SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993) 31 YEARS LATER

Oh man, according to official sources, The sequel to the 2023 animated Super Mario Bros. movie will be coming out in... April 3rd 2026?! That's almost 2 years of waiting, By that time I'll already be... I'll be... I have no idea.

Whatever, point is: Since us Mario movie fans will have to wait a long long time to get another Nintendo film on the big screen, on the meanwhile I wanted to talk about how the ORIGINAL Super Mario movie; No, not the OVA... You know the one.

SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993)

The infamous 1993 live action movie... Hoo boy, this one's a doozy! And I mean that in the best way possible.

I dare say it, as a Super Mario fan, this is actually my all time favorite movie, I've watched it over and over, It's such an iconic and memorable movie that shaped me a lot as an artist. This movie isn't afraid to be different from it's source material, or of showing quite risky material (e.g the Dinosaur strippers, citizens getting de-evolved, king Koopa harassing princess Daisy, exc.), something modern Hollywood would shit itself at from even just the mention of it. (Like, seriously, is making the Little Mermaid black all you can do? Come on.). It's a fresh new reimagining of the Super Mario universe that has to be seen to be believed, everything is so different from the games yet you're still able to recognize them and go "Woah! It's the thing from my videogame!". I hate seeing people go around on the internet and shit on this movie just because it's different from the games without even watching the movie, they can't even DARE to give it a chance, just because some angry reviewer on Youtube told them it was trash for the same exact reasons. What most people don't really take in mind is that the Super Mario videogame universe wasn't as polished as it is today, hell, at the time this movie came out the 4th main line Mario game had just come out 2 years prior! So I don't blame the directors for taking a few creative liberties, if we had a 1993 Mario movie that was EXACTLY like the games it would've just been boring and uninteresting, since you'd get the same experience from just playing the actual games.

And there's other adaptations that are just as unfaithful (if not more) than this movie. The Mask, Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Batman (1989), and IT (2017) are all movies that take huge liberties with their source material, yet these are loved while the only one that gets hated is the Super Mario movie for whatever reason... Kinda dumb when you think about it.

But enough praising, let's get into what the actual story is, and later I'll get into I think are the flaws of this movie, and later continue about it's strenghts.

PLOT

I suck at making film summaries, I tried summarizing it before on this page but it ended up turning out so painfully long that I eventually gave up. So I'll instead "borrow" the plot explanation from the best website on planet Earth, Wikipedia... Sorry for being lazy, I guess!

"Following the impact of a meteorite into the Earth 65 million years ago, the universe is split into two parallel dimensions. Surviving dinosaurs escape into the new dimension, evolving into a humanoid race and founding the city of Dinohattan. In 1973, a large egg and a rock are left at a Catholic orphanage, and the egg hatches into a baby girl.

Twenty years later, Italian-American brothers Mario and Luigi Mario working as plumbers in Brooklyn are close to being driven out of business by mafioso Anthony Scapelli's construction company. Luigi meets Daisy, an NYU archaeology student who shows him she has been excavating for dinosaur bones under the Brooklyn Bridge. There, they witness Scapelli's men sabotaging it by leaving the water pipes open. Mario and Luigi fix it, but Iggy and Spike, henchmen and cousins of President Koopa, the leader of the other dimension—kidnap Daisy after mistakenly kidnapping other girls, including Mario's girlfriend Daniella. The brothers pursue them through an interdimensional portal to Dinohattan, where they lose track of Daisy and the rock, which is stolen by Big Bertha, the bouncer at the Boom-Boom Bar.

Daisy learns she is descended from dinosaurs and the long-lost princess of the other dimension. Her father was overthrown as king by Koopa and her mother, the queen, was the one who took her to Brooklyn. Iggy and Spike realize that they lost Daisy's rock, a meteorite fragment Koopa needs to merge the worlds. They believe only Daisy can do so because of her royal heritage. Mario and Luigi escape prison, aided by Toad, a good-natured guitarist who was devolved into a Goomba, a semi-humanoid dinosaur, as punishment for a protest against Koopa. Daisy's own escape attempt is aided by Yoshi, a pet of the royal family, and Iggy and Spike, who were mentally evolved to become intelligent and decided to turn on Koopa.

Koopa's jealous girlfriend Lena tries unsuccessfully to kill Daisy, then obtains the rock with plans to overthrow him, but is fossilized when she merges the worlds. In Brooklyn, Koopa attempts his takeover by rousing his army and turning Scapelli into a chimpanzee, but Mario holds him off long enough for the worlds to separate again when Luigi and Daisy remove the fragment from the meteorite. Mario and Luigi obtain devolution guns and use them to defeat Koopa by devolving him into primeval slime. Daisy's father is restored as king, and the citizens celebrate and immediately destroy anything with Koopa's likeness. Daisy decides to stay in Dinohattan and kisses Luigi goodbye as she opens the portal for him and Mario to return to Brooklyn."

