If you are an elder millenial like myself then you grew up with
the curse of the terrible videogame movie adaptation. Nowadays we
have videogame adaptations galore. Yes it's true the quality can
vary but real money and is being pored into these adaptations and
wider audiences have generally enjoyed them. I mean heck Halo
actually got a 2nd season so someone likes them.
Of course this year is the 30th anniversary of the biggest videogame
movie to ever flop: Super Mario Bros.
Yep the Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper adaptation.
Of course as a kid, this was the movie ALL of us wanted to watch.
We begged our parents to take us to this movie...and after sitting
through it, we all were like WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT???
The movie barely resembled Super Mario Brothers videogames at all
so everyone was like WTF is this? Needless to say the movie was a
huge flop and was honestly forgotten about for many many years.
In my opinion, the idea of adapting a videogame like Mario Brothers
into a live action movie like the 1994 Mario Brothers was ahead of
its time. I think today's audiences have a much more tolerant
appetite for the the type of thematic remix that Mario Brothers
tried to attempt. And I think that's purely due to the Internet
culture that developed in the 30 years since the move was released.
On youtube you can find countless parodies of Mario Brothers being
italian mobsters or being put into space or put with other intellectual
property.
The original movie did all of that...in 1994! The director created
a whole thematic remix of all of the classic Mario elements from
the Goombas, to Koopa to the Bullet Bill shoes. If the movie was
made today as a youtube parody, I think it would have been quite
popular.
In any case, while the movie is no masterpiece, I think the
appreciation for what the director and production designer tried
to do with the Mario universe is gaining much more appreciation
nowadays. Certainly, I can look back on the movie and appreciate
more of the remixed elements of the Mario games in the movie today
than I ever did as a pre-teen.
Anyways, if you've never seen the original Super Mario Brothers
movie then I would say that it's worth a watch, if only to see the
thematic remix of Mario from back in the 90s. Compare it to the
countless popular parodies and remixes of Mario on youtube today.
Especially the Brothers Mario machinima from the 2010s.
