After the emergence from the darkness of several notable projects, which finally seemed to give their letters of nobility to video game adaptations (Arcane and Cyberpunk Edge runners), one might have thought that the crossing of the desert was over and that the financial abominations that are films like Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, Street Fighter and so on would no longer have their place on the big screen.
I thought it was the end of these decades, of this legacy of shame, that we would finally be able to say “Never again”. I thought creativity was finally in order (the goal of art). Arcane had an effective staging and a story that was not too scattered and knew how to capture the essential in a mythology that was nevertheless abundant, without forgetting to deploy all the creative genius of a firm that had proven itself visually and musically in the past.
Edgerunners, for its part, was completely re-appropriated by the vision of a group of equally competent artists (we remember Trigger’s legendary ultimatum “If there is no loli, there is no anime”), and we obtained a sublime rereading and reinterpretation of the initial game.
I believed that adaptations of my favorite media would finally be taken seriously and maturely… that was until the release of the first trailer “The Super Mario Bros Movie”, literally “The Super Mario Bros Movie”, a title that leaves already foreshadow the depth and creative ambition of the project.
Why hand over the license which is perhaps the most iconic and cult of its medium (Mario is practically the Mickey of video games) to a company like Illumination, which clearly had no reason to give a damn about it ( artistically speaking I mean).
Trigger was asked by Cyberpunk because they appreciated the touch of the studio, the small dishes were put in the big ones by going to find Akira Yamaoka to do the soundtrack, and we feel that Fortiche had the gniac and put everything they had in the realization of Arcane!
It’s suicide to give the decades of FUCKING Super Mario legacy to the guys who created the Minions! Entrusting your baby to creative people of this ilk is like leaving your child in a daycare run by Norman who makes videos!
So I went to the theater THE FIRST DAY of the release, dragged by a bad influence that I cursed… A very full room in fact, showing the historic and exceptional nature of the project. Then the drama unfolded before my eyes for an hour and thirty-two minutes.
I can already see people on the Internet wincing when someone says that the lousy Mario Bros from 1993 is better than this new animated version. But at least the live-action version had the decency of being BAD.
Because this 2023 vintage has one of the most frustrating flaws that exists: IT IS EMPTY, aesthetically and completely empty! As Baudelaire said: In the infamous menagerie of our vices, there is one uglier, more wicked, more filthy! It’s Boredom! I ask this (rhetorically) of people who think they enjoyed the film: what reached you, touched you, marked you?
What will you have left of this session, what new did it bring you, how did it enrich you? Because nothing, nothing happens, nothing exists, nothing has any impact in this Super Mario adventure! An Italian immigrant to Brooklyn, a plumber will be transported by magic to the “Mushroom Kingdom”, a fantastic world where he will have to face a turtle.
There you go, If we removed the Mario license, would you have the impression of being confronted with anything other than a book for children aged 1 to 4 years bought at 50% off at a motorway rest area with such a substance? Super Mario Bros the Movie is miserable quality fast-food entertainment, closer to attraction than cinema.
The characters advance by pretext at a terrible pace, where only 3 situations can exist: action with slightly frenetic sequences (fights, anguish, chases), discovery with wide shots on flat environments and a few small details hidden in the background and laughter with unfunny jokes.
Life has no place, the characters do not exist and are simple functions devoid of reactions and free will, subtlety and emptiness have no place at any time, and I I want as proof the fact that there is ALWAYS MUSIC! The soundtrack never stops, the flow must never be broken, the viewer must never be able to savor the slightest thing because their attention could relax if the visual stimuli does not change in the 20 seconds that follow.
The first moment where silence is heard in the film is after SEVERAL DOZENS OF MINUTES, when the music is cut to give a vague atmosphere of unease to make a gag when Mario eats his first power-up mushroom, and again the silence should not last more than ten seconds!
It’s simply exhausting, nothing can emerge from a film with such a pace, it’s a simple big 8 of Disneyland and a gigantic cinematic denial, a medium that allows you to tell a story, develop characters, communicate atmospheres and emotions.
A shame and as a bonus, the film even manages to fail in these rollercoaster rides it undertakes. We’ll start with level 1: the film is not funny. No one laughed in the room except on one or two occasions, regardless of whether the audience was children, teenagers or adults.
The humor falls completely flat, as in all productions of the genre. Level 2: the action scenes (which easily take up 2 thirds of the film) are bad. The crash test was from the start, parkour scene in Brooklyn, camera on the side to mimic the visual aspect of platform games, we would quickly see if visually it was dynamic and convincing.
And no, it’s miserable, it moves poorly and sluggishly, the animations don’t catch the eye because the character models are too clumsy, Puss in Boots 2, released recently, slapped everyone in the face precisely because of its generosity and excess in its dynamic scenes.
