by Marvel, which used them in every installment to keep fans in their seats until the house lights turned on.
The cut scene at the end ofSuper Mario Bros.consisted of two Japanese executives pitching an idea for a video game, but not about Mario and Luigi. Instead, they want to make a video game about the Koopa minions, Iggy and Spike.
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