The Super Mario Bros. Movie, despite its definite article, is not the first adaptation of the popular platformer to grace the silver screen, though “grace” may not be an apropos word to associate with the 1993 live-action train wreck. The failure of that film—Super Mario Bros., sometimes subtitled The Movie—left Nintendo sufficiently shell-shocked that they avoided further forays into Hollywood adaptations, or so the legend goes. Nintendo’s reticence to allow filmmakers access to their cherished characters has so long been a hallmark of the famous company—as opposed to the desire of other developers to license their properties for multimedia development—that Nintendo’s initial announcement that they were partnering with Illumination to produce an animated Mario movie came as a shock to many, myself included. Indeed, along with the development of Super Nintendo World for various Universal theme parks, this film represents a newfound willingness on Nintendo’s part to license out their world-famous intellectual properties—valuable commodities in the modern media landscape. I do not doubt that this willingness is contingent on Nintendo’s ability to sign off on the manner in which these properties are used, with Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto being actively involved in the development of Super Nintendo World and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, he being one of the film’s two producers, the other being Illumination’s founder and CEO, Chris Meledandri. And whether due to Miyamoto’s involvement, Illumination’s reverence for the source material, or some combination of these and other factors, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an incredibly faithful adaptation of Mario and his world, though willing to transform and innovate upon the source material, as well. And whether one finds that prospect thrilling or irksome will likely dictate one’s enjoyment of the film.
The premise is simple: Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), Italian-American New Yorker twins, start a small business, Super Mario Bros. Plumbing, against the wishes of their father (Charles Martinet). Their efforts to prove themselves to him, as well as to themselves, fall short after a disastrous gig. When a public sewer system breaks down, the brothers decide to assist in its repair. This does not prove particularly successful, but in exploring the sewer, they discover a mysterious Warp Pipe, which they inadvertently enter. The Warp Pipe separates the brothers, depositing Mario near the Mushroom Kingdom, ruled by Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), and Luigi in the Darklands, ruled by the villainous King of the Koopas, Bowser (Jack Black). Mario teams up with Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) and the princess to rescue Luigi and defeat Bowser, who seeks to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom and marry Peach.
I will not summarize further, so as not to spoil the plot. But in truth, there is not much to spoil. The plot is remarkably straightforward, with few true twists or turns. This is not necessarily a flaw: in its narrative simplicity, the film reflects its source material, as the Mario video games, aside from the franchise’s forays into the role-playing game genre, have extremely simple plots. But these games have not needed complex plots to be successful. They excel at immersing players in Mario’s world in other ways: through whimsical fantastic visuals, stirring music, and the sheer tactile pleasure of moving around in a world of Super Mushrooms and Koopa Troopas, among other means. And the film excels in similar ways: the Mushroom Kingdom is as vibrant and colorful on the big screen as it has ever been on the small, Brian Tyler’s score weaves memorable video game themes together with original material to constitute a thoroughly enjoyable soundtrack, and though the film, as a film, lacks the interactivity of the Mario games, the beauty and choreographed precision of the animation makes Mario’s movements as engaging to watch as they are to play. Given the simplicity of the plot, some may regard these points as superficial or trivial, but when one evaluates The Super Mario Bros. Movie as an exercise in capturing the sensibility of the platformers and translating it to film, these and other features make the film a rousing success.
The Mario franchise has spawned some of pop culture’s most well-known. Mario himself ranks among the most recognizable characters in the world. And while he and his co-stars are great characters in that sense, they are not great dramatic characters, because they have never had to be. So in bringing Mario and his allies and enemies to film, the screenwriters have had to make various choices.
