Rocky Morton
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Uwe Boll’s filmography notwithstanding, you might have to go all the way back to 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” to find such a striking disconnect between the experience of playing something at home and watching it in a theater.
Likewise, I reckon, the utterly deranged – and now very cult 1993 movie – Super Mario Brothers , with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo tearing it up as the plumbers who just want to save the world, while the batrachoid Dennis Hopper tries to destroy time and space itself.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Visuals
An adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, the film charts the unlikely adventures of Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a 23-year-old who plays bass in punk band Sex Bob-omb (a nod to Super Mario Bros. ), is dating high schooler Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), and is smitten with a mysterious dyed-hair beauty named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who seems to have materialized straight out of his dreams.
The list of ‘80s and ‘90s video game nods in Pilgrim alone is daunting: Tekken Super Mario Bros. Tetris Zelda and even retro titles like Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man are represented just to name a few.
But when the fighting starts—and there’s a lot of it—1990s-style video games take over; the movie becomes a sort of mash-up homage to Super Mario Bros., Doom, Street Fighter, etc. Through it all, there’s a tension between Scott Pilgrim’s adopted too-cool-for-school attitude and its mosh-pit desperation to be the Hot New Youth Thing that’s actually pretty endearing.
8-bit style graphics adorn the shots, music from a Legend of Zelda game is used in the background, and the name of Scott Pilgrim's band -- the "Sex Bob-Ombs" -- is a direct reference to a character in Super Mario Bros. games.
The laws of physics are dropped in these sequences and the audience is asked to go along with the characters' seemingly superhuman powersfortunately, that is never a problemScott's defeats each culminating in his opponents shattering into gold coins like something out of "Super Mario Bros." It is all quite something to behold.
Popularized in the 90’s by bombastic adaptations like the original Mortal Kombat series, Super Mario Bros , Street Fighter , that all became known as notable misfires, it was clear that crafting a film that was faithful to the original product yet still worked on its own was a seemingly impossible task.
Initial chatter had led me to believe this could be the “one,” but “Mortal Kombat” is no different than several “Resident Evil” movies and “Super Mario Brothers.”
It isn’t needlessly overcomplicated like “Super Mario Bros.” or “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,” but it still adds superfluous layers to make itself seem grander.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Directed by Michael Jelenic
influenced by Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Visuals
Unlike, say, the much revered 1993 “Super Mario Bros.” live action adaptation where Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo gallivanted their way through a cyberpunk rendition of Nintendo’s priceless intellectual property.
Let me paint you a picture: It’s May 1993 and Walt Disney, via distributor Buena Vista Pictures, is about to release a film co-written by Ed Solomon ( Men in Black / Bill & Ted franchise), starring Bob Hoskins ( Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ), John Leguizamo ( Violent Night ), Dennis Hopper ( Blue Velvet ), Samantha Mathis ( Broken Arrow ), and Fiona Shaw ( Andor ), based on the best-selling video game by Nintendo Co., Ltd., Super Mario Bros. .
Still, those visuals are quite striking, mostly filmed on a huge set that resembles both "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall."
Morton and Jankel (who also directed the remake of the noir classic "D.O.A." and were the creators of "Max Headroom") have given the film a flamboyantly colored, densely cluttered surface that resembles (especially in the reptile kingdom) "Blade Runner" on a semi-sunny day.
The production team decided, somehow, that the right decision for a movie based on one of the most famously cartoony and bright video games of all time needed to be a dark, noirish movie set in a grim nightmare world heavily influenced by, naturally, Blade Runner , that movie that has so long served as the favorite reference point for designers that couldn't come up with any good ideas on their own.
Koopa's underworld--a feverish neon-blazing slum, strung with pipes, festooned with fungus and rot--is a Manhattanite variant on the dystopian Los Angeles and London of "Blade Runner" and "Brazil."
Ya sabemos a lo que vamos cuando compramos un boleto para una adaptación de videojuegos: hay muy pocas posibilidades de revertir una maldición que se instaló con Super Mario Bros .
