All the anticipation around Super Mario Bros: The Movie it’s not just the fact that it’s an adaptation of one of the most well-known and beloved games in the video game world. The new feature is, in fact, a historic reparation for Nintendo after delivering one of the worst productions of all time.
In 1993, the company bankrolled a film that would take the Mario and Luigi saga to the screen. It was the first time that a game had hit theaters, but the result was catastrophic on an almost apocalyptic level, with a story that was nothing like what fans knew from the NES.
Not only because it brings a dark look that is very different from the almost lysergic color of the games. From the first to the last scene, Super Mario Bros. it was a succession of creative mistakes — a reflection of a pre-production that was also quite chaotic. Starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo, the feature had its script changed several times, had changes in the middle of filming and Nintendo itself was not sure which way to go.
The result is a film that traumatized an entire generation and helped build the curse that video game adaptations were doomed to failure. Only, let’s face it, this crazy script didn’t make the slightest effort to do it differently. Thinking about it, the Canaltech listed 10 absurd ideas from the 1993 Mario movie.
10. The Dinosaur Multiverse
The whole thing already starts out completely clueless in Super Mario Bros. when he brings up a meaningless concept. The movie begins by explaining that the meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs actually created an alternate reality. Thus, while we followed the timeline in which large reptiles became extinct and humanity evolved from primates, another one emerged in parallel.
This is where we are introduced to the world of Dinohattan, a reality in which civilization evolved from dinosaurs themselves. It’s a stupid idea just to justify that the villain King Koopa (Dennis Hopper) has this Jurassic origin, in a very forced connection with the Bowser of games.
More than that, the script tries to convey that these two dimensions are connected by a magical portal and that, at some point in the past, the queen of Dinohattan closed it to prevent the villain from trying to invade the human world.
Good luck to anyone trying to connect this story with the games.
9. A lost princess
The vast majority of Mario games boil down to the hero going to save a princess in distress. And, in the movie, this would be no different. But the attempt to transform the story into something more adult and serious aimed at the drama and hit the cheesy cliché.
That’s because Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis) is brought to the human kingdom by her mother when she was still an egg. She is the daughter of the rulers of Dinohattan and brought into our reality when Koopa initiates a coup d’état. It is in this process that the portal between the two dimensions is sealed and the dying queen leaves her offspring at the door of a church.
It’s the same cliché as countless stories. In Fire Horse a She-Ra, we have this heroine who doesn’t know she’s a princess in a magical kingdom and she’s going to find out halfway through. The difference is that, in the case of Super Mario Brosshe is a dinosaur-woman who was hatched from an egg hatched by a nun on a rainy night.
8. King Koopa’s Stupid Plan
So far, nothing in Super Mario Bros makes the slightest sense with what the games presented. So, the least we could expect was for the iconic game villain to show his face, right? Because that’s not what King Koopa does.
As the idea was not to bring Nintendo’s cartoonish look to the screen, the fire-breathing dinosaur turtle of games became an ordinary person with a strange hairstyle and an even more confusing plot. In fact, he is a descendant of the tyrannosaurus rex who decided to take a hit on Dinohattan. His plan is to govern both realities and, for that, he starts looking for a way to reopen the portal and invade the human world.
Not that Bowser’s motivations that we know are very elaborate, but the idea of joining the two dimensions simply has no reason to exist. Why does she want this? For the simple pleasure of conquest, since he considers primate humans to be an inferior species. So why master them?
7. What about mushrooms?
Any kid who’s ever laid eyes on a Mario game knows one thing: the Mushroom Kingdom is central to the whole thing. It’s part of the hero’s game. He eats one of these fungi to grow and even characters that are basically fluffy mushrooms. And how to fit all this into this meaningless plot of a dinosaur world?
If you don’t know, don’t feel bad. The screenwriters of Super Mario Bros they also had no idea and just threw it into history in the most absurd way possible. In this case, the dimension of Dinohattan is suffering from a fungus infestation. Why do you ask? Nobody knows.
It’s a rather forced reference to games that have no visual appeal, much less narrative. They needed a mushroom and, since there was nowhere to put it, they threw it on top of everything.
6. Scary Goombas
One of the most classic enemies of games, the Goombas became a terrifying thing in the cinema. As it was impossible to bring those ugly little triangular things into live action, someone thought it wise to turn them into dinosaur men.
But this was not done simply as humanoid reptiles, like the Dinosaucers. In fact, they were huge brutes with tiny heads. It was a frightening sight that traumatized a lot of kids out there.
5. The return chamber
To be a real threat, the villain Koopa needed a weapon or something that posed a danger. The solution found was to give him a regressive camera capable of making his targets return on the evolutionary scale. So much so that the Goombas emerge from this madness, with the tyrant transforming people into this quasi-humanoid dinosaur.
For some reason, Mario and Luigi get weapons that fire those same blasts and cause Koopa to transform first into dinosaur-man again and then goo.
It’s not spoiler, it’s deliverance. You are welcome.
4. Toad, the protester
This all brings us to another rather disturbing and insane point of Super Mario Bros. In nearly 40 years of video games, the Toad is one of gaming’s most likable and charismatic allies. He is a small mushroom being that illustrates very well the fact that the story takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom.
Only, as none of that exists in the 1993 film, the script had to find a way to place the character. The solution? Transforming Toad into a musician who protested against Koopa and who, as punishment, is regressed to a Goomba state.
Thus, for most of the story, Toad does not exist. And when he finally appears, he has nothing to do with the gaming bug. At most, they gave him a hairstyle with balls, emulating the effect of the fungus on his head.
3. O Yoshi de Jurassic Park
Perhaps the only thing needed in Super Mario Bros from 1993 is that Yoshi is a dinosaur. As the theme of the feature was already this Jurassic thing, they didn’t need to invent fashion with the pet. But that doesn’t make things any less disturbing.
Because of the more serious aesthetic that the plot tries to adopt, there is no green and friendly look of the little dinosaur in the games. In fact, he is a velociraptor just like the one we see in Jurassic Park and it’s more threatening than friendly — which just proves how all wrong this idea is.
2. A princesa Sarah Connor
For some reason, the producers thought that this movie would be good and would get a sequel – so much so that they left a hook for this continuation. After Mario and Luigi return to New York, Princess Daisy reappears at the plumbers’ door in war clothes and holding a gun in the best Sarah Connor style, from Terminator.
She says she has something to tell that the brothers won’t believe and the movie ends without giving more details about it.
1. Iggy and Spike in the post-credit scenes
Perhaps Super Mario Bros It wasn’t that bad, just way ahead of its time. After all, he already had a post-credit scene along the lines of what has become standard in modern cinema.
All kidding aside, that final stretch pretty much sums up another problem with the film — the indecision of what it wants to be. Although the central tone of the plot was this more serious science fiction, there were attempts at comic relief that clashed with everything, as is the case with cousins Iggy (Fisher Stevens) and Spike (Richard Edson).
They were two of King Koopa’s henchmen and represent that kind of clumsy character who thinks he’s evil. It was a very common type in films of the 1980s and is repeated here.
In the post-credits scene, they are approached by two Japanese executives – in a joke with Nintendo – who want to make a video game about them. When asked what the game’s title is, they respond in unison: Super Koopa Cousins, in an uninspired play on the film’s title and the Mario brothers.
Yes, the film fails even at the last second.
