Trust the Fungus
Jun. 9th, 2008 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatToday, for your reading pleasure, I present you with my review of the train wreck that is the Super Mario Bros. movie. I admit that I was actually interested in this film when it was first announced. I mean, everybody loved the games (not that I was ever any good at them, but that's neither here nor there), and I was quite fond of the cartoons. Even the live-action bits with Captain Lou Albano in a goofy red outfit hanging out with Magic Johnson and talking about nurses' shoes (a joke I can't say I ever got) had a certain cheesy appeal. But when everything I heard about the movie said that it was bad and had practically nothing to do with the game, I didn't bother seeing it. And now that I have, I can say that, well, it's bad, and has practically nothing to do with the game. First of all, why are two Italian plumbers played by British and Hispanic actors? I get the impression that Bob Hoskins spent the whole time trying to be Danny DeVito, and he was the better of the two. John Leguizamo gave me a greater appreciation for the guy who played Luigi on the Super Show (who I believe was actually French Canadian, but it wasn't so obvious). And aside from a Bob-omb and a brief glimpse of a Bullet Bill, pretty much everything else was related to the games in name only. Koopa was Dennis Hopper with spiky hair. Toad was a folk musician who was turned into a Goomba, which in turn was a brainless creature with a proportionally tiny reptilian head. Big Bertha, the fish from SMB3 who spits babies from her mouth, was a fat, sassy black lady at a nightclub. Yoshi was a cute little velociraptor (probably a nod to/rip-off of Jurassic Park, the big blockbuster movie of the time). I think the writers and character designers were given a list of characters from the games, with no pictures and brief (if any) descriptions, and told to make something out of it. And there was nary a floating block nor a turtle shell to be seen.
The thing is, if removed from the context of the games (a difficult thing to do, since it WAS billed as a movie based on video games), it was still bad. The basic plot (such as it was) involved a parallel universe where the dinosaurs survived. Yeah, really original, writers. While some actual dinosaurs still existed, most of them had evolved into people who hatched from eggs, had snake-like tongues, and ate living creatures. They insisted that they were reptiles, not mammals, even though they had hair and breasts. (Yeah, I know the Koopa family in the games also has hair, but this is the part of the review where I'm disregarding them, remember?) Shouldn't highly evolved dinosaurs be, like, birds or something? It's not that I'm not willing to suspend my disbelief, but if you decide to throw in something scientific like evolution, shouldn't someone on staff have at least a basic idea as to how it works?
I also had a Mario-related dream a few hours ago. I was watching a cartoon based on SMB2, which started with the opening story from the game. The four heroes were hanging around near the door to Subcon, and Luigi referred to its inhabitants as "pagans," which I thought was kind of bizarre. He was then kicked through the door by a Kickit, which is not a real Mario enemy, but sounds like it could be. Eventually, everyone but the Princess had gone through, and she presumably going to follow, but it didn't get that far. This was one of those dreams that I eventually realized was a dream, so I made a point of watching as much of the cartoon as I could before waking up, but I think that's as far as it got. It was certainly much better than the movie.
The thing is, if removed from the context of the games (a difficult thing to do, since it WAS billed as a movie based on video games), it was still bad. The basic plot (such as it was) involved a parallel universe where the dinosaurs survived. Yeah, really original, writers. While some actual dinosaurs still existed, most of them had evolved into people who hatched from eggs, had snake-like tongues, and ate living creatures. They insisted that they were reptiles, not mammals, even though they had hair and breasts. (Yeah, I know the Koopa family in the games also has hair, but this is the part of the review where I'm disregarding them, remember?) Shouldn't highly evolved dinosaurs be, like, birds or something? It's not that I'm not willing to suspend my disbelief, but if you decide to throw in something scientific like evolution, shouldn't someone on staff have at least a basic idea as to how it works?
