"Their basic approach seemed to be: how dumb can we make this?"

March 22, 2018 5:05 AM

"In 1993, the makers of The Killing Fields and Chariots of Fire bought the film rights to the world’s biggest video game. The result was a commercial disaster. But that’s only part of the story." The Stench Of It Stays With Everybody: Inside the Super Mario Bros Movie
posted by everybody had matching towels (39 comments total)

This seemed to be a lot more even-handed than the "Morton and Jankel had no idea what they were doing and destroyed the movie" narrative I'd heard before. I didn't know that they were handed a completely different script on the first day of shooting and told, "Do this one instead", or that they were asked to leave before the final three weeks of shooting. They were clearly in over their heads, but also were never even given the chance to swim. That makes much more sense, considering that "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future" simply could not have been made by complete incompetents.
posted by kyrademon at 5:32 AM on March 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

Starring Kevin Costner as Mario?
posted by thelonius at 5:37 AM on March 22, 2018

Despite being squarely in the target demographic, I've actually never seen this. I sure saw Jurassic Park and Mrs. Doubtfire, though. Many times.

I can't even imagine what it's like to have that kind of budget -- $50m! -- and still have everything be such a cluster that you can't actually make use of it. The bit about Hoskins and the "reefer" is delightful, though.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:47 AM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

I guess Hopper's on set tantrum was a way to retain street cred, or something, since he later costarred in Water World. Come to think of it, many years after both of those films, he teamed up again with Leguizamo to make a horrible Romero directed zombie movie, Land of the Dead. Oh, and a film called Space Truckers somewhere in there. Too many stinkers to keep track of. Standards, indeed.
posted by Beholder at 6:09 AM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Seems that every few years a young investigative journalist discovers the Super Mario movie.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:16 AM on March 22, 2018 [45 favorites]

I keep meaning to watch it one day, just to savor the awful that everyone talks about. But I haven't gotten around to it yet.

I'm from exactly the generation it was supposed to appeal to, I was 11 when Super Mario Bros came out, it was formative in my life, and I was 19 when the movie came out so theoretically I'd have been squarely in the ready for a more mature weird approach to things age. But I never watched it.

If it's on any of the streaming services I'm subscribed to I'll watch it this weekend... Just to knock it off my bucket list.
posted by sotonohito at 6:22 AM on March 22, 2018

It was early enough in the history of video games that it appeared to be written by someone who had only had Super Mario Brothers described to them on a static-y phone line with a bad connection by Philip K. Dick on a coke binge.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:28 AM on March 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

I unabashedly love this movie. It's a level of bizarre that you can't get by anybody trying to be bizarre, but only by total accident, made by people who are trying their best to continue to make a paycheck in the worst of situations.
posted by xingcat at 6:39 AM on March 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

25 years later, I still occasionally apologize to my mother for having subjected her to this film in its theatrical run.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 6:46 AM on March 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

I keep meaning to watch it one day, just to savor the awful that everyone talks about. But I haven't gotten around to it yet.


I mean... I guess my tastes are odd in various and sundry ways but I enjoyed the movie, madness and badness that it encompassed and all. Would I put it up for an Oscar or something? Well, no. Would I rewatch on a yearly basis to relive the wonderfulness of it? No, not that either. But would I choose it over perhaps re-watching Uncle Buck or Top Gun or Gremlins II? I mean, it's in the running for sure. Not that any of those movies are worse per se, just that there's different itches to scratch for different folks at different times of day.

So, while I don't find these retrospective views on the production choices and whatever development hell it may have originated under invalid, I admit that I'd watch it again if I was 2 beers in and nothing else was on and I'd seen everything else on Netflix.
posted by RolandOfEld at 6:58 AM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm also in the target demographic, but I've only seen it in bits and pieces because that's all I can stand and I change the channel. It's not good bad, it's bad bad. No memorable quotes, bizarre but boring sets, terrible acting, hideous characters, and so loosely connected to SMB the video game as to be almost seems like a coincidence. I get the same feeling watching it as watching Star Wars Episode 1 - with Jar Jar Binks.
posted by The_Vegetables at 6:58 AM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm from exactly the generation it was supposed to appeal to, I was 11 when Super Mario Bros came out, it was formative in my life, and I was 19 when the movie came out so theoretically I'd have been squarely in the ready for a more mature weird approach to things age. But I never watched it.

