Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: yes it's true. Today we're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: the Super Mario Brothers movie. No, no, no, Not the
Speaker 3: one currently in theaters as we record this, with Jack
Speaker 3: Black as the voice of Bowser, the one currently on
Speaker 3: four dollars DVDs, with Dennis Hopper as not only the voice,
Speaker 3: but the body and the soul of Bowser. Though when
Speaker 3: I first thought about this, I was calling him Bowser.
Speaker 3: Is this before the character was called Bowser in the
Speaker 3: Mario verse. In this movie, he's just Koopa. How did
Speaker 3: that change happen?
Speaker 2: I think Lance Hendrickson is King Bowser in this. Oh,
Speaker 2: I believe that's how he's credited. Which I don't know
Speaker 2: why they made this choice, because I feel like he's
Speaker 2: more of a Dentis Hopper is totally playing some version
Speaker 2: of Bowser in this. Maybe they just thought like Koopa
Speaker 2: sounded better.
Speaker 3: I don't know anyway. Yes, we are, of course talking
Speaker 3: about the live action Super Mario Brothers movie from nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three, and I'm pretty sure. This one was a
Speaker 3: parent's night out movie for me. So I was a kid.
Speaker 3: I think I had a babysitter, had a kid cuisine,
Speaker 3: frozen meal for dinner, maybe some oatmeal cookies afterwards, fresh
Speaker 3: rental from the video store. And what was that rental?
Speaker 3: It was a VHS tape of Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think I ever saw this as a kid.
Speaker 2: I didn't see it until I was an adult. But
Speaker 2: I remember seeing the promotional materials for it, perhaps a trailer,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe an article or at least a screen
Speaker 2: shot in Time magazine or something, and I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 2: this is a bold choice for adapting the Mario Brothers
Speaker 2: video game. But I also so was too young to
Speaker 2: question it. I was like, yes, this is the way,
Speaker 2: this is what we're doing. This is the cinematic Mario Brothers.
Speaker 3: When you're a kid, this has come up many times
Speaker 3: on the show before. When you're a kid, you don't
Speaker 3: really have that sense of this is not a way
Speaker 3: that movies are supposed to be. If a movie exists,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, that's what movies are like that that's legitimate.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the way I was My son is
Speaker 2: not this way. Like, he's a Pokemon fan and I've
Speaker 2: watched some Pokemon with him. Some of it is some
Speaker 2: weird stuff, but we watched Pokemon Detective Peak of two
Speaker 2: together and we had a great time watching it. I
Speaker 2: thought it was as I've mentioned on the show before,
Speaker 2: I thought it was substantially good, especially considering it is
Speaker 2: also essentially a video game adaptation. But he refuses to
Speaker 2: acknowledge it. Now. He's like, no, the Pokemons don't look right.
Speaker 2: They look and he has all these critiques about it,
Speaker 2: and I'm just kind of like, you're a little young
Speaker 2: to understand this, but you know you're going to have
Speaker 2: to find that middle ground with other people and realize
Speaker 2: that Pokemon Detective Pikachu is like the bridge that will
Speaker 2: bring other people in, that will allow you to connect
Speaker 2: with other people outside of like the Pokemon fandom.
Speaker 3: Well, I haven't seen that one. But we'll have to
Speaker 3: compare our experiences in a minute, because I think we
Speaker 3: cannot cover the Super Mario Brothers movie without talking a
Speaker 3: little bit more generally about the concept of video game
Speaker 3: to movie adaptations. But I want to hold off on
Speaker 3: that for a second because the first thing I have
Speaker 3: to say is Now that I have gone back and
Speaker 3: reviewed the evidence, I can say without a doubt, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, this is one of the weirdest movies we
Speaker 3: have covered on the show, and one of the weirdest
Speaker 3: movies I have ever seen. I am truly at a
Speaker 3: loss for words to express how bizarre Super Mario Brothers is,
Speaker 3: both qualitatively and quantitatively. There is a dank manic luminosity
Speaker 3: to the proceedings. It is a dream dreamed by a
Speaker 3: slime mold who is also a corporate lawyer. It is
Speaker 3: a warm garbage bag leaking black liquid onto your bed,
Speaker 3: But the garbage bag and the liquid are made of
Speaker 3: lawnmower man's style CGI, and the garbage bag is also poocy.
Speaker 3: I don't know where you fall in this. Obviously, there
Speaker 3: are different ways that movies can be weird, but I
Speaker 3: I struggle to think of a movie we've covered on
Speaker 3: our show about weird movies that is as weird as
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, they're all weird in different ways, and
Speaker 2: it can be hard to to to compare them. The
Speaker 2: way I kept thinking about this film is to think
Speaker 2: of it in terms of evolution and misnomers about evolution,
Speaker 2: as will discuss come up just throughout the film, so
Speaker 2: that that'll be something we'll discuss in a bit. But
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's easy to think about bad films,
Speaker 2: weird films, miscalibrated films as being the result of a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of bad decisions, but it's not not really
Speaker 2: necessarily the case, like in this movie is the result
Speaker 2: of a number of bad decisions, but also a lot
Speaker 2: of solid or even great decisions. But in the same
Speaker 2: way that evolution is a linear progression, but not one
Speaker 2: of just like constant quote unquote improvement Necessarily, it's not
Speaker 2: like an ascension towards heaven. The evolution of a film
Speaker 2: from you know, conception and pre production to final form
Speaker 2: to the version that goes into theaters or on vhs
Speaker 2: and DVDs, it doesn't mean that what you're going to
Speaker 2: get at the end is going to be great. Like
Speaker 2: in this case, you can almost think of it as
Speaker 2: sort of like terminal evolution. Evolution can produce a morphological form,
Speaker 2: a way of life that is very niche, but is
Speaker 2: also ultimately doomed to extinction because of how niche it is.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of what we have here, a movie
Speaker 2: that was created to fill a particular niche, and one
Speaker 2: that may not actually exist, and as it turned out,
Speaker 2: was also doomed.
