But instead Jankel and Morton decided to stick their necks out and attempt something different, something daring. With the end result is one of the biggest embarrassments, as well as the very first, in the hallowed hall of movies based on a video game.
As you may know, the producers initially attempted a literal translation of the game for the film and even had a script and director and were in pre-production. It wasn't working for whatever reason, and like you said--Morton and Jankel were brought in to come up with an idea to solve this problem. In my opinion, even though there a lot of problems with the film, the only thing it gets wrong is the underdevelopment of the story and characters. It could be defined as an "embarrassment" because of poor box office performance--but IMO that's because the film wasn't properly marketed and was released a week before
Jurassic Park. It was different, daring, and way ahead of its time. And for those reasons, it's been largely misunderstood.
The live action movie starts off with an explanation of how dinosaurs ruled the earth 65 million years ago, until a meteor arrived and seemingly wiped them all out. But in reality the impact created a parallel dimension in which the surviving dinosaurs evolved in a similar fashion as apes did on our earth. It then immediate cuts to a rainy evening in Brooklyn 20 some odd years ago and a woman dropping off a basket at the front steps of the church. Nuns take it inside and they discover an egg enclosed, which immediately begins to hatch, with a human baby emerging in the end. All that in just the first four minutes (and twenty five seconds) of the movie!
See, this is a huge part of the problem. As cool and clever as the concept and premise of the film is, it's extremely clunk y in its execution to the viewer. Even die-hard fans of the film (myself included) find it hard to defend the animated introduction. Frankly, it's a horrible way to start out the film. Understandably though, it was a desperate last-minute addition in an attempt to make sure the target audience understood what was going on in the film. On that note, just be glad that the producers didn't add subtitles to the Goombas. Because they were gonna.
Everything is rather weird, confusing, and sloppy. Yet it's all so oddly compelling and never boring. The re-envisioned Mushroom Kingdom feels just like Mad Max (much like Cory Archangel's stab at fleshing out the Mario-verse), with a bit of Blade Runner and Big Trouble in Little China thrown in. Aside from the rather boring and out of place car chases and disco dance scenes, there's numerous references to the games, along with many creative liberties, some of which are rather cute, even amazing, at least looking back, and some just plain make zero sense.
I agree with most of this--especially the comment that even though the film has its shortcomings, it's still oddly compelling and never boring. To me, that shows the strength of the overall premise. What really sucks though is that there are quite a bit of deleted scenes and moments that could be added back into the film to give it more depth and structure. I don't find the car chases or dance scene out of place at all--it fits in with the world. What game references don't make sense? Some of them don't, sure--but some of them actually do have some explanations that aren't readily explained up front in the film itself.
But some might be wondering, what's with Princess Daisy? Why not Princess Toadstool/Peach? It is funny how the filmmakers, or scriptwriters, or Nintendo, or whomever decided to go with Daisy (which educated Mario fans know as "the other princess" from Super Mario Land, who's from Sarasaland, not the Mushroom Kingdom) and have her be the love interest for Luigi, especially since only recently has Nintendo made them an item of sorts. There's also a scene in which Mario has to slide down an icy tube, which is also somewhat reminiscent of Mario 64, but again, that could just be another coincidence. But anyway, why also is Mario's girlfriend Daniella, and not, say, Pauline, which was his original girl from Donkey Kong?
Ah, the classic "they screwed up the game references" arguments. Like Redstar said above, at the time the film was written, there was Princess Toadstool and Princess Daisy. In order to pick a name that was more realistic and worked in both the "real" and "dinosaur" worlds, Daisy is the only logical choice. And be glad for that--the Princess was gonna be called "Hildy."
And interestingly--the seeds for Luigi and Daisy to be in a relationship have been in place in the games much longer than you think. NES Open Tournament Golf (1991) featured Princess Toadstool and Daisy as Mario and Luigi's caddies, respectively.
Of course, Super Mario 64 was released 3 years after the film in 1996, so it's a coincidence. There was an "ice dungeon" in previous scripts (like the Jennewein/Parker draft) and it was refitted into a frozen pipe tunnel for the released film.
And yet there's enough sly in-jokes and references to prove that the filmmakers were familiar with the source material, such as how when Mario and Luigi first try to operate a hijacked car, the screen is exactly what Mac users are used to when booting up a machine that cannot find its system folder, but in this case its a block with a question mark in it.
Both the directors and writers familiarized themselves with the source material. In fact, the directors acquired master lists of all the character names/artwork from Nintendo and would put them all on big boards/easels for the cast/crew to reference during development. They tried to fit as many game elements as they could into the world they created.
Yet again, there's Yoshi. One primary reason why Super Mario Bros was such a failure is that it was supposed to be a kid's movie, but it really wasn't. Take Yoshi for example: in the video games he's a totally lovable and very cartoony looking dino that you just want to hug. But in the movie he's very realistic looking, and at times scary. The first time you see Daisy together with Yoshi on-screen, you will swear that he was going to bite her hand off at any moment.
For whatever reason, Yoshi is
such a divisive character for both fans and non-fans of the film. Some people think he's cute, while others think he's terrifying. Personally, I think it's a combination of both. And isn't that what the character is like in the games? The dude eats everything. If I was a Goomba, I'd be pretty damn scared to have a cute little dinosaur walk up next to me, eat me, and then poop me out as an egg. Also, keep in mind that the Yoshi the filmmakers had to work with was only the way he was depicted in Super Mario World--a tad more realistic/dinosaur-like than his more recent humanoid incarnation (which takes a lot away from the character, IMO).
It's a bad movie that also happens to be pretty interesting, with bits of genius shining through.
Yep, yep, yep. That's it. It could've been a much better film if they had more time to fine-tune the story and if more of the completed film was cut together in order to give the story more depth.
I'm glad to see you took up my offer to post the article. It's certainly a good read, so I'm sure everyone here on the board will appreciate you sharing it.