If/when you do, might I recommend just taking it as a movie that happens to have some similar things from the games rather than something that could soil your formative basis for Mario and friends.

No, no, I do not want to talk about the Dark Tower movie. Why do you ask?
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:00 AM on March 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

I came here to say what xingcat said, basically. This movie ended up being high weirdness of the sort that cannot be faked.
posted by Scattercat at 7:04 AM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

a horrible Romero directed zombie movie, Land of the Dead.

Land of the Dead is hilarious.
posted by maxsparber at 7:07 AM on March 22, 2018

This film was succeeded a year later by Street Fighter which was a little more coherent but also terrible in every way. And that was the end of videogame films forever. RIP Raúl Juliá, I'm sorry this was your last movie.
posted by Nelson at 7:22 AM on March 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

In about 1992, a new guy came to my school from somewhere outside. This was Mississippi, and I don't remember where he had come from, only that it was much more interesting than the other Deep South states that people generally moved to our town from. One day I saw him wearing a Members Only-style crew jacket from the Super Mario Bros. movie.

I puzzled over that for ages. The coolness of having an actual crew jacket from a major Hollywood release was completely negated by the fact that it was from that movie. If we were actual human beings then, instead of teenagers with a set of byzantine unspoken rules about when and how to talk to the opposite sex, I might have learned something about how that jacket ended up in Mississippi, but it remains a mystery to me.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:26 AM on March 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

If it's on any of the streaming services I'm subscribed to I'll watch it this weekend

Looks like it's only available as an out-of-print DVD that can be bought used on Amazon/elsewhere, or in a deluxe UK blu-ray edition (no idea on regioning). You used to be able to stream it on Youtube, but the links seem to have dried up.

The rights situation on the movie has been a bit weird in the past; I know as of a few years ago it was assumed to be abandonware, with both Buena Vista and Nintendo basically disowning it. Not sure where things stand now that Nintendo is apparently getting serious again about putting its IP into movies and theme parks and such.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:33 AM on March 22, 2018

If you can't watch it alone, but no one else you know will put up with it, I recommend the Rifftrax.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:38 AM on March 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

My first self-organized, unchaperoned group outing as a kid was in the 6th grade when, as a Mario fanatic, I gathered five friends to go see Super Mario Bros. on opening night. I have no regrets because the movie was weird but entertaining and I got to sit next to a girl I had a crush on. Unfortunately, I could never get another group movie night going again throughout school largely because I had made them all watch Super Mario Bros.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:45 AM on March 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

If you're going to watch it, I strongly recommend seeing the RiffTrax version, and doing so with the Metafilter MST3K Club on their Thursday-night stream. It is the best way to watch that movie.
posted by biogeo at 8:38 AM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

I thought 2011's Mario (trailer) was just so much better.
posted by stevil at 8:40 AM on March 22, 2018

“He’s talked about looking into storage to see if he still has the original visual effects on 35mm, which would allow us to complete scenes they didn’t have the budget to finish,”

Directors Cut!!... ah no

Wait, hold that thought, what if there was a supercut crossover that included JarJar?

(I'd go on but don't want to loose my mifi account over something this lame)
posted by sammyo at 8:58 AM on March 22, 2018

I may have mentioned this before, but a girl a year ahead of me in school had a small role in this.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:07 AM on March 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

I've seen this movie at least ten times- most of them as a child, obviously, but at least once as an adult. It's kinda fun.
posted by atoxyl at 9:46 AM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

"Sir, your pizza is here!"
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:27 AM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

I feel kind of the same about the Super Mario Brothers movie and Star Trek V, which I saw at around the same time as a child. Both were objectively terrible movies that have nonetheless managed to have visuals and small moments stuck in the back of my head 25 years later, so it's hard to call them total failures. I'm not surprised to learn from the article that the visual effects of Super Mario Bros were genuinely cutting-edge, since the aesthetic is by far the most effective part of the movie. You can instantly tell what movie it is from almost any still.
posted by Copronymus at 10:28 AM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

