Discussion The Super Mario Bros. Movie Writeup

[Christi Junior]

PSA: This Writeup is from early 2024, it didn't take me quite THIS long to actually get around to watching this film.

So I FINALLY got around to watching the Mario Bros. movie, and ultimately found it quite good, with one major issue (if you know me, you can probably already guess the problem).

I was kinda surprised that the movie turned out to be an Origin Story, though I guess I shouldn’t be – ALL wannabe movie franchises start off with origin stories these days. The movie actually dusts off Mario’s old background as a Brooklyn plumber, rather than a Mushroom Kingdom native, which I feel is for the best – I always preferred Wage Slave Mario to NEET Mario anyway, it’s nice to have a working class hero and for all the Mario universe pipes to actually have a meaning behind them. The movie firmly establishes Mario as an underdog hero – he and Luigi can’t get business as plumbers, his family largely considers him a scewup, and he can apparently only afford an NES despite the movie being set in somewhat modern times, essentially turning the Mario story into a classic Isekai tale of the luckless loser being transported into another world and becoming its greatest hero.

Of course, making Mario a newcomer to the Mushroom Kingdom does make the lack of worldbuilding a bit more awkward (what ARE Toads actually – do they even have kids, or do they just grow out of the soil?), since you’d expect a human Mario to have a lot of questions about this bizarre new world he finds himself in. The Mario RPGs, while text-heavy and story-driven, are written in such a way that they can safely take the Mario status quo for granted, but that doesn’t work as well with this particular plot. There is one interesting retcon introduced, namely that Peach isn’t Mushroom Kingdom-born either, she just stumbled into the world as a baby and was adopted by the Toads. This isn’t expanded upon at all though, so I assume it’s just one of several instances of sequel bait.

Overall, most of the story choices work fairly well, from Mario the Isekai hero to Donkey Kong being the major Rival character (I mean, he DID start off being Mario’s first arch-enemy..). Even Luigi instead of Peach being the “damsel” character makes some sense, since at this point of the story, Luigi matters a whole lot more to Mario than Peach does (the relationship between the brothers, with Mario always having Luigi’s back and being his great protector, is pretty touching and gives the movie some heart).

That said, you really can’t defend Girlboss Peach, which of course is the movie’s glaring weak point. I kinda assumed that people were exaggerating just how bad it was, but nope, not really, especially early on, where Peach’s first encounter with Mario involves her neutralizing him with a judo throw, making fun at his height, and generally being condescending as fuck, all while herself being this perfect, selfless leader who’s better than MARIO at fucking PLATFORMING. Granted, this is a Noob Mario who has only just left Brooklyn for the first time, but the movie does make a point of clarifying that Peach beat an extremely difficult platforming course (which Mario can’t complete even after extensive practice) on her very first try, so yeah…

At least Girlboss Peach quickly warms up to Mario and actually becomes quite nice to him, but her almost comically exaggerated hyper-competence still works against the movie as a whole, because you’re left with the feeling that she should have been able to stop Bowser on her own, without Mario’s help. Take the scene where Bowser is forcing Peach to marry him by holding her kingdom hostage, while Mario and Donkey Kong (assumed to have been killed at this point) are about to stage their daring rescue….only it’s not much a rescue at all, since Peach in the meantime managed to flip the script on Bowser, put him on ice and save the hostages/sacrifices herself. Sure, she then gets briefly neutralized by the Plot so that Mario and DK actually get to be relevant, but it’s still an awkward way to handle this key rescue scene, and greatly lessens its impact. Likewise, when Bowser briefly gets the better off Peach during the climax, setting up Mario’s greatest moment, Peach losing happens off-screen and feels forced, given how she’s been portrayed up to this point. It doesn’t help that Mario seems to largely rely on Power-Ups to be effective, while Peach is just naturally awesome.

And yes, I know about (American) Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario RPG, Super Paper Mario and Mario 3D World, all actual Mario games where Peach has been one of the playable heroes. It’s still a bullshit excuse for what this movie does. You know who else has been a playable hero character in multiple Mario games? Motherfucking King Koopa himself, aka Bowser! And yet if Bowser was an heroic character in the FIRST Mario movie, wouldn’t that be weird af? Same goes for Peach not being a damsel in distress, but one of the most pro-active and capable good guys. You could have done that in the sequel (again, US Mario Bros. 2), and I’d probably have been able to defend it, but deviating so drastically from the Mario norm in the very first movie is obviously politically motivated.

It doesn’t ruin the movie though, because Mario is ultimately allowed to save the day and is consistently depicted as heroic in spirit, even before his actual abilities catch up to his good intentions, never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming the odds. And despite cutting quite the pitiful figure throughout much of the movie, Luigi too gets some great moments towards the end. The movie itself is quite enjoyable, fun and fast-paced, with some surprisingly good action scenes. It’s not quite Kung Fu Panda, but both Mario overcoming Donkey Kong and finally getting the upper hand on Bowser are genuinely cool, exciting, energizing moments of joyful Hype.

In fact, the movie as a whole feels like a quality, high-effort production, with plenty of genuine eye candy, and a sometimes surprisingly epic sense of scale (Bowser’s castle is both absolutely massive, and massively intimidating). It’s downright bizarre that this movie was apparently way cheaper to make than ugly, low-quality crap like Disney’s Wish.

