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.

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

This is gonna be hard to rate.

I almost don't know what to say about this movie considering it's been talked about enough since the movie came out and even more so when internet critics became popular, so all it comes down to is my opinion. Now the idea of a Mario movie doesn't sound difficult even despite the sheer lack of story in the games at that point and quite frankly beyond, so I genuinely do appreciate what they did and what they were trying to do. Seeing Mario and Luigi as plumbers from Brooklyn works really well, and they feel real enough so that when the weird shit happens they don't just immediately roll with it and have a solid course of action. True the whole parallel dimension thing is a bit odd but how would they have introduced all the fantastical stuff? That's kinda the problem with this movie, it's really not a clean cut good/bad kind of film, it's a mixed bag of good stuff, perplexing stuff, and interesting stuff. I feel it almost has to be a split rating, what do you think of it as a movie and what do you think of it as an adaptation of a game? So let's dig in a bit. The story or more the set up for the story is hit and miss, with the Mario brothers going about their normal business when they meet a young girl named Daisy with a mysterious origin and not long after that she gets kidnapped so they go after her. And then it gets weird, falling through a dimensional fissure they emerge in the city of Dinohattan where all residents naturally evolved from reptiles instead of apes led by the tyrannical Koopa who has plans to invade our dimension to further his kingdom so the boys gotta get back Daisy, thwart Koopa, and somehow get back home. Not a horrible story on paper, and the logistics and worldbuilding they do may be considered too realistic but I feel it helps the movie's style and tone. Dinohattan is a mish mash of Blade Runner, Mad Max, with an unhealthy overdose of fungus and the script thinking of what if there was a world with reptiles but no mammals. So they did put effort into crafting this world and thinking it out. There's no fossil fuels so everything including the cars are electric, there's no furs or much cloth for clothing so it's mostly leather, the denizens move more like dinosaurs and aren't completely evolved to look like homosapiens. All those neat touches add to the score and it's genuinely a world I would want to see evolve through more movies. The characters are defined well enough with good acting and decent chemistry I found with some offbeat things about it but nothing bad. The effects are really really good actually, again going back to a time where CGI was used only when necessary so the vehicles, props, Goombas, Yoshi, and stunts were legit! You cannot prove to me otherwise that Yoshi is real and alive, it's right there breathing and moving in front of your eyes! The music's okay but it's got some good tracks that I enjoy. With so many good points you'd think why exactly do people hate this movie yet I know the friggin' answer. The production was a nightmare and I can pin this down to two sources, the directors and the studio. The studio wanted something more kid friendly and colorful while the directors who were a married couple wanted to give it some edge and not just make a kids movie. Not horrible intentions of course, but how the actual production went, in particular the shooting, made the project into a shit show. Constant daily rewrites, the directors not communicating the schedule and what they had to get shot, rushed in editing, and emotions ran high. It really sucked reading that Bob and John were utterly miserable on the set to where they had to drink heavily just to make it through, cause I do like their performances and the energy they bring when working in tandem together. They genuinely are decent in the lead roles, I like the romances they have with Daniella and Daisy respectively, that's not a bad element to the story. Dennis Hopper as Koopa, weird ass choice but he accepted, and unfortunately doesn't get to go batshit but I can't truthfully say he sucked in this either. Of course you got your little references and easter eggs and those are cool, I totally want a wind up Bob-Omb! And you know maybe, just maybe, I'm being nice because I was a fan of this movie when I was young but I also haven't watched it in about 15 years and I'm just calling it as I see it. Regardless of what you think about the quality of it, it's a fascinating little movie. The fact that whatever momentum it had going for it was completely nuked by the release of Jurassic Park just 2 weeks later in and of itself is crazy. The 90s man, the fuck was with this decade and dinosaurs?? I was a dinosaur kid for a lot longer than most other kids, we're talking from like 98 or 99 all the way to about 2004, all due to this decade's fascination with these legendary extinct creatures. But the movie has a fanbase that seems to be growing bit by bit over three decades since it's release with some individuals finding a print with many deleted scenes and made a pretty packed Blu-Ray from what I've heard. And yeah, you're gonna have to buy that Blu-Ray. Why? Because this movie is on zero streaming platforms, you either need to own it on home video or be like me and taped it off Starz in the early 2000s and you still have your VHS of it all these years later. It's the only true way to watch it in my opinion. So what's the score here? As an adaptation of a Mario game, of which there were about 4 console games at that point, I'd give it a 6/10. But just as a movie all by itself, I'm gonna give it a 7/10. It's really not that bad, just a bit odd in how it came to be. And if you really need a second opinion of it, Shigeru Miyamoto the creator of the Mario series, stated that the movie may have been a little too close to the games and focused on being a video game movie instead of just a fun movie on it's own. Maybe he's just being nice too, but I don't doubt the man himself. So 30 years have passed, video game movies are at a better standing now than they ever were, so what will the new movie accomplish? Will it just be a 90 minute cutscene from the new games, or will it have something going for it? Well I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, I haven't heard the Mario voice or any voice for that matter. See you tomorrow.