Speaker 3: The creative elements in this movie do not feel like
Speaker 3: they were selected through the process of a single cohesive
Speaker 3: vision of what the movie should be. Instead, it kind
Speaker 3: of feels like a catemorary domice of creative elements. So
Speaker 3: it's just rolling up chairs and doughnuts and nails and
Speaker 3: people and they're all in this ball together in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not even like sometimes with films, there's this
Speaker 2: feeling of like a push and pull, like this side
Speaker 2: wanted a comedy, this side wanted a horror movie, and
Speaker 2: you have something, you know, mismanaged in between, or you
Speaker 2: have just multiple genres kind of hit in a film.
Speaker 2: We've talked about that a bit, but yeah, this one,
Speaker 2: I guess the best way I can think about it
Speaker 2: is you take the source material here, the Super Mario
Speaker 2: Brothers video games that existed up until this point, and
Speaker 2: to adapt them into a live action film, you're gonna
Speaker 2: have to make some bold choices, and they definitely made
Speaker 2: some bold choices. It just ultimately didn't take on a
Speaker 2: form that most of us can can really connect.
Speaker 3: With Okay, well, this sounds like the bridge to talking
Speaker 3: about the general concept of video game to movie adaptation,
Speaker 3: something that actually happens a lot now, but this was
Speaker 3: once a completely new thing. Of course, people have long
Speaker 3: been adapting text based literature into movies. So plays, short stories, novels,
Speaker 3: those all become movies, you know. Those kinds of adaptations
Speaker 3: have been made for more than a century. And while
Speaker 3: there are always interesting choices and changes that take place
Speaker 3: when adapting a story from one medium to another, I
Speaker 3: think it's safe to say that adapting a novel, or
Speaker 3: especially adapting a play to the screen, is often a
Speaker 3: fairly natural transition. And it can depend on the novel itself,
Speaker 3: but presumably there's a narrative of some sort and that
Speaker 3: can be embodied by actors and set designers and so
Speaker 3: and captured on film. Now, especially for more recent video games,
Speaker 3: the transition is also fairly natural, and I think that's
Speaker 3: because over time a lot of big budget video games
Speaker 3: have become more cinematic in style and structure. Like big
Speaker 3: video games now often have stories and characters in plot
Speaker 3: structure almost exactly like a movie, except you play as
Speaker 3: one of the characters instead of just watching, but Super
Speaker 3: Mario Brothers in the early nineties was a totally different
Speaker 3: type of media. This is a video game where you
Speaker 3: play as a little cluster of pixels, a little man
Speaker 3: in overalls with a mustache and a hat, and you
Speaker 3: run from left to right and you jump on fanged
Speaker 3: mushroom monsters and malicious turtles, and you go down sewer
Speaker 3: pipes into castles. The actual story is very thin, So
Speaker 3: I'm really just riveted actually by the idea of what
Speaker 3: it must have felt like when this was a new
Speaker 3: thing to do. Nobody had ever really adapted a videodo
Speaker 3: game to a movie, a feature length movie before, So, like,
Speaker 3: how do you do it? How do you turn that
Speaker 3: little man running across the screen and jumping on things
Speaker 3: into a ninety minute story? If I try to go
Speaker 3: back in a time machine, imagine it's the early nineties
Speaker 3: and I've been given this as a writing project, I
Speaker 3: really do not know what I would have thought about it,
Speaker 3: Like where to start? What do you do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is interesting. I like how you point
Speaker 2: out just like the the initial novelty of this. And
Speaker 2: I was reading actually Michael Weldon's writings on this, published
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six, So three years after this came out,
Speaker 2: this film came out in the Psychotronic Video Guide, and
Speaker 2: he points out a lot about the film that we'll
Speaker 2: be pointing out. You know, I think we have shared
Speaker 2: the same general opinion, but he includes the line it
Speaker 2: didn't stop more movies based on video games, which to
Speaker 2: us with our modern perspective like it, I mean, we
Speaker 2: can't imagine them having stopped, you know, but yeah, that
Speaker 2: kind of I think for me sums up that at
Speaker 2: the time, like this was this was a novel idea,
Speaker 2: and they were adapting things that didn't scream for adaptation
Speaker 2: because you look at something like Silent Hill. Silent Hill
Speaker 2: has you know, their gameplay innovations there and a lot
Speaker 2: of technical advancements, but you have things like pyramid Head,
Speaker 2: you know, things with a definite design quality to them,
Speaker 2: a definite setting, and even with Silent Hill, you sort
Speaker 2: of have a story there, right, But but you know,
Speaker 2: things you can latch onto and be like, yes, let's
Speaker 2: make a pyramid Head movie. But with Mario, the true
Speaker 2: innovations are all deeply technical, They're all deeply embedded in
Speaker 2: game design. Like that's where Super Mario was so innovative,
Speaker 2: and the reason it was so successful is it was
Speaker 2: doing things that had not been done before.
Speaker 3: Well, you notice a lot of modern video games have
Speaker 3: a difficulty setting called story mode for people who are
Speaker 3: not very interested in gameplay mechanics. They just want to
Speaker 3: experience it as a story like a movie. That type
Speaker 3: of mode would make no sense whatsoever for the original
Speaker 3: Mario games. There isn't a story like. The story is
Speaker 3: the gameplay. It's just the gameplay.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I wish we had. We would have had
Speaker 2: story mode back in the day. I remember I had
Speaker 2: Castlevania for any s I didn't have Mario. Castlevania was
Speaker 2: always too hard for me. I never made it very
Speaker 2: far through that game. I would have loved to have
Speaker 2: had a story mode for that, even though there's you know,
Speaker 2: basically no story or narrative to Castlevania. Either.
