Mario is the Mickey of video games, but unlike the famous mouse, until now there hasn’t been a single movie that has honored such an ingenious character. After an attempt in format live action back in 1993, it was only now that Nintendo made a powerful alliance with illumination so that this time, the Super Mario Bros movie was up to the plumber who has charmed so many generations.
Mario was for the world of video games, what Mickey was for animated movies. For its inventor, Shigeru Miyamoto, it was an almost unfair comparison. He so admired the ingenuity behind Mickey Mouse’s simplicity that he tried to do the same with a new character. And, to his surprise, a few years after launching the first video game with Mario, he was already being compared to the mouse because of his popularity. “Something Mickey took decades to achieve,” the Mario creator said in an interview with IGN.
The recipe for making Mario so beloved by everyone was simple: “Create a character that can be easily relatable and has a certain sense of personality,” Shigeru Miyamoto commented in the same interview.
super mario bros the movie
It hadn’t been that important to the franchise to delve into the details of Mario’s story. For this reason, more than getting excited about the plot of the video game, it was guaranteed fun for the whole family. A goal that both Nintendo and Illumination have in common with their products.
The story of Super Mario Bros: The Movie I had the same goal: to entertain the whole family. Mario and Luigi didn’t have much biography. Until now, in so many years, we only knew that they were two dusters with a quiet life within the Mushroom Kingdom who decided to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser’s clutches.
However, despite such a simple story, players connect with them because of their personality. On the one hand, Mario is always empathetic, brave and willing to fight with an optimism as innocent as that of a child. While for Luigi we could feel a little more compassion for his insecurity and constant fear.
The most valuable of Super Mario Bros: The Movie is that it transmits those personalities within a story as simple as that of the video game. Where, without going too deep into each adventure that Mario and Luigi go through, we can feel the same tenderness as when we played in the adventures of Super Mario 64 or in the Mario Kart races.
super mario bros the movie
Unlike the first film from 1993, in which they tried to make the plot darker and even included dinosaurs to give it more tension, this new version kept the humor simple and easy to understand because its main audience is children.
For any fan of mario bros, it can be extremely exciting to see hundreds of video game references that marked your childhood and, perhaps, your adulthood as well. However, the story is almost as simple as that of the video game, without action scenes or risks that make you live some kind of tension. Even the fights themselves are funny and add to the whole family sense of the movie.
The main difference between the plot of the film and the video game is that the princess does not need to be rescued and, instead, she trains Mario himself to defeat Bowser. Such a repeated formula for modern princess movies. For the rest, there are some clever twists that allow us to learn a little more about the relationship between the brothers.
super mario bros the movie
Also, to keep us amused with such a simple story and with which it is difficult to connect as an adult, there are wonderful universes around the characters, such as the complexity in the personality of the monkeys that are part of the audience in the fight between Mario and Donkey Kong. or Princess Peach’s tender mushroom army.
Super Mario Bros, the movie, can be fun for the little ones due to its simple story and humor, but also wonderful for adults who will see their childhood with the characteristic stamp of the Illumination movies. Although at times, such as in the scene in which Bowser sings love songs, it gives the sensation of a repetition of the best of his previous films as sing.
Susana Guzman De la O Writing and cinema are my greatest loves. I admire Tarkovski, but I cry every time I see Up.