IT'S FLAWS

Hey, remember how I was talking about how most of it's source material changes were necessary? Well, now it's time to talk about it's... Not so necessary changes.

Starting with Dinohattan... What the hell happened to all the other baddies? Why are the only ones that get shown just the ordinary Goombas and Koopa Troopas? (Koopa Troopas being the long-faced Goombas, that's what I and my family thought when they watched it at least.) I mean, we see the other's names everywhere, Boom Boom, Thwomp, hell, there's even some that don't even get mentioned like the Bullet Bills, they only appear in ONE scene for about 4 seconds and never show up again.

(The second one isn't actually from a direct scene in the movie, but it is a location seen in it, so you get the point. Also, sorry for the scantily clad dino-strippers.)

With the big focus on dinosaurs this movie has after Super Mario World, you'd really expect seeing enemies from said game too, but nope! Only minor enemies from the first few NES games, mostly which barely make appearances or have a big impact later in the movie apart from the aforementioned Goombas and Koopa Troopas. And what makes this even more confusing is that in some of the TV advertisements, enemies from Super Mario World and other games WERE shown! So why hype them up if you're not even going to show them?

I also don't like how with some of the enemies that were shown were made into being completely unrecognizable. Listen, I know I said a bit earlier that I liked most changes this movie made, but come on... Some of these are just ridiculous!

Like for example, why is Big Bertha human? I know King Koopa is also human, but at least he showed SOME resemblance to his videogame counterpart (like shooting fireballs, kidnapping the princess, being a giant lizard), Big Bertha is just a whole different character here. I really don't get why they just didn't give her an unique name like Lena and instead gave her the name of the giant fish from Mario 3.

Look at this! Does this look like a giant man-eating fish to you? NO! IT'S A FAT BLACK WOMAN!

Don't get me wrong, she's a good and likable character, she just doesn't work as Big Bertha at all.

The same problem applies with Iggy and Spike, Their characters are completely unrecognizable and don't share a single resemblance to their videogame counterparts apart from being baddies. Which also reminds me, why are they called Iggy and Spike? I get Iggy, but why Spike? Spike is just a regular old enemy, would it have killed them to just name him after another Koopaling? Come on Hollywood.

Another big gripe I have with this movie is it's writing problems, they're very minor but are still worth mentioning.

Like for example: In one of the scenes, Mario says "there are no brakes!" while trying to stop a stolen police car, even though a scene earlier it shows him hitting the brakes on that same vehicle. Or how at the end of the movie, the mushroom king magically evolves back to his original self for no particular reason after Koopa is defeated.

There's also a multitude of deleted scenes that were necessary for proper exposition. When I say there's a multitude I MEAN it, so I'll only show a few.

For example: in the climax of the film, when Koopa temporarily achieves to cross the dimensions, the Scapelli team says "Those guys will do anything for publicity" for seemingly no reason when Koopa's tower teleports in. But in one of the deleted scenes, it's shown that the reason why they said that was because of the missing Brooklyn girls telling a news anchor about the invasion before Koopa showed up, and them not believing them. Another example is how in the Devo chamber scene, you can see a guard slip on a pile of weird green goo, but it's never explained in the final film where that goo came from. But in another deleted scene, it's shown that the goo actually came from a Koopa Tower worker who got de-evoled into primeval slime.

I also dislike how at the end of the movie, when Koopa does transform into his dinosaur form, it doesn't last for very long due to costs. When I watched this film for the first time I always expected the final fight to be some epic showdown where the giant dinosaur Koopa would chase Mario and Luigi around in the Dinohattan bridge, but after seeing him just get de-evolved into slime a few mere seconds after showing up really disappointed me.

(The second one is an example of how I imagined the last fight to be, taken from Jurassic Park.)

As I said before, they're very minor gripes and I doubt anyone watching the movie ever gave a shit about them, but they're still worth noting as some of them were very stupid decisions. I believe the creative freedom in this movie was necessary to make it good and memorable, but some of it's changes were just so dumb too.

IT'S STRENGTHS

Oh yeah, now onto the part I've been waiting to talk about, don't worry though, I won't make it "super" long. (Eh? Get it? Oh come on, that was funny... OK maybe it wasn't).

The first strength I'd like to talk about is the set design and practical effects, they're the key factor that make this movie absolutely timeless.

Like with movies like Star Wars, The Grinch (2000), Terminator, and Jurassic Park, this movie only uses CGI when it's NEEDED and NECESSARY to create the scenes, not when it's for lowering costs.