Speaking of the people who made this movie, it’s obvious that a lot of them were genuine, passionate Nintendo fans – there’s neat and gratifying references fucking EVERYWHERE, both visually and musically, and not just to the Mario platformers, but to the likes of Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, even Luigi’s Mansion. And it’s not all just the kind of Oldfag NES Nostalgia that Nintendo is so obsessed with – the likes of 3D World, Mario Odyssey and even fucking Bowser’s Fury get plenty of love! Galaxy does get a bit short-changed, except for a cheerfully morbid Luma side character greatly looking forward to Bowser executing him and hundreds of other prisoners (Bowser is surprisingly Evil in this movie…), as well as a brief mention of the world being full of different Galaxies - I think I know what the inevitable sequel will focus on…

Honestly, the Mario movie ended up being a lot better than I initially expected, especially after hearing about the likes of Seth Rogen DK and Girlboss Peach. Even discounting the source material, it’s still a fun and reasonably satisfying animated movie, with not too much objectionable material compared to the kind of crap the Disney Groomers are puking out (I’d give it a -1 on my Based Morality Scale, due to Girlboss Peach and some of Kamek’s interactions with Bowser kinda feeling like a G-rated version of the Waylon Smithers – Mr. Burns relationship). It’s also quite a good time for the Mario series to enjoy some additional exposure, given just how great the likes of Mario Odyssey, Mario Bros. Wonder and Mario Kart 8 are (the modern Mario sports games are better off ignored tho). So yeah, if you’re a Mario fan I’d definitely recommend giving this movie a chance, if you’re one of the 3 people fitting that description who haven’t seen it yet.

 

[JX475]

I will say I agree with your review for the majority part. You mentioned that this costed less than Disney's Wish. I would like to think that the main reason is that Disney and all of these other Companies always skimp out on Labor and Production Costs, including Writing, by then refocusing most costs on Advertising, Executive Pay. It makes total sense when you think about it because all they need to do is outsource budget costs, say they are "woke" and then try to pander to the lowest common denominator and say they like Trans, EASY money at least in their perspective. But it failed.

As for the Peach segment to me I have to slightly disagree, I do think it's very balanced in the way it writes her. Yes Peach is a very talented character, very strong, and can do a lot of things, she was not invincible day 1 and capable of everything, neither was Mario right when he entered in the Mushroom Kingdom. Also by the end of the day she is still weak in the Mushroom World compared to Bowser who has the Koopa Army, Kamek and other Characters that are stronger than the Toads and herself. This is very pivotal to great writing as a whole, It's like Emilia in Re;Zero or Pandora/Shaina in Saint Seiya, yes they are strong woman, they are talented, very capable of doing things, but it does not mean they are invincible. Even when Peach stands up to Bowser was not the whole "Queen Slay" thing but showing that she was willing to stand up for the Weak towards the Strong that wishes to crush the Weak itself despite her not being stronger than Bowser, it shows courage to be strong in the face of Evil despite what might happen to her. This is what you call great writing. Not everything in Movies and Films has to be political and even if it is, there is ways to write in a way that makes sense in the world its in and give respect and agency to Characters involved in such works without humiliation of Characters.

Besides the main issue of bad writing and a lot of Western Films is that it's very political in nature to extreme ends of absurdism that it feels like it is rubber stamped by the Federal Government as Advertising for the Masses. Women are Invincible can do no wrong, Men are dumb and lazy and do everything wrong and women need to lecture Men always and teach them things, Women can do anything that it's Feminist Power Fantasy. In the Mario Movie none of this really happens, because it does not fall for the classic awful writing cliches and poor writing 101 faults a lot of Fanfiction Writers and Amateur's do which is making Characters Perfect and Bad Guy is Generic Strawman of the thing Author hates Ideology wise or it has to explain literally every joke they tell or hamfist the writing that it becomes the Left Wing Meme. Which is why Western Films in the last decade for the most part have been awful because they have been taken over by Fanfiction/Politically Correct Writers who do not understand, nothing is 100% morally correct or 100% perfect which is the main issue that goes against great writing as a whole.

 

[Christi Junior]

Fair points, tho I do believe context matters: in the overwhelming majority of mainline Mario games, Peach is depicted as the damsel in distress who needs Mario to save her. Even if you add together all the games where she's a playable hero (which I've already listed) AND the games where she's kidnapped, but still plays an active part in helping out Mario (primarily the first two Paper Mario games), they're still a relatively tiny minority of Mario platformers and RPGs. When it comes to the 3D Mario platformers for example, you got 1 game where Peach is playable, VS a whopping 6 where she's a damsel in distress. So when the very first "true" Mario movie so dramatically deviates from that norm, I become suspicious - doubly so because Peach's recurring role as a damsel in distress is something that has received a lot of much-publicized criticism over the years, at least since the days when Anita Sarkeesian first began pushing her anti-gamer propaganda and the gaming press started acting as a megaphone for her and other feminist shrews.

That said, while I do feel that Peach has indeed been given the Girlboss treatment, and that the motivation was feminist, she's indeed a fairly benign example when compared to what we generally tend to see in today's movies.

 

[s8n]

Super Mario Bros. (1993) was better

 

[berkberkman]

There was already a Mario animated movie released a while ago, except it was only in Japan. It's called Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyūshutsu Dai Sakusen! After seeing all of the adaptations released, this one's the best so far, even though Mario got cucked by a prince, who was turned into a dog earlier.