Mario himself, the film’s protagonist, is one such case. In the games, Mario is characterized mostly by joy and happiness. Though he embarks on perilous quests and routinely encounters dangerous situations, he exudes an enthusiasm exemplified in Charles Martinet’s memorable “Wahoo!” Movie Mario, however, is characterized differently. Mario, we learn early on in the film, has left his job as a construction worker to start a small business with his brother. But his father and certain other family members disapprove of this, leaving him with a chip on his shoulder. And when he arrives in the Mushroom Kingdom, he experiences difficulties learning how to use Power Ups and operate in this magical world. In the human world and the Mushroom World, Mario must persevere, learning from failures and improving over time.
This shift in Mario’s characterization is more radical than may be first apparent. Some of the film’s marketing showcased this aspect of the film: this is a Mario to whom adventuring does not necessarily come easily. When I first saw these trailers, I was taken aback by this, as it seemed a far cry from the Mario with whom I was familiar. But after seeing the film, I have come to regard this change as a clever, even inspired move on the part of the filmmakers.
When one plays Super Mario Bros., the 1985 video game, one plays as Mario. And in playing the game, one will fail many times, as the difficulty gradually increases and as one learns how best to navigate the levels. But when the player fails, Mario dies—which is to say, the instantiation of Mario which one is controlling fails in his quest to rescue the princess. But, of course, the story of the video game, the story that the player participates in and performs, is one in which Mario does not die but is successful in his quest. As such, the canonical sequence of events in Super Mario Bros. is one in which Mario always succeeds. But that is not what the player experiences, who instead must overcome challenges through multiple attempts. So in depicting Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie as someone who has to learn how to be the capable hero that gamers know and love, the filmmakers have managed to translate the experience of becoming more skilled at Super Mario Bros. or another Mario game into a dramatic arc.
Of course, Mario is only one of the film’s two titular characters, the other being Luigi, about whom I have considerably less to say, as does the film itself. Luigi does not do a whole lot in the film, since he spends most of it in captivity. The film does, however, capture his personality, as seen in the video games. Most notably, he is timid and less brave than his older brother, which the film demonstrates in various ways. The game that uses this character trait most dramatically and satisfactorily is Luigi’s Mansion, in which Luigi must overcome his fears in order to rescue Mario from a haunted mansion, casting Luigi’s fear as the basis for a dramatic character arc. But here Luigi is not given the chance to grow as a character. If The Super Mario Bros. Movie spawns sequels and spin-offs, as I suspect it will given its box office earnings, I hope that Luigi will play a greater role in future installments, whether as a supporting character or as a protagonist in his own rite, as in Luigi’s Mansion.
Because Luigi serves as the film’s “damsel in distress,” this frees Peach to play a different role than in the original Super Mario Bros. video game. Here Peach, unlike Mario, knows the Mushroom Kingdom and its neighboring lands well and also knows how best to avail herself of the various Power Ups the world provides. This reversal was, I think, a wise choice on the part of the filmmakers, as it opens up various narrative possibilities, which the film avails itself of. Because Mario and Luigi are brothers, Mario has an immediate emotional buy-in to save Luigi that he would not have had were he tasked with rescuing Peach. (In the original video game, Mario and Luigi must rescue Peach so that she can use her magic to restore the Mushroom Kingdom from the damage Bowser’s forces have incurred upon it, though the game does not necessarily explain how Mario and Luigi came to know about all this.) Moreover, if the film concerned Mario and Luigi working together to rescue Peach, then Mario and Luigi would both have been in the situation that Mario finds himself in, being a fish out of water learning the ins and outs of the Mushroom World, which would have been dramatically redundant. As the film stands, however, Peach, having grown up in the Mushroom Kingdom, can mentor Mario in the ways of adventuring, differentiating the two character’s dramatic roles.
