Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach

That's a long ass title.

We're back with the video games and immediately when I heard of an animated theatrically released Mario movie made just one single year after the video game came out, I knew I couldn't pass it up. Side bar but I promise it relates, recently I've been reading the novelizations of Star Wars films but specifically when they first came out alongside the movies, and you get a lot of elements that were not on screen in the slightest and there's a difference in the "canon" and the same can be said for this. But surprisingly it's a very decent adaptation of the story used in the instruction manual for the original NES game, the Mushroom Kingdom is under attack by the Koopa tribe who abduct Princess Peach and two brothers embark to save her. But it gets weird. For example, one night Mario is up late playing Famicom games when like a reverse Captain N the princess launches out the TV screen before being captured by Bowser and that kicks off the whole movie, that's scene one. I know it's just a show and I should really just relax, but man this was the lore back then! There's no other source or adaptation almost 40 years down the road to contradict anything because it came out just a singular year after the game, and it takes a lot of liberties with the characterization and world building. The Mario brothers aren't plumbers, they run a grocery store. Luigi wears blue overalls and cap instead of green. The Toads are all female. Aspects like that are what makes it so interesting to watch, to see how far it has come as a series. I will freely admit it is one of those "because" movies, where shit happens for no reason than just because. Prime example off the top of my head, in the middle of the climactic battle with Bowser a bowl of rice and a packet of rice seasoning appears for Mario to eat literally out of thin air. Why? Because. They were loose with their storytelling once upon a time, now everything has to be done seriously and make total sense....as if anything about this series makes sense. Animation wise it's not super fluid and clean but here's my stance on that, my domain of knowledge and watching of anime is in that time period of 1995 to 2005 that's just what I know best. However I always jump at the chance to see anime from pre-1990 all the way back to the 1960s, just to see how the medium developed and changed. So I liked seeing the old school animation techniques some of which is akin to Hanna-Barbera cartoons at points, and some of the background shots were really cool. You just have to throw any modicum of preconception about Mario or anime out the window otherwise it probably isn't gonna do much for you. The movie runs at a fast pace, it's only an hour long but back then in 1986 it must have been a blast to see on the big screen because Mario was huge even then in Japan. A relic of a time long past that thankfully has been preserved, you can watch the whole dang thing on the Youtubes, but it's neat to watch. There's a lot of visual nods to things that didn't even exist yet in the Mario games, the airship makes an appearance from Mario 3, Mario dons a sombrero for a quick joke about 30 years before Super Mario Odyssey, and Bowser wants to wed Peach again like Odyssey and the new Super Mario Bros. Movie. It's a trip man but if you've learned anything here I like the strange and unusual, and I give it 2.5 stars, 6.5/10, so check it out if you're curious. Grab some food, maybe get some friends together and have a game night, and just throw it on to see what everyone thinks. Me personally, I'm about to throw on Peaches by Jack Black.

The Wizard

Oh man I rolled out of my seat I was laughing so hard at that Power Glove scene!

I gotta admit there is a bit more to this movie than a feature length Nintendo commercial as some people claim. The Wizard is a good movie, very dated, very commercial, and yet at the same time actually has a really good story and characters. The story follows a young boy named Jimmy who has been traumatized by the death of his sister and sent to an institution, where his young brother breaks him out and they make a quest to California, where they meet a young girl and discover Jimmy is ridiculously good at video games. So the gang comes up with a plan to put Jimmy in a video game tournament while making their trek to Jimmy's true destination. The first thing I gotta tell you guys is these kids are awesome, you spend enough time with them to get to know them and see them as real people, they have baggage, they have history even though they are very young. True, they sometimes act more like adults than the actual adults but it's essentially a kids movie so I can forgive that. I don't know, I was just in a good mood watching this movie! It was a big deal when this movie came out, Nintendo was on top of the world with a massive dedicated fanbase, and the unveiling of a certain new game at the end needless to say made people lose their minds. The film has some cheese to it, but I would be lying to say it isn't fun. Hell, the villain of the movie has lived beyond all these years with the immortal line which causes head shakes and guffaws aplenty, "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad...". Sweet Jesus. And one thing I especially noticed is how much of a time capsule this is. The NES came out in 1985, this movie came out in 1989 still during it's golden years but not only the Nintendo fever that was being felt, but also the movie throws in this big chase through a Universal Studios amusement park so that adds another layer of that specific time. You can almost look at it from a philosophical view. Optimists would say it's cool seeing a part of the world in that particular time, whereas pessimists would say it's heavily dated and hurts the film in years to come. I am an optimist in this case, to see a world so heavily seeped in video games and to also see just as simple a thing as an amusement park is really neat to me. And even I have to admit the final scene does in fact choke me up a bit, which just goes to show how well the characters and relationships were built. It's a really good movie and one I would definitely recommend to younger kids, maybe it could get them into older video games or video games in general! It's a good family movie, and I do see merit in what others brush off as a long commercial. If you have the time or interest you should give it a watch, I don't think you will be disappointed. Plus I'll give you a buck if you ever dialed up the Nintendo tip hotline and probably racked your parent's phone bill up sky high!