Speaker 3: To be fair, I maybe getting terminology mixed up story
Speaker 3: mode I think maybe also just sometimes means like not
Speaker 3: multiplayer early. But you know what I'm talking about, that
Speaker 3: difficulty setting. It's like the easy mode where you are
Speaker 3: just there. You just want to experience the narrative. You
Speaker 3: don't want to have to fight for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want to get frustrated with it. I
Speaker 2: just want to ride this out.
Speaker 3: Okay, there's a second thing that I'd say, at least
Speaker 3: from my perspective, I have to make clear at the
Speaker 3: very beginning in order for you to understand what the
Speaker 3: experience of watching Super Mario Brothers is like, and it's
Speaker 3: that in a pure visual sense, this is, with doubt
Speaker 3: one of the ugliest movies we have covered on a
Speaker 3: Weird House and one of the ugliest movies I have
Speaker 3: ever seen. And I don't even think that is an
Speaker 3: oversight by the filmmakers, Like I don't think that's unintentional.
Speaker 3: From what I've read, they were trying to create something
Speaker 3: that was hideous to look at. It was part of
Speaker 3: an intended esthetic that one of the producers. I was
Speaker 3: reading an article by Karina Longworth from many years ago,
Speaker 3: sort of a retrospective about the making of this film,
Speaker 3: and she said that the producers were calling it an
Speaker 3: aesthetic of new brutalism. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3: That was their term, and they said it was, you know,
Speaker 3: it was set to be inspired by kind of perverse
Speaker 3: urban settings and industrialism.
Speaker 2: Ah. Now that's interesting because as we'll discuss in a bit.
Speaker 2: I don't really love the music in this film. I
Speaker 2: feel like the music is outside of one piece from
Speaker 2: the soundtrack, very forgettable to bad. But imagine if it
Speaker 2: had had a heavy industrial soundtrack, because clearly, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what the aesthetics are asking for it ultimately, not like
Speaker 2: a traditional score, not even like some cool funk, but
Speaker 2: just some straight up like nurse with wound or something
Speaker 2: playing with like a sound of cacophony, get some einsters
Speaker 2: into a new bottin in there or something.
Speaker 3: The Mario theme as done by Ministry.
Speaker 2: Ye, Ministry would have been a great a great pick
Speaker 2: for the way this film looks.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine the Swans take on Mario? Yeah? I
Speaker 3: would listen to that in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that this is this is a
Speaker 2: great point to make. Yeah, this idea that there are
Speaker 2: aspects of the film that are pushing in a more
Speaker 2: you know, creative and inventive direction. But at the other hand,
Speaker 2: this was like what a fifty million dollar picture aimed
Speaker 2: at a mainstream audience and presumably for children. Those are
Speaker 2: certain things, Yeah, there are certain things that had to
Speaker 2: be in check, like like you know, you probably can't
Speaker 2: go to graphic on melting a dude in this movie,
Speaker 2: and it's gonna end up having a traditional score, no
Speaker 2: matter how gnarly the visuals are so. Historically speaking, no
Speaker 2: one liked this movie. No one seems to have liked
Speaker 2: working on it. Neither critics nor audiences found much to
Speaker 2: love about it. It was a box office bomb. However,
Speaker 2: it does seem like maybe the cheese has aged into
Speaker 2: something more desirable, at least for some segments of the population,
Speaker 2: or at least some individuals. I was reading that Quentin
Speaker 2: Tarantino defended the film recently on his I believe he's
Speaker 2: on a podcast and in hosted an enthusiastic showing on
Speaker 2: it now. Tarantino certainly has a love of weird films,
Speaker 2: although he sometimes makes some really you know, head scratching
Speaker 2: picks for favorites. I seem to recall he loved twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen's Lone Ranger, for example.
Speaker 3: That's a I don't know but yeah, but okay, I Well,
Speaker 3: we two also have enthusiasm for out of the way picks,
Speaker 3: kind of strange movies that nobody else would really think
Speaker 3: were even worth revisiting. They can't and you know, what.
Speaker 3: I can't say that I loved or even necessarily liked
Speaker 3: Super Mario Brothers, but I'm really glad we decided to
Speaker 3: cover it for the show because I think this movie
Speaker 3: is maybe not pleasant, but it is fascinating. I think
Speaker 3: you could write a book length work about this film,
Speaker 3: about how it was made and what it means, and
Speaker 3: I would read that book.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's important to know, especially with
Speaker 2: critics like Michael Weldon and even you know, some other
Speaker 2: contemporary reviews. Is like when this was new, when this
Speaker 2: was the latest release, like it didn't have this historic place,
Speaker 2: you know. So I think even the critics who really
Speaker 2: gave it a lashing, you know, they would they probably
Speaker 2: would consider a similar picture in a different light if
Speaker 2: it were from thirty years ago to their writing. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is. It's a weird film. It's it's an ugly film,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in
Speaker 2: it now.
Speaker 3: Since it was, of course ostensibly a film mostly for children,
Speaker 3: it had toy tie ins, and you included a photo
Speaker 3: of those action figures here in the outline. Just wretched,
Speaker 3: wretched toys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they remind me. They're almost as repulsive as the
Speaker 2: Dick Tracy toys that I definitely own several of They
Speaker 2: look like they have similar bodies, you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, so two of the toys are Mario and Luigi.
Speaker 3: I get that. One toy is Dennis Hopper as King Koopa.
Speaker 3: One is one of the movies goombas, which are getting
Speaker 3: nasty looking. But then two of the six pictured here
Speaker 3: are just They're just the guys from Night at the Roxbury.