Jack Black appears as Bowser, the film’s primary antagonist. Black brings the baddie to life with fun and flair and even sings a love song about Peach. Indeed, the filmmakers opted to emphasize Bowser’s love of Peach, a character trait prominent in some but not all of Bowser’s video game appearances, which fleshes out Bowser’s personality and keeps him from being a generic would-be conqueror villain. Here Bowser is allowed to be humorous, in keeping with his depictions in most Mario role-playing games, and Black’s vocal performance captures this side of the King of the Koopas well. But the film strikes a balance between Bowser’s humorous and menacing sides, showcasing some of Bowser’s ridiculous tendencies without lessening the threat he poses to the heroes and the Mushroom Kingdom. Rather than reinventing Bowser for film, as they more or less had to do with Mario, the filmmakers have managed to pull various character traits of Bowser’s from the source material and synthesize them into a character who works as a cinematic antagonist. Of the film’s major characters, then, Bowser is probably the one adapted most straightforwardly from game to film. So longtime Mario fans’ opinions on the film’s portrayal of Bowser will likely mirror their thoughts on his portrayal in the video games.
Several other characters from the game appear as supporting characters in the film, including Toad and Kamek (Kevin Michael Richardson). Of note is the film’s use of characters and elements from Mario’s mother franchise, Donkey Kong. Here the Kongs, talking primates, reside in the Jungle Kingdom, whose king is Cranky Kong (Fred Armisen) and whose prince is Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen). This departs from the Donkey Kong Country games, in which the Kongs live on Donkey Kong Island, where Donkey Kong and his family seem to be in charge, given the island’s name, but Cranky Kong is not depicted as a king (King Kong?). But Cranky Kong’s personality remains much the same in the film as in the Donkey Kong Country games, and Seth Rogen brings Donkey Kong to life as Mario’s braggadocious rival. And the general aesthetic of the Jungle Kingdom pulls from the Donkey Kong Country series, with other characters from those games making cameos; and we even hear the infamous “DK Rap” from Donkey Kong 64.
On a more general note, much has been made in the press around this film about its celebrity voice cast. I confess that casting well-known celebrities in animated films appeals to me little, and that the film’s marketing saw fit to emphasize this aspect of the film in the public eye mildly irritated me. But this is not to say that the film was poorly cast. The cast give good performances all around, though not all the film’s stars have the opportunity to shine equally.
Of the film’s casting choices, Chris Pratt as Mario has been the most controversial, both before and after the film’s release. He certainly gives a more restrained performance than the effusive exuberance of Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario in the video games. I love Martinet’s portrayal of Mario in the games, so I empathize with the disappointment of some that he did not voice Mario in the film. And given how strongly associated Martinet’s voice has become with Mario’s identity, any other actor tasked with voicing the character would be faced with either being an imitation of Martinet or choosing a different approach to Mario’s voice entirely. Pratt has done the latter—wisely, I think. Mario’s traditional voice, with its iconic accent and exclamations, likely would have worn out its welcome in the context of a feature-length film with plenty of dialogue. The same goes for Peach’s high-pitched voice in the video games, as opposed to Anya Taylor-Joy’s rendition of the character. Mario games are typically light on dialogue, and those few instances where the characters have been allowed to speak at length, such as in Super Mario Sunshine or Charles Martinet’s interactive portrayals of Mario, seem odd. Mario characters’ voices have been crafted to be maximally expressive and suggestive of personality in brief exclamations, not to recite dialogue per se. So if the film has departed from its source material in this way, I tend to think this was warranted.
