Super Mario Bros. Movie Podcast Episode

[wtipodcast]

Hello, all

We are the hosts of Watch This Instead - a podcast dedicated to seldom seen, seldom critiqued, and poorly rated films. Recently, we released an episode critiquing the 1993 film Super Mario Bros. (You can find a link to it here, or get it via iTunes) Shortly after its release, we were contacted by Steven Applebaum, a representative of smbmovie.com, regarding certain inaccuracies within the show.

Although we created Watch This Instead for entertainment purposes, we are also very dedicated film buffs and would love to hear your rebuttals on topics contained within the episode.

Were we wrong? If so, please let us know. We will be gathering information to release an amendment in one of our upcoming episodes regarding the film in hopes to drive traffic and awareness to this site and to your dedication to the movie.

Cheers to edification and the glory of movies!

Sincerely,

The Watch This Instead Team (Gustave Cadet, J. Ethan Chattman, and Jonathan Aldrich)

[Redstar]

Glad to see you so willing to discuss the film here. It's always appreciated when people are open to re-examining their perspective on any work when shown an opposing viewpoint.

Upon listening to the episode I can point out a few issues that should be clarified:

Super Mario Bros. was actually released about a week before Jurassic Park, which made it unfortunate timing rather than an explicit attempt at ripping off the latter. They were shot concurrently.

While Yoshi's status as a dinosaur, dragon or some combination of the two has never been made clear, the fact remains that he and his species debuted in the Dinosaur Land-set Super Mario World. It's not exactly a stretch of the imagination for the filmmakers to presume Yoshi to likewise be a dinosaur.

Goombas were actually twice as tall as Mario in the original games and equal in height to him when he was powered-up. The size difference in the film is accurate to that.

Big Bertha, both in name and appearance, was based off large, red fish from Super Mario Bros. 3. Her odd relationship with Mario was also a reference to a storyline from the comic series.

Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel have actually had work since; Rocky returned to his successful career as a commercial director while Annabel recently directed the award nominated/winning Skellig.

Somewhat minor issues, though fairly common as well. The film may not be a carbon copy adaptation of the property, but it's still true to the heart of the original games with merits in its own right. It's worth appreciating for what it did and what it was trying to do.

[Phlibbit]

I too appreciate you guys posting the episode for us to evaluate. I do have some comments, though:

Redstar got most of the glaring corrections out of the way in regards to the inaccuracies to your comparisons between the film and the game series. One thing that I wanted to mention is the Princess Toadstool / Princess Daisy connection. The filmmakers decided to name the character Daisy (who first appeared in Super Mario Land and is a different character than Toadstool) simply because it's a more believable name for someone living in our world. As far as her relationship with Luigi, there was precedent for that in the games--in NES Open Tournament Golf, Toadstool and Daisy were Mario and Luigi's caddies, respectively.

Plus, add in the fact that in the original NES Super Mario Bros., player 2 (Luigi) can indeed save the princess. So who's to say that Mario has to be the one who loves/saves the princess?

This leads me into my main complaint about the overall impressions the podcast relayed. Early on you guys talked about the live-action Transformers films, saying that people should turn their brains off and not get so upset that it's not 100% accurate to the cartoons. But then you complain about the SMB film from that exact standpoint. I think one reason the SMB movie has some sort of lasting legacy is because it's so different.

If it ended up being a feature-length episode of the live-action Super Mario Bros. Super Show, I don't think it would have been as fondly remembered. How could that have been better? Although I do like the nostalgic appeal of that series, the live-action segments in particular were much farther removed from the games than the '93 film--give it another look if you haven't.

[wtipodcast]

Hey Redstar and Philbbit,

J. Ethan here.

Redstar,

You bring up some great points. I think the biggest shocker for me was the realization of Big Bertha - I cant tell you how many times I was swallowed by the fish as a child. The Jurassic park info, the goomba's, and the info about the screen writers you were SPOT on and we will make sure to correct ourselves.

It must have been a gargantuan task for the screenwriters to turn the whimsical anthropomorphized creatures of the Nintendo series into tangible characters. However, my biggest critique of the movie's screenplay remains - why even try to make the characters "real," i.e. why try to fit the Nintendo world into ours; it is like fitting a round peg into a square hole. The Nintendo universe has enough detail to easily formulate a completely unique script outside of what the super Mario’s TV show depicted and not have to manifest some strange evolution / de-evolution process...

