Blog Hop 2018: Different but Still Good

Once upon a time, I was eight years old.  (I know, it's a rather shocking admission, but one I hope we can move past swiftly.)  Every store had an exorbitant amount of packs of collecting cards for any random interest in any major cartoon currently airing, salad dressing was now pizza flavored, sneakers dazzled onlookers with arythmic flashes of red lights, and the local video rental shop had every SNES game that you could read about in Nintendo Power.

The year was 1993, and it was quite the time to be a kid.  And alive, I guess.

It was this year that a pecular curiosity began to culture in my developing mind.  At first, I was terrified by the implications of this sudden yet prominent force taking hold of me.  It felt wrong but it was a budding sensation I couldn't ignore. During playground conversations, I'd always attempt to bring it up but would always fall prey to the inherent caginess of my meek, introverted personality. Eventually, I talked to my parents about this, unable to hide my embarrassment.  My parents assurred me that it was all part of growing up, that it was the most natural thing in the world.  The following week, I felt more at ease around my friends as the group conversation topics generated at a rapid fire rate. At last, we landed on a topic that somewhat pertained to my issue, so I was ready to embrace the new sensation I felt at that point: disagreeing with my friends.

"I watched the Super Mario Bros. movie last week.  It sucked."

There was a vacuum of sound in our group. Stone faces and white knuckles soon followed.

"But it was so cool". someone retorted. I shrugged my shoulders.

"But it wasn't anything like the game." I replied.

And that was my problem.  I should have devoured it with my pre-adolescent eyes.  I should have been wrapped up in the throes of a verbal vomit rant projecting all of the praises upon the movie.  But it wasn't Super Mario Bros.  I adored Super Mario Bros. 3 at that time.  Back then, if you had to adopt something from medium to another, it had to strictly adhere to the source material.  Or so I believed.

Plus, that poster was TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

Admittely, the early Mario games never really had a story, just enough worldbuilding to keep you running East across the screen.  (Although, the instructional booklet for the original game casually mentions that all of the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom had been transformed into bricks.   The Soylent Green twist here could be it's own blog post, so we won't go in depth with it here.)  But the movie version took astronimically huge liberties with the source material, which included interesting elements like:

1. The mushroom kingdom is actually another dimension created by a meteor when it hit Brooklyn 65 million years ago. (yep)

2. All of the dinosaurs were whisked away into this new dimension (yep), where the humans there descended from dinosaurs instead of monkeys (yeppers).  There's even a birthing scene featuring a human baby emerging from an egg.

3.  Lastly, the mushroom kingdom is a dystopian metropolis run by the Dennis Hopper's King Koopa with the help of devolving machines and dinosaur influenced goomba army (which are just the humans in this world devolved)


So why am I dredging up this past relic of inferior cinema?

Because I watched the movie for the first time again two weeks ago, and it is actually an oh-so delightful visual landfill.

Here's why:

1.  It presents the source material in a whole new way.

As I mentioned before, the main reason it never clicked with me as a child was how off the rails the movie went when compared to the game.  For one, the movie seemed to be more targeted for adults than an audience of all ages, something that the games have always aimed for.  As an adult, it 's easier too appreciate the movie as a new vessel for the Mario universe, but there's more to it than that.

Nowadays, adaptations that go off-kilter are more common in Hollywood and successful.  For example, 21 Jump Street, a drama in its TV form, became more of a goofball comedy with shades of self awareness in its movie form.  Additionally, Adi Shanker, a Hollywood producer, has become renowned for making high quality, short film adaptations of popular franchises that take familiar characters into newer, darker directions.  (The highlight of his so called "Bootleg Universe" being a violent, R-rated take on the Power Rangers that has to be seen to be believed.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw5vcUPyL90)

2. It was first time Luigi was presented as a legitimate character

Luigi has always played 2nd fiddle to Mario in the mainstream games up to this point.  There was his brief fling with protagonist-hood in the largely forgettable "Mario Goes Missing", but that was before the spin-off titles became more of focus for Nintendo.  (Most importantly, it was a boring attempt to cash in on the "edutainment" despite it's own proclamation that it was "way cool!")

HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU, LUIGI!!!! FOR THE LOVE OF TANOOKI, JUST TURN AROUND!!!!!!!!!!

                                 
In the movie, he takes the lead in saving the damsel-in-distress and ultimatly kicks off the 2nd act.  He also comes up with several strategems that prove to be effective throughout their journey, one of which is featured a legtimately funny scene with dancing goombas in an elevator .  Finally, in the climax of the movie, he's standing shoulder and shoulder with Mario as they takedown King Koopa.

On the game side of things, Luigi would eventually go on to star in his own series called "Luigi's Mansion" and become a beloved character in his own right.  Nintendo even went as far as to christen 2013 as the "The year of Luigi", where he was prominently featured in several new titles.  Not bad for a character that started life as just Mario clone in a different color pallete.

3.  The overall look

Now, don't get me wrong. Even though I enjoyed it immensely more as an adult,  this is not a great movie.  It barely qualifies as a good movie, but it's one of those things where the individual pieces are enough to cultivate something watchable even though together they produce an unsubstantiated film,

The overall visual presentation is spread out unequally, but that's part of its ridicoulous charm. For example, the color scheme is mostly drab due to it's noir punk revision of the mushroom kingdom, but like most dystopian stories, it features key pops in color. Usually, this design is meant to signify something important. and in this case it does since theses pops in color come in the form of the iconic Mario uniforms in the 3rd act. However, they are quite the sight for all the wrong reasons.  Whereas the environment is muteless in color but still interesting in its aesthetics, the uniforms look like a barely registered afterthought.  It looked like the directors robbed a high school production of OKLAHOMA, stitched on too many front pockets while drinking the blood of heroin addled vagrants, and then found enough change in the backseat of their car to conduct a cheap and quick dye job.  And yet, it's hard to look away.

Fun Fact: Both John Leguizmo and Bob Hoskins took up drinking heavily on a daily basis just to make it through filming.  Seriously.

Other fascinating things about this movie:

Dennis Hopper's Koopa hairdo

-and a tongue Gene Simmons would kill for.

The goomba designs

Still better than Jar Jar Binks

And finally, my favorite redesign from the game, the mushrooms are a grotesque, gurgling network of slimy fungus.  Plus, in a fun Chronenberg like twist, the fungus is actually the king devolved.  (Which means he descended from things that grow in dark, dank areas instead of dinosaurs, I guess?)

You got The Fly in my Mario Bros.

So yeah, this movie's bad, but it's an enjoyable bad.  Sure, the movie was reportedly a nightmare behind scenes, but regardless of your opinions, it's left an indelible mark on pop culture. And as an adult, I have an actual appreciation for what they were attempting to craft despite the final product.


If you want more of my pointless musings on a micro level, follow me on Twitter: @MCainwrites

On 02/21/2018, check out the next author on the blog hop: Deborah Nam-Krane!
http://writtenbydeb.blogspot.com/