Speaker 3: They're like Fisher Stevens and the other dude from the
Speaker 3: movie were in suits to go out to the club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the least marketable in terms of children characters film. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the goomba looks really good, Like the goomba toy actually
Speaker 2: does look better than the goomba's in the movie. Agree,
Speaker 2: all right, So Joe, what's the what's the elevator pitch
Speaker 2: on this one?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a hymn A Mario No I do? Okay,
Speaker 3: So it's uh, Mario and Luigi are. They're struggling plumbers
Speaker 3: in Brooklyn. They meet Daisy, a paleontologist who happened to
Speaker 3: have hatched from an egg. Together, the three of them
Speaker 3: are sucked into an alternate dimension where people evolved from
Speaker 3: dinosaurs and everything is gross, and an evil Dennis Hopper
Speaker 3: wants to make our world gross like his. Can the
Speaker 3: humans stop him?
Speaker 2: All right? Let's listen to that trailer audio.
Speaker 4: They're brothers, They're plumbers. They're on the trail of a
Speaker 4: kidnapped princess and a mystical meteorite.
Speaker 3: That gives any one who possesses EXI.
Speaker 4: The power to rule the universe.
Speaker 2: Get me the rocks.
Speaker 4: They must rescue the princess physic escaping and make.
Speaker 3: It safely back later, alligators.
Speaker 4: To our world before time runs out. Get him Super
Speaker 4: Mario Brothers.
Speaker 2: This ain't no game all right. Now. If you're wondering
Speaker 2: where can I watch nineteen ninety three Super Mario Brothers,
Speaker 2: Well it's pretty much only available as physical media, so
Speaker 2: go out and get it now on bare bones Blu ray, DVD,
Speaker 2: LaserDisc or VHS.
Speaker 3: We watched it on a DVD that might as well
Speaker 3: have been a VHS.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is I mean, I'm glad you were
Speaker 2: on it and you ordered up a couple of these
Speaker 2: three dollars DVDs for us. But man, this is one
Speaker 2: of the most bare bones DVD releases of a major
Speaker 2: motion picture I've ever seen the menu for it, Like
Speaker 2: the onscreen menu looks like one of those template default
Speaker 2: menus on a burn your own DVD program from like
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago.
Speaker 3: It might literally have been something like that. And when
Speaker 3: the menu pops up, it plays the Super Mario theme
Speaker 3: like from the game. But I swear they modulated it somehow,
Speaker 3: so it sounds sad. It literally sounds like the depressed
Speaker 3: version of the Mario music. Dun dund dun dundun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a busted holiday card or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the Blu ray received any more love.
Speaker 2: I tend to doubt it. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 2: any release for this film re release has given it
Speaker 2: any amount of love. It's been just sort of cast
Speaker 2: out there, like we don't want Pirates to provide the
Speaker 2: people who are interested with this film. So okay, we'll
Speaker 2: put it out all right. Shall we get into the
Speaker 2: connections on this one? The people of note because there
Speaker 2: are a number of fascinating folks and very talented folks
Speaker 2: involved in the creation of this monstrosity. So first of all,
Speaker 2: the director's chairs. We have a pair of directors. I
Speaker 2: believe they were husband and wife at the time. Annabel
Speaker 2: Jenkle and Rocky Morton both born in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 2: so yeah, these two were a couple. They found it
Speaker 2: Q Cumber Studios in the late nineteen seventies and they
Speaker 2: specialized in music videos, TV commercials, title sequences, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: They worked with a number of notable clients and musical talents,
Speaker 2: but what really put them on the map was Max Headroom.
Speaker 2: Max Headroom debuted in a fifty seven minute TV film,
Speaker 2: Max Headroom Twenty Minutes Into the Future in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: He was played, of course, by the talented Matt Freuher
Speaker 2: in a cyberpunk origin story for this character that I
Speaker 2: think a lot of us associate with later becoming a
Speaker 2: spokesman for Coke.
Speaker 3: But I thought the whole point of Max Headroom is
Speaker 3: that he is an evil, soulless, computer generated representative of
Speaker 3: an oppressive corporate conglomerate that wants to rule the world
Speaker 3: with an iron fist.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I think you might know more
Speaker 2: about Max Headroom than I do. I haven't seen any
Speaker 2: of these Max Headroom properties aside from like the Coke spots,
Speaker 2: so all I know is that he's digital and kind
Speaker 2: of plastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've never actually seen this TV film or anything,
Speaker 3: but like I've seen clips and I've read about it.
Speaker 3: That's what I thought it was. It seems to me
Speaker 3: like if like Dick Jones from RoboCop became the spokesperson
Speaker 3: for coke.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know, So maybe we have some Max
Speaker 2: Headroom fans out there. You can set the record straight
Speaker 2: on this, but Max was a hit. He almost immediately
Speaker 2: got his own Channel four music video presentation show that
Speaker 2: got aired on Cinemax in the US the Coke deal. Obviously.
