10/28/91 (Sci-Fi/Fantasy--Bennett/Runté) Pitch Discussion

[Redstar]

Here's the OFFICIAL forum for discussion of the 10/28/91 Parker Bennett & Terry Runté Pitch.

Overview: This pitch by budding writers Parker Bennett and Terry Runté (Mystery Date, The Princess and the Cobbler) represents the early transition from Jennewein/Parker's fantasy-oriented take on Super Mario Bros. to the more grounded sci-fi take of new directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel.

Parker and Terry felt that the story was never funny, scary or outlandish enough, so to make it more compelling they sought to focus more on Mario and Luigi's relationship, to develop Daisy into a more proactive character and to expand Koopa's plot so that it would also endanger our world.

However, the pitch still contains various fantastical elements, including Mario and Luigi being icons of a "prophecy," a magical talking book that aids them on their quest and a mushroom-infested world complete with a castle. The sci-fi concept of a parallel world inhabited by humanoid dinosaurs is essentially only retrofitted onto the fantasy story already written.

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Click HERE to download the pitch or HERE to read our other early scripts!

[Serum]

Well, I looked through it. The idea itself isn't very solid, it's trying too hard to mix high fantasy and low science fiction. It was lacking the overall cyberpunk feel that the next three drafts would hold and it held on to too many kiddie oriented things while trying to be more edgy and scary but undermining the bleeding edge it was going out upon. Overall, I still think the initial Bennett/Runte draft is the definitive script, and had they just worked on that one they probably would have been given a larger budget to work with and would have been able to have much more going on. This pitch is too childish in tone in that it's trying to be adult oriented, almost like Beavis and Butt-Head: they say it's for a more mature audience, but children watch it anyway because it's funnier to them than it is to adults.

If they were going to make a fantasy movie, they should have made a fantasy movie.
If they were going to make a sci-fi movie, they should have made a sci-fi movie, which they eventually did do.

Overall, I'm not particularly keen on mixing high-fantasy with low-science-fiction, and that's what the pitch did: it kept the fantasy element high but set it in a vaguely sci-fi world. It wouldn't have worked at all and the Bennett/Runte draft is far superior to their original pitch, as is the finished film. I will say that I liked the idea of the Mario Bros being part of a prophecy, though, which is something I felt was missing in later drafts and the finished film-- as with all of the pre-production scripts, Toad is a major player and they probably should have kept it that way, but, we got what we got and that's the way it is. Either way, I think the cyberpunk tone of the later drafts and the movie itself are far superior to the fantasy based script, which I thought, while strong on some levels, was outweighed by weaker elements.

All in all, I didn't care for it, and I'm glad they went in the direction they eventually did.

[Redstar]

If they were going to make a fantasy movie, they should have made a fantasy movie.
If they were going to make a sci-fi movie, they should have made a sci-fi movie, which they eventually did do.

I disagree. I feel that if they had gone with the overall direction of this pitch (with significant expansion and rewriting, mind you) I think it would have probably satisfied both purists of the game and those interested in a more original, sci-fi direction. The fantasy/sci-fi concept is faithful enough to the tone and atmosphere of the games while still exploring something new and unusual.

What I especially love about this pitch is how they described the parallel world: "New York? It's similar, but off-kilter, out of whack. Scaly. Moss covers the buildings, mist covers the ground, and mushrooms seem to pop up from the strangest places..."

Another concept that intrigued me was that Mario and Luigi's father had smuggled them into our world as infants. Parker or Terry didn't seem to realize that this concept would imply that they are descended from dinosaurs much like Daisy. It also wonderfully mirrors Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.

[Serum]

What I especially love about this pitch is how they described the parallel world: "New York? It's similar, but off-kilter, out of whack. Scaly. Moss covers the buildings, mist covers the ground, and mushrooms seem to pop up from the strangest places..."

Another concept that intrigued me was that Mario and Luigi's father had smuggled them into our world as infants. Parker or Terry didn't seem to realize that this concept would imply that they are descended from dinosaurs much like Daisy. It also wonderfully mirrors Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.

Yeah, I didn't like any of that. I've been a cynical existentialist for too many years, I guess.