The 'Real' Mario Movie
June 9, 2023 8:01 PM Subscribe
Who needs Illumination? Let a completely different Mario movie play out in your brain as you listen to the completely improvised audioplay The Real Mario Movie (starring, among others, Ellie Spectacular, the woman behind, among other things, the uncommonly clean Youtube Poop account DaThings). By its creators' own admission: 'no script, no reheaseals and zero brain cells'.
I was in the theater opening day back in 1993. I know the real Mario movie. Trust the fungus.
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM on June 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM on June 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
What hippybear said.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 9:44 PM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 9:44 PM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I love that the 1993 Mario movie has become almost a cultural touchstone after the fact. We often pull out the Rifftrax for it at the MST Club Christmas marathon (although haven't the past few years). It's a perfectly fine 90s-era big-budget Hollywood sci-fi/fantasy blockbuster, it's just has only a tangential relationship to the Mario Bros.
posted by JHarris at 10:36 PM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 10:36 PM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Who needs Illumination?
EXACTLY--let's burn it down before they make a Zelda movie!
posted by mittens at 5:06 AM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
EXACTLY--let's burn it down before they make a Zelda movie!
posted by mittens at 5:06 AM on June 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I didn't know DaThings was run by a lady! Neat! She seems cool from her website, and DaThings has a ton of very funny videos on it. Anyway, now I'm gonna go look at the actual post part of this post.
posted by JDHarper at 5:17 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JDHarper at 5:17 AM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
It really wasn't a perfectly fine 90s-era big-budget Hollywood sci-fi/fantasy blockbuster. It was a complete mess. Watching it, you can see what the makers were striving for, but they were hampered by budgets and technology. They sort of succeeded in creating a movie that uses the elements of Super Mario Bros, but the whole thing is a real muddle. You can tell the stars are trying to make the thing work -- Hopkins and Leguizamo and Hopper are all doing their damned best.
I have a lot of affection for movies like this. It really shot for the moon and didn't make it, but it is so glorious in its failure.
posted by hippybear at 3:09 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have a lot of affection for movies like this. It really shot for the moon and didn't make it, but it is so glorious in its failure.
posted by hippybear at 3:09 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean, this isn't really a good place to argue about this I think? But you and I appear to have different memories of what your typical Sci-Fi/Fantasy blockbuster from the time was like. Released the same year were Demolition Man and Robocop 3.
I won't die on the hill of defending the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, but I have found that it's possible to enjoy it for what it is.
posted by JHarris at 11:44 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I won't die on the hill of defending the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, but I have found that it's possible to enjoy it for what it is.
posted by JHarris at 11:44 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's a perfectly fine 90s-era big-budget Hollywood sci-fi/fantasy blockbuster, it's just has only a tangential relationship to the Mario Bros.
I think it's Nintendo's equivalent of all that fantastic Atari cover art used to represent games where you played as a square or a dot. It's a creative and weird interpretation of a game that just didn't quite have enough to work as a movie. I think we're definitely missing something these days where games themselves can be complete narrative works because it doesn't leave much room for there to be a movie that isn't just a bunch of cutscenes from the game strung together.
The Real Mario Movie reminds me of all the imaginary video game movies that played out in my head when I was a kid, which were always better and more interesting than anything which ended up on the screen.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:34 AM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think it's Nintendo's equivalent of all that fantastic Atari cover art used to represent games where you played as a square or a dot. It's a creative and weird interpretation of a game that just didn't quite have enough to work as a movie. I think we're definitely missing something these days where games themselves can be complete narrative works because it doesn't leave much room for there to be a movie that isn't just a bunch of cutscenes from the game strung together.
The Real Mario Movie reminds me of all the imaginary video game movies that played out in my head when I was a kid, which were always better and more interesting than anything which ended up on the screen.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:34 AM on June 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
RonButNotStupid: Fun fact: the reason the Western cover art of early NES games featured actual graphics from those games was to keep kids from being disappointed when the games didn't look like the cover art, which they believed to be one of the reasons behind the game industry crash of 1983 - the crash that Mattel, through its important of the Famicom as the NES, managed to undo.
posted by BiggerJ at 8:44 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by BiggerJ at 8:44 PM on June 12, 2023
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posted by BiggerJ at 8:02 PM on June 9, 2023