I also had a Mario-related dream a few hours ago. I was watching a cartoon based on SMB2, which started with the opening story from the game. The four heroes were hanging around near the door to Subcon, and Luigi referred to its inhabitants as "pagans," which I thought was kind of bizarre. He was then kicked through the door by a Kickit, which is not a real Mario enemy, but sounds like it could be. Eventually, everyone but the Princess had gone through, and she presumably going to follow, but it didn't get that far. This was one of those dreams that I eventually realized was a dream, so I made a point of watching as much of the cartoon as I could before waking up, but I think that's as far as it got. It was certainly much better than the movie.
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Date: 2008-06-09 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-27 05:43 am (UTC)First of all, you state that a concept involving a "parallel universe where the dinosaurs survived" isn't entirely original. I simply don't understand how you can think that... Have you ever seen another movie or any form of media utilize such a plot? It's not very common and at least hasn't been done before on film.
Secondly, (and this is a big one) you say that Yoshi was probably a "nod to" or "rip-off" of Jurassic Park. That certainly isn't true since Super Mario Bros. was released over two weeks before Jurassic Park. The fact that both films involve dinosaurs is only a coincidence. Additionally, Yoshi is a baby T. rex, not a Velociraptor.
Finally, you say that the dinosaurs should have evolved into humanoid birds rather than reptiles. While that would of course be more plausible considering modern evidence, the theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds was only just that at the time: a theory. You can't hold that against them.
Overall, the film did it's best to adapt a storyless game to the big screen. It's frankly amazing what they managed to do with two plumbers brothers chasing down a princess in a strange world. It's even more amazing that they adapted the plot from three different games: the dinosaur world from Dinosaur Land in Super Mario World, the parallel dimensions and gateways from Super Mario Bros. 2 and the King being turned into a strange create from Super Mario Bros. 3. And, best of all, it works!
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Date: 2011-06-29 08:36 pm (UTC)Just because the Mario movie came out before Jurassic Park doesn't mean they couldn't have been referring to it. SMB almost certainly took less time to make, and the creators might have thought tying in with a big-budget film would have been a good idea. There are rip-offs that predate what they're ripping off all the time in the film industry.
Finally, you say that the dinosaurs should have evolved into humanoid birds rather than reptiles. While that would of course be more plausible considering modern evidence, the theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds was only just that at the time: a theory. You can't hold that against them.
I was wrong here anyway, because I wasn't thinking about how evolution is driven by environment. Dinosaurs might have evolved into birds in our world, but the process would almost certainly have gone differently in a different world. The movie still got evolution totally wrong, but hey, so does Star Trek.
All that aside, though, it was some time after I wrote this that I saw someone else's comment that largely sums up my problem with this movie. When you think of Mario, you think of a world that's bright, colorful, and weird. So why did the movie go for a dreary dystopia instead?
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Date: 2011-06-29 10:36 pm (UTC)Super Mario Bros. actually took a longer time to make, though Jurassic Park had a much higher budget and creative team. They simply had more people pulled from the best of the industry to make their movie more visually exciting. I don't think it's fair to say that Super Mario Bros. "didn't try hard enough" or were "ripping off" Jurassic Park. They simply had less money, less creative teams and a completely different direction.
I agree that the "evolution" science in the film is both wrong and absurd, but I should point out that in the scripts it was indicated that the technology was actually controlled mutation. Latent genes and characteristics were brought out to mutate subjects into organisms reminiscent of, but not identical to, their ancestral states. The Goombas themselves are exaggerations, caricatures, of Koopa's idealized version of dinosaur supremacy. "Evolution" was simply a charged term that played into his propaganda.
Of course, none of that gets across in the movie. A huge political subtext involving Koopa's philosophy and government was cut out. In fact, over 30 minutes of brilliant footage was cut out to make the movie move faster and be more kid-friendly.
The movie went with a "dreary dystopia" because that's Koopa's world, not the Mushroom Kingdom. The film was intended to be a prequel set during Koopa's reign (as he had just taken over in the first Super Mario Bros. game) while the sequels would have explored the "true" imagery of the games. With Koopa gone and the King restored, the entire city would have been turned into a lush jungle with prehistoric plants and creatures everywhere. We just didn't get to see that.