Speaker 2: Max even had his own TV show on ABC in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, and we continue to have various cameos
Speaker 2: over the years and it remains something of I guess
Speaker 2: like an eighties odd ball cultural icon. All right, But anyway,
Speaker 2: back to Jenkle and Morton here. Following Max Headroom, they
Speaker 2: did a nineteen eighty eight film titled Da starring Dennis Quaid,
Speaker 2: Meg Ryan, Charlotte Rampling, Daniel Stern, and Jane Kazmarak. Wow,
Speaker 2: an impressive cast. I have not seen it. It was
Speaker 2: apparently like a neo noir flick, and it did pretty
Speaker 2: well clear and commercially, I understand it's actually a remake
Speaker 2: of a nineteen forty nine film, and Michael Weldon in
Speaker 2: his review stress that the original is definitely better. But
Speaker 2: then came nineteen ninety three Super Mario Brothers, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot to unpack here about what didn't work,
Speaker 2: and you know what a bomb it was, certainly, and
Speaker 2: it kind of I think caused a pause in both
Speaker 2: their careers. I believe Morton continued doing music videos. We
Speaker 2: don't see much from him afterwards, either in terms of
Speaker 2: film or TV credits, at least around two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: which is also around the time that the couple having
Speaker 2: to divorce. I think Morton's work has mostly been in
Speaker 2: music videos, and Jankell has continued to direct, including the
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine TV movies skellg The owl Man
Speaker 2: starring Tim Roth and John sim and twenty eighteen's Tell
Speaker 2: It to the Bees starring Billy Boyd and Anna Paquin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I can say I'm not familiar with
Speaker 3: it either of the director's other work really, apart from
Speaker 3: what little bit I know about Max Headroom. So that
Speaker 3: you know, all I've got to go on here is
Speaker 3: Super Mario Brothers. I can't get further into their heads.
Speaker 2: All right, the writers on this. So there's, first of all,
Speaker 2: there are a pair here. There's Terry Runt, I believe
Speaker 2: it is I may be mispronouncing that, are you Nte
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen sixty through nineteen ninety four, along with
Speaker 2: Parker Bennett dates unknown. They'd previously written nineteen ninety one's
Speaker 2: Mystery Date. Bennett was a cartoonist and apparently was in advertising.
Speaker 2: But that's all I really dug up about their professional careers.
Speaker 2: The other credited writer is Ed Solomon born nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2: Solomon is best known for his writing work and I
Speaker 2: believe all the Bill and Ted films, from the Bill
Speaker 2: and Ted franchise, the first Men in Black movie, the
Speaker 2: Now You See Me films, and also such titles as
Speaker 2: ninety two's Mom and Dad Saved the World, that two
Speaker 2: thousand Charlie's Angels movie, and twenty twenty one's No Sudden
Speaker 2: Move Now.
Speaker 3: I think one thing to stress, and this will make
Speaker 3: a lot of sense if you see the movie, is
Speaker 3: that the script that we ended up with being shot
Speaker 3: and making the movie was by no means the first
Speaker 3: attempt or the first draft to script this thing. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I've read accounts where I lost track of
Speaker 3: all the different version I think there was something like
Speaker 3: nine different scripts or something, and it went through all
Speaker 3: kinds of development hell or I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: technically development hell. That might be a more specific thing.
Speaker 3: It went through a very complicated creative process. In fact,
Speaker 3: I was reading an article in Yahoo Entertainment about one
Speaker 3: of the screenwriters who did an early draft for the movie.
Speaker 3: And this article is by John San called the Super
Speaker 3: Mario Brothers Movie Turns twenty five, How the Infamous Dud
Speaker 3: was inspired by an Oscar winning film. This article claims
Speaker 3: that the first draft of the script, again completely different
Speaker 3: from what was actually filmed, was written by the Oscar
Speaker 3: winning screenwriter Barry Morrow, who was one of the two
Speaker 3: writers behind rain Man, and he was brought on board
Speaker 3: because of the rain Man script because of quote his
Speaker 3: talent for writing Brothers.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So a few quotes from the article, Morrow says, my son,
Speaker 3: who was very small at the time, was Mario crazy.
Speaker 3: I said I would do it just to get Mario
Speaker 3: games for my son. Probably. Apparently it was going to
Speaker 3: be an origin story telling the story of how the
Speaker 3: Mario Brothers became.
Speaker 2: Super Don't they just step on a mushroom? Like that's
Speaker 2: the original version.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that is. But so, he says he
Speaker 3: can't remember all of the details of his script. I've
Speaker 3: read a few other allegations about it elsewhere that it
Speaker 3: had a kind of mythic structure and involved like a
Speaker 3: great journey or a quest. But he says it hinged
Speaker 3: on quote a ring getting lost in a drain, and
Speaker 3: that's what led Mario and Luigi into the plumbing world.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean makes sense. You got to start somewhere. Uh.
Speaker 3: He also says, quote, I didn't even finish the script.
Speaker 3: I had the last scene I was working on when
Speaker 3: the courier arrived and said I've been told to take
Speaker 3: it whether you're finished or not. Off it went.
Speaker 2: Wow. That story itself is pretty crazy, just in terms
Speaker 2: of like a pre internet age, like there's no like
Speaker 2: we need you to email the script. Now it's like
Speaker 2: the courier is at the door.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he had to hand off the unfinished script.
Speaker 3: Of course it was. It may have fed into subsequent scripts,
Speaker 3: which were subsequently revised in many different ways. I've heard
Speaker 3: that the shooting script that they ended up using, I
Speaker 3: think the claim I read about I think this was
Speaker 3: in the Koreana Longworth article in Grantland that I read
Speaker 3: about this. That script they said by the time they
Speaker 3: used it had no original pages in it, so you
Speaker 3: know they would have like the color coding of the
Speaker 3: different revision pages, and there were no white pages from
Speaker 3: the first draft. Left.
Speaker 2: Wow. Well, if creatively this is a train that eventually
Speaker 2: goes off the tracks, we have to acknowledge that that
Speaker 2: train began long ago in a station of just pure
Speaker 2: game development. The individual that, of course this begins with
Speaker 2: is Shagiru Miyamoto born nineteen fifty two, video game designer, producer,
Speaker 2: and game director in Nintendo. His work also includes the
Speaker 2: creation of the Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, f Zero,
Speaker 2: and Star Fox. He has been described as the father
Speaker 2: of modern video games.