Things like the Goombas, Yoshi, Koopa's castle, the cop cars, the Stomper boots, and the streets of Dinohattan (just to mention a few) haven't aged a single bit due to them not being CGI, and rather carefully and beautifully crafted props, sets, and animatronics.

Hell, when I first watched this movie about 2 years ago I was absolutely stunned at how amazing the movie looked, and this was the time when the second live action Sonic movie was coming out.

Another thing I find amazing about this movie is it's gritty Batman-esque aesthetic; bringing up the Sonic movies again, I always disliked how those looked so bland and boring, bright full of nothing fields and ultra lame life-less towns.

This always came as sort of confusing to me as a kid, since my perspective of Sonic back then was solely based on the classic and Dreamcast games along with the Cartoons, and those were always darker than the newer games (e.g SATAM's Robotropolis, Sonic 1's Star Light, Sonic Adventure's Speed Highway.)

When I was a kid, I liked Sonic more than Mario for the sole reason that Sonic was more badass and dark, since Mario was more lighthearted stuff, and when a few years later I watched SMB 1993 I was absolutely stunned at how fucking cool it looked. The tables seemed to have turned out of nowhere, now Sonic was the lame one while Mario turned mega badass! The best example of this would be my favorite monsters in cinema, The Goombas. Their designs in this movie were absolutely amazing, instead of the puny little weaklings you see in the games, these Goombas were big, intimidating, imposing, and freaking awesome. These huge, fire shooting reptiles with coats full of spikes were always such a pleasure to see every time they were on-screen. Even in some scenes you can see them wearing these sort of sunglasses, like they KNOW they're just that awesome.

Dinohattan itself also looks amazing, looks like something that wouldn't be out of place in Doom 3 or Duke Nukem! People alway say this movie's set design is a knock-off of Blade Runner, but I'd like to disagree.

Blade Runner's cities were more clean, sleek and futuristic, while on this movie Dinohattan is more dirty and neglected, full of gross lumps fungus that cover the entire place and vicious dinosaurs and lizard people. It's a place that just screams danger, It's repulsive but in a good way that fits the tone of the film.

Adding to this sort of dangerous feel, a really noteworthy part about this film would be it's absolutely insane looking extras. Seriously, they look like Two-Face's goons from Batman Forever! They all look different in their own way while at the same time looking like they belong in the same universe.

Their outfits are also always really spiky, as if they're telling you "Back off buddy, or suffer the consequences!".

The acting and writing is also fantastic, there may be some obvious mistakes in them, but when they're done right they're absolutely great. There's not a single scene in this movie that isn't iconic, once you watch this for the first time you'll remember everything, it's an unforgettable blast of a movie where not a single moment isn't fun to watch. For god's sake, my mom and dad who haven't rewatched the movie ever since it came out still remember a large chunk of the movie. (Mostly the de-evolution scene, which most likely forever scarred them as kids when they first watched it, but it proves my point!) . Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo were PERFECT fits for the Mario Brothers in this movie, their acting is top notch and it really seems like they are brothers and not two completely unrelated actors. Samantha Mathis and Dennis Hopper were also great, I wouldn't say Samantha Mathis' acting was AMAZING, but it definetely was great and she does her job of being the damsel in distress; King Koopa as Dennis Hopper seems like a weird choice at first, but his acting is so good it makes you completely forget that, he's a goofy cartoon-esque villain that at the same time still manages to be serious and intimidating.

(My favorite shots of these 2 actors!)

I also love how this movie's priority was never really about "references" or making you go "woah!!! The thing from the game!!!!!" (Unlike some other videogame movies), It's its own movie that is able to stand on it's own 2 feet while at the same time still feeling like Mario Brothers without the need of any excessive references to it's source material, similar to the FNAF movie.

Overall, Super Mario Bros. (1993) is an amazing movie despite all it's flaws, it's an entertaining unforgettable film that is certain to give you a good time if you're not actively looking things you don't like in it. I really don't understand how people back then were disappointed by this, I mean, in EVERY SINGLE piece of advertising this movie had pre and post release stated CRYSTAL CLEAR that it wouldn't be like the games. For fuck's sake, even the movie's slogan is literally "This ain't no game", they knew exactly what they were going to get yet still whined about how "OOOHH BUH BUH BUT IT'S NOT LIKE MY NINTENDOE!!!!".

Most of the stuff I dislike about this movie are minor nitpicks that don't ruin the movie in the slightest. I'd give this movie a 10 out of 10 if I wanted to, but since I'm giving FAIR reviews here, i'll instead give it an 8/10. There was a bit TOO MUCH creative freedom here, but It's not NEARLY as bad as people say. It's an unique, gritty, hilarious film with immense talent put into it, that once you watch it will never leave your mind... As the VHS cover puts it: It's a blast!

Last updated June 6th 2024, contact me at my Escargot: AIMguy@escargot.chat

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