After reading your reviews (and trolling the board) they did a pretty good job at bridging these two very different worlds together, and included a TON of stuff from the game I did not even realize. I am still processing a lot of it, but I am pretty shocked.

With all that said, I have to still rip on this film. And, Redstar, I cannot agree that they remained true to the heart of the Mario series because the central theme, the very pillar of it, has always been...

Mario saves the princess...

The fact remains that we can easily argue back and forth siting games as reference until we are blue in the face - "Princess" and "Daisy" do become two separate characters in NES open tournament golf and are loosely associated with Mario and Luigi- they were even two drivable karts in WII Mario kart. But why get mired into that? Why not make Mario save the princess, and prevent us from having to wade through obscure Nintendo character references to clear up the ambiguity?... And then they throw in the fact Mario has a girlfriend named Daniella and I’m totally confused again (if you find some obscure video game / comic book reference to this I’ll probably explode).

We did talk about Transformers and how they HAD to modernize and change their characters to create palatable script, but they held true to central theme –

Autobots & Decepticons turn into other things and fight each other...

Mario should have saved the princess.

[Redstar]

It must have been a gargantuan task for the screenwriters to turn the whimsical anthropomorphized creatures of the Nintendo series into tangible characters. However, my biggest critique of the movie's screenplay remains - why even try to make the characters "real," i.e. why try to fit the Nintendo world into ours; it is like fitting a round peg into a square hole. The Nintendo universe has enough detail to easily formulate a completely unique script outside of what the super Mario’s TV show depicted and not have to manifest some strange evolution / de-evolution process...

The road to scripting the premise of the games into a cohesive, character-oriented story was long and difficult. There were three teams of writers, each with their own take on the story and themes. It became very muddled in the process, especially due to the studio mandating certain changes.

I can say that the evolutionary theme was much more implicit in the early drafts. The entire scheme with the devo guns was absent until the film was actually shot; before then Koopa just wanted to merge the dimensions and feast on the mammals. Things change in the process and, unfortunately, some of those things just didn't work as well as scripted.

[wtipodcast]

Redstar,

This is great! This is the kind of information people NEED to know about this movie, and we'll make sure to bring this up in the follow up show. The struggle between screenwriters, studios and themselves is something we have brought up in previous shows - a lot of time big studios force their "view" on a movie and in most situations they ruin it.

I have a quesitons for you, I have read a number of aritcles about this movie stating that it went way over the original alotted filming time as well as the intended budget, do you have any idea if this is associated with what was going on with the script and the on the fly changes you alluded to - where did the conflict lie? (actors vs directors, screenwriters vs directors, etc...)

Simply merging dimensions and eating everyone seems MUCH more Bowser like!

J. Ethan

[Redstar]

I have a quesitons for you, I have read a number of aritcles about this movie stating that it went way over the original alotted filming time as well as the intended budget, do you have any idea if this is associated with what was going on with the script and the on the fly changes you alluded to - where did the conflict lie? (actors vs directors, screenwriters vs directors, etc...)

Here's the lowdown:

The production spent several million dollars developing the original fantasy script, which was wasted once the director Greg Beeman departed from the project. The producers struggled for over a year to find a replacement, but no one wanted the project. Not even Harold Ramis.

Eventually, Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel agreed, but they had their new premise with the dinosaurs. The production then had to start from scratch, the millions spent on the fantasy production deducted from the overall budget.

Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper, Fiona Shaw and many of the other cast/crew signed onto the project under the second script by writers Dick Clement and Ian le Frenais, which was much more politically and ecologically-oriented with strong character presence.

However, the producers feared that the project had skewed too far from the children target audience, so they commissioned a script doctoring from Ed Solomon and Ryan Rowe that dumbed-down the concept without input from the directors and without telling the cast. They showed up onto the set only to be handed a new script.

The central conflict lay with the directors doing everything in their power to return the shoot towards the tone of the original script, battling the producers at every turn. This forced script changes. The actors, not liking the script anyways, took it upon themselves to improvise their lines and scenes in an effort to also return to the original work that they had agreed to.

The original climax of the film saw Mario and Koopa materializing on the Brooklyn Bridge, battling on the suspension cables. At this point Koopa would have de-evolved into a humanoid T. rex and utilized a Yoshi-like tongue. The set was never built.

[wtipodcast]

Awesome. Absolutely awesome - just got done going through the original fantasy script.

This is great. Thank you!