The cutting and staging became crazy, we were treated to whirling sequence shots at WIT Studio for Shingeki no Kyojin, I admit from the first scene you were obliged to take your visual smack regardless of your background. There MARIO BROS CA RAAAAAAAME, MAMA I saw people saying on Twitter that they were visually slapped but HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A MOVIE?
The characters are heavy, the cutting is far too jerky and so poor, why the only sequence shots (of 20 seconds) that I have seen are in a kart on the rainbow road, plus they work well those – there to feel the disarray of anti-gravity, when Mario spins in a loop to land on a turtle, avoid a few opponents then throw it and stop the antagonist who emerges from the background.
It seems basic when I describe it, it’s the basis for making a dynamic scene visually interesting but damn the action scenes stink in this film really will in 1 week you be able to bring out a single visual that has you impressed in this heavy and classic mush? Level 3: the feeling of discovery.
Also miserable as you will have understood, the settings are SANITIZED as desired, there are only 3 environments left in the Mario universe: kingdom of grass, kingdom of shadow, kingdom of Donkey Kong, finito as Macron would say.
It looks like Paper Mario post-Sticker Star, when all the original designs have been replaced by Toads, we’re bored! Although the environments are framed in wide shots, they are so lacking in interest that it gives ridiculous scenes, where Peach is on a rock with Mario and tells him “I want to protect this, it’s magnificent” and we sees 4 disgusting stone pillars in a completely empty sea of clouds.
I had to sit up in my seat to see if I was missing a detail, no, is that really just that? And then the design of the Mushroom Kingdom which consists of a copy and paste of product placement for the Nintendo Universal park.
Honestly, it’s sad enough to cry when we see the richness of The Millennium Gate. Although the environments are framed in wide shots, they are so lacking in interest that it gives ridiculous scenes, where Peach is on a rock with Mario and tells him “I want to protect this, it’s magnificent” and we sees 4 disgusting stone pillars in a completely empty sea of clouds.
I had to sit up in my seat to see if I was missing a detail, no, is that really just that? And then the design of the Mushroom Kingdom which consists of a copy and paste of product placement for the Nintendo Universal park.
Honestly, it’s sad enough to cry when we see the richness of The Millennium Gate. Although the environments are framed in wide shots, they are so lacking in interest that it gives ridiculous scenes, where Peach is on a rock with Mario and tells him “I want to protect this, it’s magnificent” and we sees 4 disgusting stone pillars in a completely empty sea of clouds.
I had to sit up in my seat to see if I was missing a detail, no, is that really just that? And then the design of the Mushroom Kingdom which consists of a copy and paste of product placement for the Nintendo Universal park.
Honestly, it’s sad enough to cry when we see the richness of The Millennium Gate. it’s magnificent” and we see 4 disgusting stone pillars in a completely empty sea of clouds.
I had to sit up in my seat to see if I was missing a detail, no, that’s really just it ? And then the design of the Mushroom Kingdom which consists of a copy and paste of product placement for the Nintendo Universal park.
Honestly, it’s sad enough to cry when we see the richness of The Millennium Gate. it’s magnificent” and we see 4 disgusting stone pillars in a completely empty sea of clouds.
I had to sit up in my seat to see if I was missing a detail, no, that’s really just it ? And then the design of the Mushroom Kingdom which consists of a copy and paste of product placement for the Nintendo Universal park. Honestly, it’s sad enough to cry when we see the richness of The Millennium Gate.
Because yes I am directly ahead of the people who will say “Yes but we are adapting a platform game where an Italian jumps on turtles niania the developers they took drugs or something” (this joke is actually present in the film AND JUST FOR THAT DESERVES THE MINIMUM GRADE.
In 2023 it’s really illegal). Narrative Mario games proved decades ago that it was possible to write a consistent story with the seemingly simplistic Mario universe.
Either by using him as a simple protagonist and by transposing him into stories that are thematically distant but offer the same light and crazy vision (Paper Mario The Millennium Gate, where we are treated to a police investigation in the Cresus Express, a gangster film with Port Lacanaïe, a story of anguish with The Pig Bell.
An authentic adventure with the Tropatroce island), or by taking its universe very first degree and using absurd humor to divert it in an enjoyable way (the Mario & Luigi saga where the two brothers stutter in Italian which means that no one understands them [Visible here], and where light and fun stories exist like Dream Team Bros where we access Luigi’s subconscious and visualize his inferiority complex vis-à-vis Mario).
Damn and I’m not even talking about Super Paper Mario, when Bowser said “Game Over” I thought they were going to dare to adapt the Game Over World arc to us, but no of course it’s the Nintendo of 2007 that, the Nintendo which was still trying things.
So NO there was a way to create a story which was more than “Mario who hits people”. I also understand the review available on this site from a father who says that he went to see the film with his children under 10 and that he was disappointed by the violence of the film, that the characters spent their time to fight.