And no discussion of Super Mario Bros would be complete without Henry Hopper's comment.
posted by dannyboybell at 10:28 AM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Let's not forget MOJO!
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:32 AM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love this incredibly terrible movie. I usually don't like bad movies, but I like this one. And I do occasionally find myself saying "trust the fungus" for no reason.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:27 AM on March 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

If you want to laugh at everything that is terrible with this movie without actually watching the movie, check out How Did This Get Made's episode on it.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 1:00 PM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

This movie is such a product of its times. I'd never heard of the Batman comparison, but that helps me make sense of it. They wanted to make a version of Mario that was like Tim Burton's version of Batman. The only problem is that there are actually elements of Batman that afford Tim Burton's gritty take on the story, whereas there aren't any for Mario.

From the perspective we have in 2018, it's ridiculous to put the word 'gritty' next to Mario. Mario is such a very carefully constructed brand, and it is not gritty. From our current perspective, it's also possible to see the error in equating grittiness with seriousness: I feel like we're a lot more open to bright colors, silly absurdity, and fun than adult filmgoers were back then. Additionally, we're a lot more open to the suggestion that video games can be art, or at least worthy of attention, these days.

I get so angry at this movie, not for being bad, but for failing so spectacularly to be Mario Brothers. No one attached to this movie cared about the game. No one attached to this movie understood the pure joy of finding a pipe you can go down or hearing the special super-secret-prize-place music. None of them even thought it was worthwhile to consider whether they should care or not about the aesthetic of the games and the experience one has playing the games.
posted by meese at 1:18 PM on March 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

I have seen this movie three times, and by some coincidence I've had some kind of flu or fever each time. I can attest that when you're half-delirious anyway, it's a truly wonderful movie.

...tbh, I'm rather frightened to try watching it when sober and healthy.
posted by fencerjimmy at 1:29 PM on March 22, 2018

Looks like Jankel finally has her first movie in 25 years with an adaptation of the novel "Tell it to the bees"

I've never seen this film but I loved Max Headroom and remember liking DOA quite a bit.
posted by octothorpe at 2:14 PM on March 22, 2018

I wonder. Hmm. Yep, Scarecrow Video (one of the Last Great Video Rental Shops, which I am spoilt enough to live a block away from) has not one, but two copies of this. It is, of course, in the “Joysticks!” section of the Psychotronic Room.

I am tempted to go see if it is one of the movies they require a three-digit deposit on before you can rent it.
posted by egypturnash at 6:08 PM on March 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

This movie is such a product of its times. I'd never heard of the Batman comparison, but that helps me make sense of it. They wanted to make a version of Mario that was like Tim Burton's version of Batman. The only problem is that there are actually elements of Batman that afford Tim Burton's gritty take on the story, whereas there aren't any for Mario.

Yes, the Batman comparison clicked in my mind, too. It's like some studio exec said "Hey, let's get us some of that Batman stuff and oh, we got this vidya game license over here, kids love that shit!"

It's kind of amazing how the movie manages to be so completely unlike anything that is identifiable as Mario Bros.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:14 AM on March 23, 2018

The Now Playing podcast covered Super Mario Bros. a couple of months ago...They're in the middle of a series of episodes covering all movies based on video games.
posted by doctornecessiter at 8:55 AM on March 23, 2018

I don't think anyone made as horrible of a mistake as I did by dropping a tab and seeing this thing in the theater.

To this day my going theory is that they made such a horrible movie and replaced the script at the last minute to specifically fuck with me in particular.
posted by loquacious at 9:13 AM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Our annual MST Club Christmas Marathon has taken to showing the Rifftrax of this as a capper, the last thing (or among the last) we show way early in the morning December 26th. It's definitely suitable for riffing material, but its chief crime is really that it really has little to do with the games. It was put through that Hollywood treatment where they assume they can turn an already-popular thing into something even better, while usually neglecting everything that made the original popular in the first place.

If you forget that it's supposed to be a Mario movie, it's possible to enjoy it as a standard 80s kiddie sci-fi fantasy, and even a more-creative-than-usual example of the type.
posted by JHarris at 10:41 AM on March 24, 2018

this thread led to me finally ordering the movie from Amazon and watching it for the first time.

I kind of liked it. It's got a weird positive energy to it.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:14 PM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]