The Live-Action 'Super Mario Bros.' Was Supposed To Rival Tim Burton's 'Batman', So What Happened?
Image Source: Monet
When The Super Mario Bros. Movie hits the big screens on April 5, it will be nearly 30 years since the last time the iconic plumber from Brooklyn appeared in a cinematic movie and the reason it took Nintendo so long to agree to license out one of their most beloved IP can be summed up in three words:
Super Mario Bros.
The movie from 1993 was both a critical and commercial disaster, repeatedly voted as one of the worst movies of all time.
Bob Hoskins, who played the titular character (alongside John Leguizamo) has called this movie the worst project of his career, which he could only sustain by getting drunk each morning before shooting began. And both he and Dennis Hopper, who played Mario's arch-nemesis King Koopa never tried to hide their disdain for Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, the directors' couple, whose careers in Hollywood were over after the release of Super Mario Bros.
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But back in the early 90s, they had high hopes and expectations for their new project:
"I remember saying to Annabel, 'This is it. This is going to be our Batman," says Morton, looking back at the 30th anniversary of the movie.
The initial pitch to bring Mario and Luigi to the big screen came from British director and producer Roland Joffé. By that time, in the late 80s and early 90s, Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, and the other characters were already household names, so Nintendo felt they were strong enough to exist outside the gaming world. As a result, they completely waived any creative control over the project and only kept merchandising rights.
The first iteration of the script was written by Barry Morrow, who came up with a road-movie-based character piece, not unlike Rain Man, for which he had received an Oscar. As this concept fell through, Jim Jennewein and Tom S.Parker were brought on board to write a more traditionally fairy-tale-like story, which also didn't work.
Then Joffé remembered Morton and Jankel, who had created Max Headroom.
Image Source: Laughingsquid.com
They came up with the premise that 65 million years ago, when a meteorite hit Earth, dinosaurs weren't completely extinct but transferred into another dimension, where they evolved into intelligent beings, creating their own society. But instead of the color- and joyful world of the Super Mario games, this dino-dimension was dark and dystopian - like Gotham City in the 1989 Batman Movie. Mario and Luigi would also get sucked into this other dimension and had to free Princess Daisy. from Koopa and his minions
Hello, World!
When Disney became a last-minute financier of the film, they feared that the movie would be too dark for a young audience and hired Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted) to do some rewrites. But instead of just doing some minor dialogue tweaks, he changed major parts of the script, even after shooting had already begun. The major weakness of Super Mario Bros., aside from deviating so heavily from the game, is that it unsuccessfully tries to incorporate a generally dark theme with funny or rather ridiculous elements.
But despite all the wrong decisions that Morton and Jankel made, they also came up with the clever concept of making the movie a kind of meta-prequel to the game:
"This was the true story of what really happened before the plumbers return to Brooklyn. Of course, by that point, they're TV celebrities and a couple of Japanese executives from Nintendo want to turn their story into a game, but it gets lost in translation. That's how we ended up with the Nintendo game."
The movie's end even pushed the door wide open for a second film, which of course, never happened, although there was an unofficial webcomic sequel in 2013.
It looks like the new The Super Mario Bros. Movie is much more faithful to the original concept and will restore Nintendo's faith in licensing out their beloved characters.
But the original Mario Bos. movie is still out there, and you can watch it if you dare.
104 minutes of your life, you will never get back
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Source: SyFy
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