Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Reader discretion is advised.
Nintendo and the big screen should go hand-in-hand.
Despite Nintendo’s storied history of beloved franchises both popular and obscure, they’ve only ever been successful in getting one of their franchises into movie form.
Success is relative, however, as the only film based on a Nintendo game released in the US was Super Mario Bros. from 1993.
The film starred Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as the titular plumbers as they traversed the dystopian cyberpunk world ruled by the ferocious reptilian leader President Koopa (played by Easy Rider’s Dennis Hopper) in order to save a mysterious girl named Daisy (played by Samantha Mathis) and stop Koopa’s plot to bring the two worlds together. A troubled production and a weak box office meant this experimental film has become little more than an awkward footnote in Nintendo’s history.
Since the failure of the movie, Nintendo has been uneasy about adapting their properties to film. Their efforts have been a bit of a mixed bag.
An Animal Crossing animated film released in 2006 only in Japan. Despite its modest success at the box office, there were no plans for an English release.
A Legend of Zelda film was in the works at Imagi Animation Studios – the same studio behind 2007’s TMNT and the 2009 Astro Boy film – before the studio shut down in 2010.
Zelda was also supposed to receive a Netflix series alongside a claymation Star Fox series with ex-CollegeHumor alums attached before the former was leaked and both wound up canceled.
For the longest time, it seemed that Nintendo wouldn’t try a big film project featuring any of their characters. Plenty of video game adaptations both good and bad have come out in the nearly 30 year span since Super Mario Bros. with Nintendo sticking more to smaller projects such as Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins and various digital-exclusive Pikmin and Yoshi shorts.
However, in 2018, a new Super Mario Bros. film was announced.
The initial reception to the news was mixed, especially with Illumination – the same studio behind Despicable Me and The Secret Life of Pets – announced to be the studio behind the film with Teen Titans Go! creators Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic in the directors’ seat. Even more worrying to some was the announcement of celebrity voices replacing the cast of the games, with the most infamous announcements being Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Charlie Day replacing Charles Martinet as Mario and Luigi, respectively.
Now, The Super Mario Bros. Movie has released theatrically, and the result is an interesting experiment that brings the Mushroom Kingdom to the silver screen with a few hurdles still to overcome.
The film’s story centers on the titular Mario Bros. as they find a secret entrance to another world while trying to stop Brooklyn from flooding. Mario ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom where he meets the spunky, adventurous Toad (Key & Peele‘s Keegan-Michael Key) and the headstrong Princess Peach (The Queen’s Gambit‘s Anya Taylor-Joy) while Luigi ends up in the Dark Lands where he is promptly captured by the tyrannical Bowser (Jack Black of Tenacious D) and his magically inclined lackey Kamek (Kevin Michael Richardson). With the help of the Kong army, led by the elderly Cranky Kong (Portlandia‘s Fred Armisen) and his son Donkey Kong (comedian Seth Rogen), Mario and crew venture across the world to stop Bowser from taking over the other kingdoms and rescue Luigi in the process.
Despite spending a decent paragraph talking about it, the story is really just a run-of-the-mill Mario plot and not much else. If you’ve played any of the mainline Mario games, you know the beats of this movie. The small bits of character development don’t get to stay on-screen more than a few minutes, and the film seems like it needs to speed along between plot points and action set pieces. The only characters who get any time to shine are, unsurprisingly, Mario, Peach and Bowser. All three are solid characters and fill their roles well, but it feels like, once again, Mario has overshadowed his little brother once more.
One of the biggest concerns I had going in was how well the celebrity voices would mesh with the on-screen characters. I grew up in an era where Charles Martinet shined as Mario and the rest of the supporting cast brought such life and spunk to each new installment of the beloved franchise. I’m pleased to say that every character’s voice actor breathes their own flavor of life into each performance in the film. Jack Black’s Bowser is a standout given his amount of screen time, and his romantic ballad “Peaches” scores extra points with me for having a musician perform an original piece in an animated film. It was one of the few moments where the film was allowed to let its talent and genuinely gorgeous animation shine.
One part of the film I am mixed on is the music. Brian Tyler and the accompanying orchestra did a fantastic job adapting music from across the series for a major motion picture. Unfortunately, some scenes forgo these lovely compositions in favor of licensed tracks. Licensed tracks seem to be all over video game-to-film adaptations – we heard “Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars in last year’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – and it really brings the film down from reaching its full potential. Dishonor particularly goes to an entirely unnecessary usage of a-ha’s “Take on Me” during a scene in the Jungle Kingdom, especially as it replaces an excellent medley of tracks from the Donkey Kong series. That said, for what compositions are in the film, there’s some deep cuts woven into these tracks that fans of the Mario franchise and all of its spin-offs will enjoy.
Though fans and children will enjoy it, those with a more critical eye and expecting something substantial from a Mario movie produced by Illumination will be disappointed. I personally enjoyed it as a Mario fan, but as a film critic, it’s really hard to give this movie anything more than an 8/10. It’s perfectly inoffensive and makes for a fun family viewing if nothing else. There’s plenty of things to be excited about in this film, but not much particularly sticks out.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now playing in theaters but will be streaming on Peacock and Netflix later this year.
Photo credit // Illumination
