Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Directed by Rocky Morton
Mario and Luigi, plumbers from Brooklyn, find themselves in an alternate universe where evolved dinosaurs live in hi-tech squalor. They're the only hope to save our universe from invasion by the dino dictator, Koopa.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced Super Mario Bros.
What critics say influenced 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."
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.
Co-directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel created the "Max Headroom" movies, as well as the bizarre, failed 1988 updated film noir, "D.O.A.," and graphic spectaculars are obviously their specialty.
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.
British co-directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel created the similarly ambitious "Max Headroom" TV series, but they lack the visionary gifts of Terry Gilliam, and so "Super Mario Bros." remains more of a game than the awesome movie it's trying to be.
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."