Super Mario Brothers (1993)

I was actually browsing the film's Wikipedia page the other day, and apparently the tone the creators were aiming for was something similar to Ghostbusters (1984). It explains a lot about the creative decisions they made, although it's been years since I've actually seen the film in it's full.

Something cool I stumbled upon:

Despite the name, the video is more a critique of the political structure under Koopa, why it sucks, and ultimately leads to his downfall.

Well okay, the first five minutes or so are about just how unlikely this civilization should be able to exist in the first place. But since it does...

A) Horrible use of resources and technology. The city is stupidly crowded for no reason and they could expand further out or establish a new city if they wanted to. They clearly have the technology to obtain water if they're all still alive but don't go looking for other sources that could solve the shortage. The cars are shoddily made even if they are electric. Their most unique weapon, the bombomb packs a punch and had incredible range, but takes forever to blow up and you have no control of where it ends up. There are dangerous weapons just about everywhere

B) King Koopa is an idiot despot. Some criticism is leveled at the previous government as well, since any system than can overthrown by just turning the monarch into a fungus already has issues. But overall, Koopa is a lousy planner and administrator. His evil scheme assumes that the combining of the dimensions will make him ruler of the combined worlds, despite no guarantee this merger will work. Even if it does, his security forces are outnumbered and outgunned by the mammal New York and will make short work of him. On top of that he relies on his two idiot cousins, an overworked and ineffectual police, and even more idiot goombas to enforce his will.

Earlier scripts and the junior novelization expanded on that more clearly and explained how the old kingdom had clean water and resources, which Daisy and her father worked on rebuilding. Dystopia Is Hard is Koopa's in-universe motivation too, wanting to bail out of the world he ruined and take over our world.

That's actually cool. Rebuild you say? So previous generations wrecked the environment then?

Rebuild as in 'fix what Koopa broke.' There's an in-universe reason for the electric cars, though—since they're dinosaur people fossil fuels are considered sacred and off-limits. Going by the Fridge page there's speculation the grid ran on manpower.

Miyamoto felt the film failed because it tried to be too close to the games. I saw an interesting retrospective on the movie that showed clips from the movie in tandem with reading the manual from Super Mario Bros., and they synced up surprisingly well.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Mar 3rd 2019 at 6:22:42 AM

In the vein of The Mama Luigi Project, Shrek Retold, and Kirby Reanimated comes Super Mario Bros. Retold! It's a work in progress and doesn't have to be in animation—I should bust out my old Mario toys and Amiibos!

Thanks to the upcoming Sonic movie, this movie is trending as a topic on Twitter from people making comparisons to it, with most people saying Mario looks better because of the set design, parallel worlds, and amount of game references.

Honestly, once it was announced that a CGI animated Mario film was in the works, people started coming out of the woodwork saying the 1993 film will always be better. Fanbases are weird.

My problem with the upcoming animated Mario film is it looks like it'll be based off the 3D games like Super Mario Sunshine, when really I'd prefer to see an animated film that's more inspired by the original games like Super Mario 3 or Super Mario World.

From what I can tell the main thing people have against the idea of an animated movie would be that it would be generic, while the '93 movie is memorable even if it's flawed. Another sticking point seems to be Illumination's output, which is kinda infamous for being by-the-numbers.

I am still surprised SMB managed to go through after all the production troubles.

Speaking of production troubles, there's a nice video summing them up.

…Though honestly, I'm not sure the original, more gritty script would have fared much better. But damn, that's a lot of executive incompetence in a short time.

And yes, Yoshi's adorable.

There were about 8 scripts in total, and the one that got everyone to sign on was a Mad Max style thing. It's really neat to see how they all, for lack of a better word, evolved!

Edited by lalalei2001 on May 16th 2019 at 1:26:06 AM

DELETED SCENES HAVE BEEN FOUND!

Youtube personality Matt Mc Muscles did a video on what happened to the movie -

Among other things, Harold Ramis and Danny Devito in talks to direct, a first draft from the writer of Rain Man, and other wackiness.

The movie has an interesting cyberpunk (?) aesthetic and premise. It's just not what people wanted from a Mario film. It could have been fine if it were an original product. Instead, it's someone's really weird Patchwork Fic.

Unlike Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, I've only seen it rerun on tv once. It doesn't even appear on tv. It's the type of film you actively have to find to watch, However, at least people remember it. A lot of video game films fade into obscurity. I forgot that Assassins Creed had a film until a few days ago.

I didn't know the Double Dragon movie was a thing until recently.

I've seen a lot of these movies. They're obviously a former shell of themselves(though Mortal Kombat, both of the original movies, is fairly faithful in comparison. I found Tomb Raider to do a fairly good job as well, namely because it focuses on the actual point of the character, a badass woman who goes after artifacts and such. Now, I didn't play the original games, so I don't know how faithful it is the orignals. I also saw Doom, which wasn't all that off as is. Just a slightly different premise, but got the point across pretty well. Only thing it could use is a lot less F-Bombs).

Overall, I found them fun, regardless of inaccuracies. My favorite in this regard would Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The movie is actually pretty good, despite not being heavily tied to the series name that well. Stuff like bringing up the Lifestream was cool. Some might've found the whole technology thing weird, but it was also made around the time where regular technology, not simply Magitech, was the thing at the time. VII and VIII are full of that, moreso than any other game. So it still fit the settings well. It wasn't adapting a specific game, which can be problematic. I've also heard that Advent Children had some story issues/felt like it derailed the characters, but I need to watch it first. I at least have seen a full LP of VII, though I might need to watch the other VII-related games LP'd to get a good gist of all the characters.

As someone who hasn't actually played a FF yet, The Spirits Within always confused me. It always seemed like someone slapped the name Final Fantasy onto an unrelated film, but apparently it does have references here and there.

I haven't seen the ''Street Fighter" film in years, but I don't really remember why people didn't like it. Other than the fact that it was kinda campy.

Nope it's pretty much just the campiness. That and Raul Julia redefining ham and cheese.

Mostly people complaining 'not enough fights', the overall plot, and being nothing like the games while simultaneously cramming in every game character possible.

I love the movie though ^^ And it looks great in black-and-white!

The first deleted scene was uploaded today, featuring the Scapelli Bros., Mike and Doug!

The second deleted scene was uploaded today, featuring the infamous sliming scene in the Devo Chamber.

I'm kinda curious what the film would have been if it was the thing the actors and actresses signed up for.

SMB Archive has a ton of early scripts. The one that got everyone to sign on was the "Mad Max" Sci-Fi/Action Draft. "The narrative structure is once again largely the same as earlier drafts, though the Mario Golf-inspired desert segment devised by Bennett and Runté is now a Mario Kart-meets-Mad Max death race. Most significantly, the third act gives Princess Daisy and Lena more direct involvement in the climactic inter-dimensional merge."

http://www.smbmovie.com/SMBArchive/preproduction/script.htm

Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 25th 2019 at 5:30:49 AM