Wa-Hoo! How The Super Mario Bros. Movie Power-Jumps Over the Low, Low Expectations for Video Game Movies
When I saw the trailer for The Super Mario Brothers Movie my first reaction was, “Hey, that’s just the video game! No fair! That’s cheating! You can’t just recycle; you need to create an actual movie.”
It was an odd gut response considering that one of the most common criticisms of video games is that they have seemingly nothing to do with their ostensible inspirations.
That was famously true of 1993’s notorious Super Mario Brothers. The disastrous first feature film adaptation of the iconic Nintendo game was essentially an artsy, stylish cyber-punk head film made by people seemingly deeply embarrassed to have anything to do with video games.
Super Mario Bros. isn’t alone in taking extensive, unwise liberties with its video game inspiration in an inherently doomed attempt to reach an audience that couldn’t care less about video games.
In 1994, for example, the legendary fighting tournament game Street Fighter, one of the most popular, beloved and iconic games of all time, was adapted for a film that made the bold choice to throw out the whole fighting tournament element completely.
It’s common for film adaptations of video games to be wildly unfaithful. After all, video games and movies are very different mediums and the history of video game adaptations is long and almost impressively undistinguished.
As someone who hasn’t played video games regularly in three decades but has intense nostalgic feelings about the video games of his youth and adolescence all that I want from a video game adaptation is for it to look and feel like the video game that inspired it and not suck.
That’s all I’m asking for! My standards are very low, my expectations reasonable. Take Rampage. I fucking loved that game as a kid. What’s not to like about giant monsters fucking shit up in major metropolises?
All I wanted from the Rampage movie, consequently, was Dwayne Johnson and giant-ass beasties running amok. That’s exactly what I got.
The makers of The Super Mario Bros. Movie have clearly learned from the mistakes of the past. Instead of making a wild fantasy film with a vague connection to Super Mario Brothers they made a slickly appealing piece of commercial product that never stops pandering to video game fans.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie has all sorts of inherent advantages over its predecessor. It has three decades of Super Mario Brothers lore and mythology to lovingly recycle, for example.
Oh sweet blessed lord does The Super Mario Bros. Movie enjoy recycling Super Mario Brothers mythology! As a Gen-Xer both cynical and nostalgic, it pushed my buttons relentlessly.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is 92 minutes of things that I remember fondly, if vaguely, from my childhood in a slickly appealing, exceedingly commercial package.
Is The Super Mario Bros. Movie a particularly good movie? No, but it is good enough. It’s commerce rather than art or even entertainment and at the end of the day, it’s not really for me but rather my children and my son enjoyed it even without recognizing its many, many references.
The bar is set so low for video game adaptations that it does not take much to clear it. All The Super Mario Bros. Movie had to do to succeed where the 1993 movie failed spectacularly was to give people what they know and want and, more than anything, recognize.
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