And it’s true that it takes up almost 2 thirds of the film while Mario, for me, is more of an ode to exploration and travel (says Odyssey, which based its entire game design on that) than in combat.
Finally I come back to the last point that fans more blind than Oedipus will highlight as a quality, the avalanche of visual and musical references to the series, as well as to Nintendo at the start of the film.
So of course there is the eternal debate of the difference between reference and quotation, of the fact that a quotation if it is useless to the thematic and aesthetic progression of a work seems completely superfluous, a debate emanating in part from Ready Player One by Spielberg.
And honestly is that just what you wanted people to see? Your little music and your little visuals of your favorite little games simply displayed on the big screen? Is that what you aspire to, nothing more? Because I too am a big no life gamer, far too much of a Nintendo fan for my own good, yes I was shocked when I saw Glass Joe in a dinner setting, yes I had a slight chill when I saw Kid Icarus because it reminded me of my divine memories on Uprising a few years ago.
But if really all you wanted was that well all you had to do was start a playlist on YouTube, the spirit museum in Smash Ultimate, or simply restart the games. Because yes, the film is full of references, but what’s the point if it doesn’t make anything emotionally interesting?
Mario in Tanuki costume, the blue shell, Luigi’s ringtone is the Gamecube startup, Jumpman is Charles Martinet, why, why, BUT WHY? Damn but in Scott Pilgrim if we use Zelda’s music it is precisely to apply melancholy to scenes on the emotional razor’s edge, not to go boom boom because that’s really the only way in which references are used in this film!
A few notes of a cult melody to fill an exhibition scene linked to the game in question, a gadget in the setting which behaves faithfully to its behavior in the game. But I, facing the canvas, am empty. I say to myself “Okay it’s like in the game”. It’s good. But when do I get the chills?
Because that’s why I’m bitter, that’s why “I don’t like anything” as my friends tell me. Mario’s legacy was too great, the first film officially produced by Shigeru Miyamoto and labeled “Nintendo” was far too historic an event to lead to such a flat, disappointing, vain and above all UNCREATIVE result! Nintendo and I are a story of love-hate, because I know that they are capable of the best, capable of innovation, bias, inventiveness and pushing boundaries without limit and they give it to me. have proven in the past.
Punch-Out remake, Kid Icarus Uprising, Super Smash Bros, the Zelda saga, even Pokémon, you have stars in your eyes when hearing about these licenses precisely because they have brought you new things into your life, they make you have stepped out of your comfort zone and your habits, they gave you a taste of the extraordinary, took you into sumptuously designed and inventive fantastic worlds.
Even Mario is capable of it, with the unbridled creativity of The Millennium Door which in my eyes contains the best combat system of any video game, with Mario Galaxy which took the platform game further than it had ever been, and even with the already timid Odyssey which nevertheless had the decency to offer strong moments like the finale with Pauline’s song “Escape” which I rediscovered this morning.
Even Odyssey went so far as to imagine new things, vocal songs, a first in the series to try to delight you. Here, what does the Mario film offer you other than a rehashing of your memories, an adventure without splendor or rhythm,
The Mario movie is entertainment without any splendor, it’s really the kind of movie that doesn’t respect its audience and takes it for granted.
Because now it’s done, the dice have been cast, the story has been written, THE Mario film, that’s it. A film without inventiveness, without substance, without success, of a classicism and a startling convention.
A film which absolutely does not promote a license which nevertheless has artistic assets to promote, and which will absolutely not help to highlight the fact that video games are a medium which has things to offer emotionally for everyone, and continues to give it a neglected and unserious image.
Afterwards, we agree that Mario was the worst Nintendo license to adapt on the big screen, and yet it was a necessary step given its influence. We should have seized the opportunity to transcend it by passing it on to competent artists, as Intelligent Systems, Alphadream or Next Level Games have done in the past.
It’s not impossible to appropriate, reinterpret and adapt Mario. At least, not like that… Thanks to Illumination for this mess.
To conclude, a mini aside on the post-credit scene which therefore announces Yoshi as if it were a remarkable announcement whereas as everything lasts 15 seconds in this film we don’t have the impression that it has more impact than anything else. or else.
If this indeed announces a Yoshi film, a few snippets of ideas of what I would do: a 2D animated film, with an ambitious visual style taking up the pastel side of Yoshi’s Island on SNES. A film for very young children, a la Ernest et Célestine or Roi & l’oiseau where of course the Yoshis are mute (well only make their traditional noises) and have quite animalistic behavior, living adventures that animals could experience in a similar movie.
And last bonus, a little random comparison. The Mario movie is as if in Arcane, Riot had decided to put all the regions of the game by spending 10 minutes in each, and the scenario was Jinx who must prevent Darius from getting a magical artifact and that for 10 episodes she almost only fights with a little Poro running at one point is that what you wanted?
Leave a Reply