Speaker 3: I don't know a lot about him personally, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. How can you argue with that track
Speaker 3: record that is an incredible creative and technical mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's get into the cast here. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the lead is Mario Mario. Mario is his full name
Speaker 2: and the character's name, and Mario Mario is played by
Speaker 2: Bob Hoskins. Who of nineteen forty two through twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Hoskins was a versatile British actor, probably best known to
Speaker 2: many out there for his role as Eddie Valiant in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, who framed Roger Rabbit, But of course
Speaker 2: he came into that role on the back of a
Speaker 2: lot of highly regarded work, including nineteen seventy nine Pennies
Speaker 2: from Heaven, nineteen eighty two's The Long Good Friday, playing
Speaker 2: a gangster British gangster opposite Helen Mirren and Paul Freeman.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty four is The Honorary Console, which was also
Speaker 2: released under the title Beyond the Limit. On that he
Speaker 2: acted opposite Richard Gear and Michael Caine. And then there's
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven's Mona Lisa playing a criminal again opposite
Speaker 2: Kathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane and Clark Peters. That
Speaker 2: one was directed by Neil Jordans, so a great actor,
Speaker 2: maybe best known for his roles outside of some of
Speaker 2: these films, roles as heavies, you know, as kind of
Speaker 2: tough guys and gangsters. But there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 2: stuff in there too. Amid some obvious paydays I've seen
Speaker 2: some creepy performances from him and also just some basic
Speaker 2: authority figure roles.
Speaker 3: Bob Hoskins was a great actor. Yeah, I love him.
Speaker 3: He has quite famously and emphatically insisted that this was
Speaker 3: the worst thing he ever worked on in his entire career,
Speaker 3: and has had just venomous things to say about it
Speaker 3: in interviews. But I was reading in that Grantland article
Speaker 3: about the other actors who at some point were considering
Speaker 3: or were considered for the role of Mario. Do you
Speaker 3: know who these other potential Marios were.
Speaker 2: I am going to guess Robert de Niro.
Speaker 3: He's not on the list. He may have been in there,
Speaker 3: but not here. Okay, No, first one, Karina Longworth says,
Speaker 3: first one, Dustin Hoffman wanted to be Mario again because
Speaker 3: his kids were Nintendo maniacs, and so he wanted to
Speaker 3: impress his kids, apparently by being Mario on screen. But
Speaker 3: that didn't work out. I think originally the game executive,
Speaker 3: so this may have been the people at Nintendo rather
Speaker 3: than the movie studio, wanted Danny DeVito. I mean it
Speaker 3: seems like a very clear choice there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean de Vito would have been
Speaker 2: interesting in the role. Would have brought a different energy
Speaker 2: because one thing about Hoskins Mario is that he looks
Speaker 2: like he's ready for a brawl a lot in this film, like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, his intensity is a little unnerving at times.
Speaker 3: He looks like he could kill somebody in an argument
Speaker 3: about football.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and his character frequently says that he wishes to
Speaker 2: kill people.
Speaker 3: Yes, So this is a Mario who expresses death, which
Speaker 3: is constantly yeah. But apparently Danny DeVito ended up not
Speaker 3: being involved in this because he wanted to concentrate on
Speaker 3: directing and co starring in Hafa. Okay, I think that
Speaker 3: was starring Jack Nicholson as Jimmy Hoffer. Okay. Next thing
Speaker 3: after this was that apparently Tom Hanks was considered for
Speaker 3: the role. This would have been Tom hank right around
Speaker 3: the time of Forrest Gump.
Speaker 2: I believe, No, I don't know. Hank's would have been
Speaker 2: Luigi at Best yeah, though I honestly don't even know
Speaker 2: how I have a strong opinion about this.
Speaker 3: Tom Hanks apparently wanted five million for the role, but
Speaker 3: instead they ended up going with Bob Hoskins. And it's
Speaker 3: weird because it's like, I can't really fault them for that.
Speaker 3: Seems like a great choice, But then again, I don't know,
Speaker 3: Like Hoskins ended up being so hostile about the very
Speaker 3: idea of this film. I don't know. I mean maybe
Speaker 3: I one wonders if there had been a different actor
Speaker 3: in the role, if the whole movie could have taken
Speaker 3: a different direction. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, hard to say. Now, you can't have Mario
Speaker 2: without Luigi and Luigi Mario is played by John Leguizamo
Speaker 2: born nineteen sixty. I've seen this film singled out as
Speaker 2: the role that allowed him to rise to fame, and
Speaker 2: maybe that's the case. But he'd certainly been putting in
Speaker 2: the work prior to Mario Brothers and has done a
Speaker 2: great deal since Mario Brothers to cement his legacy as
Speaker 2: a comedian and an actor with both comedic and dramatic power.
Speaker 2: His earliest credit is playing Madonna's boyfriend's friend in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four music video for Borderline, followed by small
Speaker 2: roles in such films as Diehard Too and Regarding Henry.
Speaker 2: But it's clearly off to the races after Mario Brothers,
Speaker 2: and the man has worked so much that I can't
Speaker 2: even hit it all like the high points. But just
Speaker 2: to name a few films of note, there's Tu Wong
Speaker 2: Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmart from ninety three, the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six adaptation of Romeo and Juliet Oh nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven Spawn, in which he plays the villainous clown character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a role.
Speaker 2: I know it's probably not like up there for like
Speaker 2: examples of Leguizamo at his best, but like that is
Speaker 2: a role where the times raw energy that he has
Speaker 2: as an actor is really essential. Like he's wearing God
Speaker 2: only knows how much makeup in that to become clown,
Speaker 2: and he's able to like shine through that in a
Speaker 2: way that feels like impishly comedic and also villainous at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 3: February tenth, twenty twenty three article on comicbook dot Com
Speaker 3: features quotes from an interview with John Leguizamo. John Leguizamo
Speaker 3: is asked of all the villains he's played in his career,
Speaker 3: what is his favorite. Leg Guizamo says, I gotta say clown.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 3: He says he liked it because of the level of
Speaker 3: difficulty and because of how much freedom he had like
Speaker 3: to add lib and get crazy, and so he says, quote,
Speaker 3: I pushed it to the max.
