Pixels ‘n Bits 3.17.10: Super Mario Bros.

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 03.17.2010

In 411 Games’ new column Pixels ‘n Bits, Shawn S. Lealos questions whether the movie adaptation of Super Mario Bros. is as bad as everyone makes it out to be.



Welcome to the premiere issue of Pixels and Bits, a look at the movies inspired by some of your favorite video games. My name is Shawn S. Lealos, and you have now entered my world.

The way this column will work is simple. Each week, I will look at a movie that was either adapted from (Mortal Kombat), inspired by (Tron) or about video games (Gamer). I will review the movie and talk about the influences the video game had on the movie and what makes it better or worse than the games themselves.

I'll start off talking a little about myself.

I am nowhere near as much of a gamer as I used to be and that is in large part to a mixture of growing older and having a baby. I started playing video games when I was a child, but I am not sure exactly when the infatuation began. I often thought it was when I was eight or nine but that can't be true because Space Invaders wasn't even released in Japan until I was eight and Pac-Man when I was ten. I played lots of video games when I was a kid at the local bowling alley, including favorites like Galaxian and Ms. Pac-Man.

I finally got a video game system to play at home and, once again, I am cloudy on my age when I started. The Atari 2600 was released in 1977 and I owned the "wood veneer" version, which was available after 1980. I still own this system today and my games include Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pitfall, Missile Command and more. I ate these games up and while my friends were experimenting with other systems like Activision and Odyssey, I have always been pretty loyal to one developer and stuck with Atari.

When I was ready to head off to college, I took a couple of things with me to keep me occupied and one of them was a new system called the Nintendo. It was an interesting mix of games that won me over to this new developer including Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, Excitebike, Techno Bowl and Punch-Out!. It was like the difference between night and day when it came to the games I played as a kid and the ones that were available to me when I was starting college. I graduated to the Super Nintendo but only played a few games, such as Madden, Dr. Mario and Donkey Kong Country, which made me realize how far graphics on these games were coming. I also played the old arcade games I loved like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter.

Then I stopped playing videogames for awhile. When I finally came back to gaming, I left Nintendo and chose to support Sony and their PlayStation system, discovering a bunch of new great games like Resident Evil, the amazing new sports games and even more fighting games. I have stayed with the PlayStation ever since, moving up to the PS2 and now the PS3. I'm fascinated at the amazing detail of the new games I see every time I go to the store. I don't play anywhere near as much as I used to but still grab the sport's games whenever they are released, including baseball, golf, professional wrestling, professional and college football, and basketball. I also bought my wife a WII a little while back, and that remains her choice for gaming.

That leads me to now. A lot of you may know me as a film critic over in the movie zone. Others might recognize me as a contributor to the wrestling zone, including the monthly TNA PPV previews. Others may just know me as the guy whose name your girlfriend won't stop calling. Either way, I am now in the Games Zone for both this weekly column as well as occasional reviews (including this week's review of MLB 10: The Show). I hope you enjoy this column and, with that said, let's get the first issue off in style.


Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Directed by Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton [Roland Joffé (uncredited), Dean Semler (uncredited)]
Written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runte and Ed Solomon

Cast
Bob Hoskins ... Mario
John Leguizamo ... Luigi
Dennis Hopper ... King Koopa
Samantha Mathis ... Princess Daisy
Fisher Stevens ... Iggy
Richard Edson ... Spike
Fiona Shaw ... Lena
Dana Kaminski ... Daniella
Mojo Nixon ... Toad
Gianni Russo ... Scapelli
Francesca P. Roberts ... Bertha
Lance Henriksen ... The King

Runtime: 104 min
MPAA: Rated PG for sci-fi action, mild language and sensuality.




The character of Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong. The game was simple, you run up a series of levels to save the "Lady" from Kong as he throws barrels at you. The following year, Donkey Kong Junior was released and "Jumpman" became known as Mario and, for the only time in his existence, was the bad guy as he captured Kong and kept him locked away as Junior attempted to save his dad.

Following Donkey Kong, Mario was adopted as Nintendo's mascot and the face of the platform. The 1983 arcade game Mario Bros introduced Mario and his brother Luigi as Italian plumbers who must defeat creatures coming out of the sewers below New York. When the game was adapted for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1986, the storyline was Mario running to save the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom from the evil King Koopa. Mario had to fight through eight levels, defeating all the minor bosses, before finally facing off with Koopa to save the princess. When Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) was released, you could choose from playing as Mario, Luigi or their friends Toad and Princess Peach. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990) upped the ante and had Mario trying to save the rulers of seven kingdoms from Bowser and his evil children.

By 1993, Mario was a household name and, if the time was right to try to make a movie based on a popular videogame, there was no better choice than Super Mario Bros. Of course, in Hollywood there is a saying that "no one knows nothing." With the movie being a financial (it made back less than half its budget) and critical (Siskel & Ebert gave it two thumbs down) failure, it remains known as one of the worst videogame adaptations of all time. Even a Nintendo Power article looking at the timeline of Mario's legacy only said of the movie: "Yes, it happened. Let us speak no more of it."

Let's take a look at the adaptation, shall we...






"You know what I love about mud. It's clean and dirty at the same time."

This is the kind of dialogue you can expect from this movie and shows how low the bar you need to set for yourself is, if you have never watched it before now. The movie is considered a prime example of how bad video game adaptations can be, but I don't think it is really as bad as everyone, including the lead actors from the movie, makes it sound.