Not since the “Super Mario Bros.” film — with Dennis Hopper as a man-dinosaur and people turned into fungi — has a film gone so over and beyond to punch up a game too thin for the cinema.
Think cinematic disasters like Super Mario Bros., Wing Commander, Alone in the Dark and many others that have categorically cemented the near-impossibility of making a beloved video game property work as a narrative feature film.
While there’s the occasional win (“Wreck It Ralph”), this genre is awash with the critically reviled ( “Pixels” ) and box office losers (“Super Mario Bros.,” “Doom,” “Double Dragon”).
Since it is based on a video game, Uncharted overcomes the stigma of Super Mario Bros. and Prince of Persia to set a high score among adaptations.
Nothing in those films can compare with the Goombas (who are the best movie heavies since the flying monkeys in "The Wizard of Oz") or the adorable Yoshi.
Hercules (1997)
Directed by Ron Clements
influenced by Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future (1985)
Both the "Greek" and the "mythology" are pretty much tossed away with the washing-up water, making way for rousing up-tempo songs (what the "Gospel Truth" has to do with matters mythical we can't quite figure out) and a high-profile voice cast that includes Danny De Vito, Rip Torn, Samantha Eggar, Hal Holbrook, Amanda Plummer, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, Wayne Knight (of TV's Seinfeld) and Matt Frewer (TV's Max Headroom).
Super Mario Brothers (1993) was novel but awful, Mortal Kombat (1995) cashed in on arcade fame and blew it, and Wing Commande r (1999) was tragic.
Pixels has a remarkable amount in common with Super Mario Bros., from pixel transportation, to the tacit participation of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, right down to the involvement of Fiona Shaw (TV’s True Blood).
Whether it’s Super Mario or Silent Hill, there’s been an uphill battle to get an adaptation of the video games we love that are of the same quality.
Chappie (2015)
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
influenced by Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future (1985)
As they used to say on the 1980s TV show Max Headroom, it's 20 minutes into the future.
To say that “ Need for Speed ” is one of the better movies derived from a videogame source may not sound like much of an endorsement given the competition (“Street Fighter,” “Tekken,” “Super Mario Bros.”), but it’s an apt description of this mash note to the American muscle car in which high-flying stuntwork routinely trumps plot, plausibility or particularly memorable characters.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Directed by Mike Newell
influenced by Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Themes
Can Bruckheimer succeed in a gamer world where Super Mario Bros., Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat and Max Payne fell on their digital asses?
It's a genre littered with such regrettable films as "Super Mario Bros." and "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li."
Spaceballs (1987)
Directed by Mel Brooks
influenced by Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future (1985)
In addition to Star Wars, Brooks and company take potshots at Star Trek, Transformers (as in Howard Korder's 1985 off-Broadway space spoof "Episode 26," there's a kind of "Heavenly Hoover" involved in the climax), Alien, Max Headroom, and The Wizard of Oz.
Maybe it's the presence of spasmic and overly colorful visuals, the way Channing Tatum roller blades in the air, or Balem's dragon/dinosaur henchmen that gives the film this "Super Mario Bros." meets "The Last Starfighter" kind of tone, but the Wachowskis delayed sci-fi actioner slips on its visuals like a barrel full of banana peels more often than not.
It’s as if “The Wolverine” is written in the “Super Mario Bros.,” “Legend of Zelda,” classic video game paradigm: the second the hero rescues the princess she is whisked away with a YOINK by any number of colorful baddies.
The story, one more variation on "rescuing the princess from the evil castle," has the Marios trying to save pretty Daisy (Samantha Mathis of "Pump Up the Volume") from the Fascist empire ruled by evil King Koopa (Dennis Hopper, made up and coiffed like a corrupted Rutger Hauer), his race of reptile people, his idiot cohorts Iggy and Spike (Fisher Stevens and Richard Edson), his "devolution" machine and his army of pin-lizard-headed "Goomba" guards--who march around in outsize military coats, and are crazily susceptible to Frankie Yankovic renditions of "Somewhere My Love."