Speaker 2: Well, it absolutely worked. We may eventually rewatch Spawn for
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. In many ways, it's not an experience
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to, but his performance, actually several of
Speaker 2: the performances would be the main thing I would want
Speaker 2: to come back for. All Right, and I'll mention some
Speaker 2: of their Leguizamo films in a bit, But another one
Speaker 2: of note is twenty twenty two is the Menu. That's
Speaker 2: probably one of the more recent ones that I've seen
Speaker 2: from him, and I thought he was great in that,
Speaker 2: playing this kind of washed up action actor that I've
Speaker 2: seen him in interviews. Say that he kind of patterned
Speaker 2: this character after Steven Sagal because he worked with and
Speaker 2: he had, like many people, he has a Steven Sagall story,
Speaker 2: many people in the industry, and so he based that
Speaker 2: character in part on Steven Sagal.
Speaker 3: Let me gues. Steven Sagal told him that he could
Speaker 3: read anyone's mind just by shaking their hand, and then
Speaker 3: leg Wasamo shook his hand and Segal passed out on
Speaker 3: the floor something like that.
Speaker 2: All Right, we mentioned we mentioned our villain already, but
Speaker 2: we have King Koopa, and this is played by Dennis Hopper,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty six through twenty ten. This is,
Speaker 2: weirdly enough, our first Dennis Hopper movie in our left
Speaker 2: two plus years of weird house cinema, which is kind
Speaker 2: of a shock because Dennis Hopper is an actor with
Speaker 2: a long career that experiences multiple spikes and dips and
Speaker 2: has a lot of weird films in there from different decades.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's one of those who, you know, he's done
Speaker 3: his prestige films, but also he clearly was not above
Speaker 3: cash in a paycheck doing some kind of weird sci
Speaker 3: fi slop. He did that quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he came up in TV in the occasional
Speaker 2: Western during the nineteen fifties, and then in the sixties,
Speaker 2: you know, things got weird.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: He started appearing in things like the nineteen sixty one
Speaker 2: horror film Night Tide. He played a neo Nazi on
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty three episode of The Twilight Zones He's Alive,
Speaker 2: And certainly there were more TV and westerns mixed in there.
Speaker 2: But he also appeared in the nineteen sixty six Space
Speaker 2: Vampire film Queen of Blood, starring John Saxon. In sixty seven,
Speaker 2: he appeared in the Corman directed Jack Nicholson scripted LSD
Speaker 2: movie The Trip, which which is certainly amusing. I have
Speaker 2: seen The Trip. Other notable sixties films, of course, include
Speaker 2: Cool Hand, Luke, Hang Him High, Oh in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine's Easy Rider, which he also directed and wrote the
Speaker 2: first of nine directorial credits, which also included nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: one's The Last Movie. He was in sixty nine's True Grit.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy nine, of course, he played a memorable
Speaker 2: role as the as a deranged photo journalist in Apocalypse Now.
Speaker 2: And I think his eighties output may be classified by
Speaker 2: some as a slump, but he's still and during that
Speaker 2: time period he gave us a nineteen eighty one Stigmata
Speaker 2: movie titled Reborn. And then, of course he had a
Speaker 2: strong nineteen eighty six with both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Speaker 2: two and Blue Velvet.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, that's a year.
Speaker 2: Did you notice Joe in this movie? The MANI like
Speaker 2: sort of campaign and dictator posters for King Coopa include
Speaker 2: one where King Coopa has a big chainsaw.
Speaker 3: No, I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did notice until like the end sequences when
Speaker 2: they're kind of like throwing overthrowing him and tearing the
Speaker 2: stuff down, But there's clearly a big chainsaw in one
Speaker 2: of the posters.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite sort of understated movie scenes of
Speaker 3: all time is Dennis Hopper shopping for chainsaws at a
Speaker 3: chainsaw store in TCM two.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's one of my favorite sequences
Speaker 2: in that movie as well. All Right, Then, in the
Speaker 2: early nineties, his career experienced another strong villains surge with
Speaker 2: Roles and not only ninety three's Mario but also ninety
Speaker 2: three's True Romance Who in ninety four Speed, which of
Speaker 2: course was pretty huge at the time. He followed it
Speaker 2: up with nineteen ninety five's water World, and I guess
Speaker 2: after that there's another slump period, but he still gave
Speaker 2: us nineteen ninety six as Basquillot as well as Space Truckers.
Speaker 2: Of note, he was a modern art collector and owned
Speaker 2: an extensive collection, and I believe he owned some Basciot paintings.
Speaker 2: But anyway, the rest of his career is pretty packed
Speaker 2: with projects, with some standouts at least for us, like
Speaker 2: George Romero's Land of the Dead from two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: which reunited him with John Leguizama.
Speaker 3: He plays a similar kind of character in Land of
Speaker 3: the Dead to his King Koopa character. Yeah, he's like,
Speaker 3: he's sort of a post apocalyptic rich guy who lives
Speaker 3: up in a you know, skyscraper above all the poor
Speaker 3: people in the zombie land.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember seeing Land of the Dead when it
Speaker 2: came out, and I remember liking it, but not like
Speaker 2: falling in love with it. It's interesting to look at
Speaker 2: where zombie cinema and zombie TV shows and so forth
Speaker 2: have gone since that time period, because I feel like, take,
Speaker 2: for instance, The Walking Dead. Clearly, you know, it owes
Speaker 2: a huge nod to all of Romero zombie films, but
Speaker 2: I feel like, if you had to compare The Walking
Speaker 2: Dead film by film, I feel like it has more
Speaker 2: in common with Land of the Dead and that kind
Speaker 2: of vision of post zombie apocalypse society, you.
