As you all know, the great actor Dennis Hopper recently passed away. I know for people of my parents' generation, Dennis Hopper was associated with some pretty revolutionary movies like Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now. In fact, Dennis Hopper was sort of known for "sticking it to them man." However, for people my age, this image is something of a joke, as one of Hopper's less talked about movies shows just how willing he was to take one for the man.
Most kids who grew up in the 80s and 90s played Super Mario Brothers at some point or another. I played a lot of video games growing up, mostly due to the fact that I have a brother close in age to me who has a few obsessions in life, one of which is Nintendo. Said brother was and still is unnecessarily competitive 95% of the time so video games were extremely serious business. *Case in point, we recently engaged in a war to see who can type fastest. I am currently in the lead with 101 words a minute.
If you’re between the ages of 21-40 and you don’t understand such phrases as “one up” or “star power," chances are you are reading this on a Saturday night because you have no friends. Gamers must be forgiving to people like my friend Sarah who inexplicably like Mario 2 the best, but total cultural and generational ignorance cannot be overlooked.
Imagine all us kids about my age - loyal, devoted fans of Nintendo, believing that anything stamped with a Mario face must be good. Now, imagine all our adorable, innocent faces looking up to adults with complete trust. Now imagine a movie executive roundhouse kicking all of these children in the face.
Somewhere in ’91, ’92, movie executives saw a golden opportunity to turn Super Mario Brothers into a movie. A live-action movie aaaaaannnd that’s where you lost 95% of your audience because even a 2 year old is with-it enough to realize that Dennis Hopper, reptilian as he may be, looks very little like King Koopa, a.ka. Bowser:
The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics and fans alike and was denounced by critics as "cheesy" and lacking any sort of coherent plot. Gee, who could have predicted that they’d have trouble coming up with a coherent plot? Not with so much plot provided by the original video games! From Wikipedia…:
The player takes on the role of the main protagonist of the series, Mario. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces and save Princess Toadstool.
That screams “coherent plot” to me. I mean, one the one hand you have the also incredibly successful Legend of Zelda franchise which features an iconic "predestine" hero, a well established cultural setting, a compelling princess, a villain with believable motivations, and plenty of magic and violence. On the other hand we have Italian plumbers, mushrooms and evil turtles. Of course, before we judge, we must remember that most movie executives are legally retarded. Otherwise, how do you explain something like this?
The saddest part about there not being a Zelda movie is that the currently best-remembered artistic reinterpretation was the short-lived cartoon show of 13 episodes in which Link says his catch phrase, “Well excuuuuuse me, Princess!” 27 times LITERALLY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxY8lpYAUM
Yeah...bet you thought I was kidding about that.
Anyway, the movie execs chose Mario Brothers and hired some talented writers (monkeys with typewriters) who developed a plot with a few tweaks to the original story. Again, from Wikipedia:
Mario and Luigi awaken a minute later and head deeper into the caves following Daisy's screaming and discover an interdimensional portal through which Mario and Luigi follow Daisy. They find themselves in a strange dystopian parallel world where a human-like race evolved from dinosaurs rather than the mammalian ancestry of true humans. 65 million years ago a meteorite crashed into the Earth and in doing so ripped the universe into two parallel dimensions. All the surviving dinosaurs of the time crossed over into this new realm before being sealed there forever. Iggy and Spike turn out to be lackeys (and cousins) of the other world's germophobic and obsessive dictator, King Koopa, descended from the T-Rex. However, the two have failed to also bring Daisy's rock, a meteorite fragment which Koopa is trying to get in order to merge his world with the real world that separated from Koopa's world during the meteor strike. It turns out that Daisy is the princess of the other dimension but when Koopa overthrew Daisy's father (and turned him into fungus), Daisy's mother took her to New York using the interdimensional portal.
If you took a 4 year old and gave him some mildly hallucinogenic drugs and some action figures, this is the movie he would construct for you. That’s how stupid this is.
Aftermath of this horrible, horrible film, again courtesy of Wikipedia:
The film states that both Mario and Luigi's last name is Mario (hence the Mario Bros.), giving rise to the idea that they are named Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. However, Nintendo has publicly stated that Mario and Luigi do not have last names in the official canon.
I find it sad that Nintendo has to make “official statements” about such matters.
The Super Mario Bros. movie was mentioned [in Nintendo Power magazine], only with the words, "Yes, it happened. Let us speak no more of it."
"The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers” – Bob Hoskins
And then here’s an odd one:
Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario's creator stated, "[In] the end, it was a very fun project that they put a lot of effort into," but also said, "The one thing that I still have some regrets about is that the movie may have tried to get a little too close to what the Mario Bros. videogames were.”
Whhhaaaa? Mr. Miyamoto, did you even WATCH the movie? Have you ever played or seen your own game? Just how far away from the game did you want the movie to get? Let's just breath a sigh of relief that, if the Mario Brothers movie had to happen, it at least happened before Hollywood discovered the whole "awkward and snarky = smart and funny" craze.
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