Okay, I know what you’re going to say: “The Super Mario Bros. live-action film is a disgrace to cinema and the reason Nintendo is reluctant to share rights to their properties anymore.” I’m here to tell you that while the latter could be true, the former is utterly false. In fact, the Super Mario Bros. film is one of the most creative adaptations of a beloved game franchise to hit the big screen.
Our movie starts in none other than Brooklyn, NY with a scene of a woman running through pouring rain to the doors of a church where she leaves a mysterious oval-shaped container on the steps with a pointed geode on a string shoved into the top of said container. What is in this container, you might ask? An egg; an egg out of which hatches a newborn baby. The nuns at the church witness a person hatch from an egg, then sort of smile and shrug and move on as normal. Fair enough. Meanwhile, the woman who left the egg at the doors of this church is running through underground tunnels looking behind her often. Out of the darkness emerges a serious-looking blonde man who asks, “Where’s the rock?” The woman screams and moves a beam that was holding up the tunnel, ultimately causing a collapse.
After a twenty-year time skip, we meet our heroes - two plumbers living in a shitty Brooklyn apartment struggling to find work. Driving a broken-down van and being destroyed by the rival Scapelli Construction Company, the Mario Bros. are in a bit of a slump. While making a call on a payphone (1993 was a simpler time), Luigi is struck by the beauty of the woman behind him in line for the phone. This is where we meet Daisy, a student of archeology at a local university whose dig site is being harassed by none other than Anthony Scapelli, the head of the rival construction company. In addition, women of a certain age keep going missing from Brooklyn - an important plot point that comes around again later.
As it turns out, Daisy is the baby from the beginning of the film and is actually a descendent of the dinosaurs. Cool, right? There is also an entire alternate dimension of lizard-humanoid lifeforms living in a city that looks like Manhattan but worse. The blonde guy from the opening scene is King Koopa, an evil dictator looking to merge the lizard dimension with the human world and become an almighty interdimensional ruler using de-evolution technology to turn any humans who disobey him into monkeys. Sounds like madness, but it all comes together wrapped in a dark, seedy, interesting way of portraying the elements of the original video games.
At the time this film came out, the Mario game franchise was incredibly popular. Fans of the games can appreciate this movie not necessarily for its plot - because, let’s be honest, the story is wild - but absolutely for the overall construction of this world that references the games in such new and poignant ways. The kingdom in the lizard dimension is referred to as the “Mushroom Kingdom” because a massive fungus is growing on everything in the city. We meet beloved characters such as Toad - a friendly, musical individual - and Yoshi - an adorable special-effects-created dinosaur that somehow still holds up almost thirty years after initial release. Koopa’s cousins/minions that take orders from him go by the names Iggy and Spike, direct references to Bowser’s children or “Koopalings” in future iterations of the franchise.
In addition to these references, the story takes us through numerous settings in this Mushroom Kingdom including a desert on the outskirts of the city, the seedy underground of the city itself, and even an ice “world” that pops up as a result of Mario and Luigi messing with the heating system in Koopa’s tower and freezing the pipes. This journey mimics the different levels in the original game. Plus, I could go on about the absolute perfect casting specifically for our main heroes. Actors Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo - Mario and Luigi respectively - don their iconic red and green outfits as they scale Koopa’s tower to rescue the princess and save the day.
As if this weren’t enough, the abilities within the game make an appearance through weapons and accessories. Mario and Luigi are able to make their impossible double jump through the use of special boots referred to as “Stompers” and they damn near cause a riot when Mario pulls a Bob-Omb out of his pocket. And for the true Nintendo fans in the audience, it is fun to observe the setting with billboards advertising Thwomp’s Store or a neon sign indicating Bullet Bill’s Bar. The entire atmosphere, while dark and gritty and unlike a children’s game, is filled with little goodies that play on the nostalgia of audience members in a creative, captivating way.
Upon the announcement of the upcoming animated Mario movie, the inner child in me was both excited and mildly offended. I am glad Nintendo got over their past trauma, but keenly aware this new film will never be able to replace the dark nostalgic acid-trip that was its predecessor.
Holly Hagman is a teacher and writer from a small town in New Jersey. She graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University with her BA in creative writing and her MAT in secondary education. She also earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Fairfield University. She has been a nonfiction editor for magazines such as Brevity and Variant Literature. Her work can be viewed in The Citron Review, Complete Sentence, Porcupine Literary, and elsewhere.