This was John Leguizamo's first lead role in a movie following years of supporting work. While it might sound strange that Leguizamo is playing an Italian plumber, it shouldn't as his paternal grandmother is Italian and he is also part Columbian, Puerto Rican and Lebanese. Since the film's release, he has made many disparaging comments about it even though it helped him launch his successful Hollywood career. It is his character Luigi that helps the movie rise from being completely ridiculous into something with a little bit of charm.

Mario is a plumber who has helped raise the orphan Luigi and the two own a struggling business. They always seem to end up at the wrong end of business opportunities thanks to unscrupulous contractor Anthony Scapelli and his construction company. The Mario Bros. aren't the only people being held down by this guy, as he is also strong arming a local NYU group involved in an archeological dig. This group, led by a young woman named Daisy, has found possible evidence of dinosaur bones on the site but doesn't realize how much they are about to uncover.



The movie begins with an animated sequence from 20 million years ago where the dinosaurs were living happily until a giant meteor crashes into the Earth, causing their extinction. What no one realizes is the meteor split the world into two alternate dimensions, one with the dinosaurs as they evolved into humans and the other, our world, where we evolved from apes. The ruler of the alternate dimension is an evil dictator named King Koopa, evolved from a mighty dinosaur, who took over the small kingdom from the rightful king. Koopa only needs a small meteor fragment to complete a device that will merge the two worlds into one, allowing his armies to somehow conquer the human race and take over the entire world.

Now, if all this seems ridiculous, it is. The entire premise, the entire movie and all the twists and turns of the story are stupid. That does not make this a bad movie, just a really dumb one. I can see the attraction of the film to the people involved. The directors had worked on music videos and created the very popular Max Headroom character, making them what might have seemed like the perfect choice to helm this film. It is clear from watching this movie, they were running around making it with their tongue planted firmly in their cheeks.

The action scenes are horribly done in a "so bad it is hilarious" way. The dialogue is atrocious. Dennis Hopper seems to be channeling his Blue Velvet character, which seems horribly out of place in this film. The movie ignores the colorful, brick covered world of the videogame for a dystopian landscape, a mishmash of Blade Runner and Brazil. It might be the similarity between this world and the world of Terry Gilliam's Brazil that made Bob Hoskins realize how lowbrow Super Mario Bros. really was. Hoskins, who also starred in Brazil, has called this movie the "worst thing I ever did."



However, taken for its own merits the movie is a lot of fun. Leguizamo is great as the wide eyed man-child, the catalyst for the two brothers to enter the underworld to find Daisy, who also turns out to be the Princess and daughter of the overthrown King (a criminally underused Lance Henriksen). There are nods to the game throughout the movie, from names that pop up in the underworld (Thwomps, Wigglers) to the sound effects from the game. There are also cameos from the game's characters, from a small dinosaur named Yoshi to the Goombas.

What might make many gamers mad is the movie is nothing like the game. While the game has the plumber brothers racing through various pipes and tunnels trying to save the princess, the movie has an overlord trying to take over our world. King Koopa is a human evolved from a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the movie while he is a fire breathing turtle king in the game. Toad is a human who is de-evolved into a Goomba in the movie while he is a mushroom in the game. None of this matters to me when a game is adapted into a movie. What matters to me is if they take the initial idea and make it into an enjoyable movie.

Super Mario Bros. is a movie that can be watched enjoyably for what it is. However the movie falls apart at the end with a completely ridiculous sequence of events destroying any good will it had built up to that point. Nothing that happens makes sense. The two bumbling fools who serve Koopa are evolved to become more useful at one point, but then we learn they are loyal to the former King, which makes no sense with what we have seen. Koopa and Mario end up in the real world, where people on the street don't seem surprised at all these men appeared out of thin air to do battle. There is a wind up bomb that moves throughout the entire last act, serving as a dues-ex-machina at the end by walking up a wall and then under a walkway. To be honest, nothing in this climax makes sense.

The acting is good at points, with both Leguizamo and Hopkins turning in solid performances in the lead roles. Dennis Hopper, who has also ripped on the movie over the years, used this as a springboard to other over-the-top maniacal performances in films like Waterworld and Land of the Dead. It isn't a great movie. It isn't even a good movie. But from an era of movies like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Super Mario Bros. works if you look at it as a kid's movie, which is what videogames were all about at the time.

There have been a lot worse adaptations over the years.






Final Score: Super Mario Bros. is a movie that breaks the Golden Rule of videogame movies and strays way too far from the source material. It possesses some horrible dialogue, bad action and one of the most ridiculous endings I have ever seen in a film. However, taken on its own merits as a movie made for a younger audience, it works as absurdist fun. It isn't as bad as critics have led you to believe but it isn't good either. [4/10]

Tid Bits: The underworld is referred to by King Koopa as The Mushroom Kingdom. Many elements of the game are referenced by name including Snifits, Goombas, Bob-ombs, Big Bertha, Iggy, Spike, Thwomp, Bullet Bills, Hammer Bros., Ostro, Princess Daisy, Wiggler and Yoshi. The sound at the start of the movie is straight from the game. The sound effects when the jumping boots charge is the exact same as the sound when Mario dies in the game.

Extra Lives: After the end credits role, two Japanese gentlemen are pitching a videogame to be made based on the adventures in this movie. The twist is they aren't talking to Mario and Luigi, but to Spike and Iggy, who suggest the name for the game be The Super Koopa Cousins.

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