There was another available alternative to having the original voice actors reprise their roles in the films, however, and that is for The Super Mario Bros. Movie to have been a largely silent film. This would have been a bold and interesting aesthetic choice and would have been in keeping with the games the film adapts, since those mostly lack dialogue also. But I imagine that Illumination would have been quite nervous about releasing a feature-length silent animated film, especially given their evident desire to use the voice cast to market the film. Still, I wonder whether the idea that it could be was ever considered during its early development.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie depicts an interesting facet of the Mario mythology, one seen in much of the franchise’s early material, particularly in multimedia adaptations, but understandably overlooked in most modern Mario media—namely, that Super Mario Bros. is a portal fantasy. This is to say that, though Mario games are set in a fantasy world, the Mario brothers themselves hail from our world, specifically from New York. Mario and Luigi were consistently depicted as New Yorkers in the franchise’s early years, and this is seen most clearly in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, the 1989 television series starring Captain Lou Albano and Danny Wells as Mario and Luigi, respectively, whose animated segments depict the brothers having fantastical adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom alongside Toad and Peach, but whose live-action segments depict Mario and Luigi living and working as plumbers in Brooklyn. The film’s use of Warp Pipe to transport Mario and Luigi from the world of humans to that of Toads and Koopas hails originally from the manual for Super Mario Bros., providing the justification for the game’s premise. However, since these early works, most Mario stories have been content to showing Mario and Luigi living in the Mushroom Kingdom, relegating their origin as New Yorkers to a seldom-remembered trivia fact. As such, it is a shock to the system of this Mario fan to see the brothers in Brooklyn again, though not an unwelcome one.
And speaking of the human world, we get to see Mario’s parents and extended family early on in the film. And I’m honestly surprised that Nintendo allowed Illumination to flesh out Mario and Luigi’s home life in this way, since Nintendo has historically left that vague. And in a fun bit of metafictional casting, Charles Martinet, who voices Mario in the video games, voices two characters in the film: Mario and Luigi’s father, and Giuseppe, a man whose design is based on Mario’s original design from the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong and for whom Martinet uses the voice he usually uses for Mario.
After establishing Mario and Luigi’s origin, the film mostly takes place in the Mushroom World. And while that world is so surreal that some levels in Mario games come across more as hallucinogenic trips than as exercises in fantasy worldbuilding, The Super Mario Bros. Movie features the appropriate mix of elements from the games to make the Mushroom Kingdom and other locales feel like locations that fantasy peoples might actually live in. And there are plenty of Easter eggs and subtle references to the Mario video games, many of which even those filmgoers who are passingly familiar with Mario will recognize but some of which are more obscure. And most of these references are fun to spot and do not detract from the film’s storytelling, although a couple of them are too on-the-nose for my taste: for example, during a kart racing sequence reminiscent of Mario Kart, which occurs fairly late in the film but the film’s marketing nevertheless saw fit to publicize before the film’s release, a blue-shelled Koopa yells, “Blue shell!” before hurtling into a kart like a missile. Those familiar with Mario Kart will understand, even appreciate, the reference, but having a character randomly yell, “Blue shell!” as if to underscore the bit is excessive. But by and large, the film is careful in introducing and explaining the ins and outs of things like Power Ups, although as the film’s pace accelerates in the third act, concepts continue to be introduced, though with less care. Those who already have a solid grasp on Mario’s world from playing the games will have no trouble following along, but those who are less familiar with them may find the third-act surfeit of new concepts off-putting.
The Power Ups are one of the more obvious ways in which the filmmakers translate conventional Mario gameplay mechanics to film, but they also do so through action scenes. There are multiple points through the movie in which Mario traverses terrain patterned after levels from Super Mario games, and in these scenes, the camera is sometimes positioned as to suggest a side-scroller. This sounds gimmicky on paper, but it works remarkably well on film, creating frenetic action scenes that replicate the acrobatic gameplay of the Super Mario video games. But side-scrolling is not the only gameplay style that the movie replicates. The aforementioned kart racing sequence channels Mario Kart gameplay, and a sequence from later on in the film seems to be based on Super Mario 3D World and is one of the film’s more frenetic and visceral segments.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie works about as well as an animated adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. video game can be expected to work. It is light on plot but has charming characters and an enchanting world, with beautiful designs and animation. If you have ever wanted to see a faithful Mario adaptation on the big screen, this will likely scratch that itch. If you’ve never cared about Mario, this probably won’t transform you into a rabid fan, though you may still appreciate certain aspects of the film. All in all, I am grateful that Nintendo took a chance in making this film, and I expect that most who see the film will find it a good time.