Speaker 3: Know, well, Land of the when you think about the
Speaker 3: Romero movies in order, so Night of the Living Dead
Speaker 3: is about the night of the outbreak. Dawn of the
Speaker 3: Dead is taking place as civilization is falling apart. Day
Speaker 3: of the Dead is very interesting because It takes place
Speaker 3: apparently after civilization has fallen apart, and it has a
Speaker 3: very small, isolated cast. It's like a group of scientists
Speaker 3: and military personnel living alone on a base and they're
Speaker 3: not even sure if anybody else is left out in
Speaker 3: the world. Land of the Dead comes along after that.
Speaker 3: It's the fourth film, and it sort of opens back
Speaker 3: up again. It has a social element and it's like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: here's what a city looks like in the zombie world.
Speaker 3: People have reorganized. There is a social structure now, and
Speaker 3: this is this is what emerges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, all right, But back to Mario. We
Speaker 2: have the character Daisy, who I guess is essentially like
Speaker 2: the Princess.
Speaker 3: This is the princess character identifiable as the princess from
Speaker 3: Mario only because she's named Daisy, which I guess she
Speaker 3: is maybe in some of the games, like the maybe
Speaker 3: the Game Boy one or something, I'm not sure, and
Speaker 3: because they say she's a princess, but she never like
Speaker 3: looks like the prince from the games, and she never
Speaker 3: like flies like in Super Mario two. So I don't
Speaker 3: know what else would tire her to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Luigi, I don't know if he double jumps.
Speaker 2: He kind of double jumps, I guess, But I don't
Speaker 2: think Daisy ever flies.
Speaker 3: They all do spend a lot of time digging up turnups.
Speaker 2: No, they don't, all right, So Daisy's played by Samantha
Speaker 2: Mathis born nineteen seventy. Former child actor. She appeared in
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties Pump Up the Volume. She was a voice
Speaker 2: actor on Fern Gully, then Mario happened. Not a lot
Speaker 2: of video game movies after that, but more traditional dramas.
Speaker 2: She pops Up in nineteen ninety six, Is Broken Arrow,
Speaker 2: a nineteen ninety nine episode of The Outer Limits, and
Speaker 2: she was in the cast of American Psycho in two thousand.
Speaker 2: She was also in two thousand and fourths The Punisher,
Speaker 2: and had a role on the TV series The Strain of.
Speaker 3: Note in My Household. At least when Rachel saw the
Speaker 3: cast of this movie, she was like, Oh, it's Amy.
Speaker 3: And that's because Samantha Mathis plays the adult version of
Speaker 3: the youngest sister Amy. I think the younger version is
Speaker 3: Kirsten Dunst. In the nineteen ninety four film adaptation of
Speaker 3: Little Women directed by Julian Armstrong, which is a beloved
Speaker 3: film in our house. It's long been one of her favorites.
Speaker 2: Oh, very nice. Well, I can't say much about Samantha
Speaker 2: Mathis in this film other than it's probably not the
Speaker 2: best representation of what she was capable of. You know,
Speaker 2: her scenes to me anyway, they felt at times they
Speaker 2: feel either green or disconnected, and it may not even
Speaker 2: be anything that's a reflection on her experience level at
Speaker 2: the time. You know. It's just like we said, this
Speaker 2: is not the production that perhaps one should use to
Speaker 2: judge everyone's acting abilities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like she's kind of going through the motions,
Speaker 3: but most of the actors are. I think the only
Speaker 3: one who's not just going through the motions is Dennis Hopper,
Speaker 3: which you know he would kind of give you something
Speaker 3: even when he was just collecting a paycheck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's move on to the goons. First
Speaker 2: of all, we have Fisher Stevens playing Iggy. This is
Speaker 2: one of Kopa's goons. Born nineteen sixty three, a fine
Speaker 2: actor of stage, screen and TV, who is unfortunately best
Speaker 2: remembered by many for the ill conceived role of the
Speaker 2: roboticist Ben on Short Circuit one and two. He was
Speaker 2: also in nineteen ninety five's Hackers. But he's really been
Speaker 2: in some solid stuff over the last ten years, including
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen's The Grand Budapest Hotel, twenty sixteen's Hail Caesar,
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen is The Night Of on HBO and also
Speaker 2: the HBO series Secession. But he's just one of two goons.
Speaker 2: These are the koop of cousins. As we later learned,
Speaker 2: the other one is Spike, played by Richard Edson born
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four. This is a character actor with a
Speaker 2: is a great sort of loopine look, a kind of
Speaker 2: lean and hungry look. Best known to many out there
Speaker 2: is the Garage Attendant in nineteen eighty six is Ferris
Speaker 2: Bueller's Day Off. He was also in such films as
Speaker 2: eighty six as Howard the Duck, eighty nine's Do the
Speaker 2: Right Thing, an episode of the TV series Monster Zoh,
Speaker 2: and then Rob Zombie's twenty nineteen film Three from Hell.
Speaker 2: All right, we have another villain to sort of round
Speaker 2: out our villain cast here, and that's the character Lena,
Speaker 2: who I don't to my knowledge, is not based on
Speaker 2: anything from the actual video games. But Lena is played
Speaker 2: by the terrific Fiona Shaw born nineteen fifty eight a
Speaker 2: tremendous Irish film and theater actor, probably best known to
Speaker 2: most out there as Aunt Dursley on the Harry Potter films,
Speaker 2: but she's far more than that. Some of her older
Speaker 2: credits include nineteen eighty nine's My Left Foot. She was
Speaker 2: one of the stars of that film. She's in the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties Mountains of the Moon, which is a film
Speaker 2: about Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. After Mario. You can
Speaker 2: look to such films of hers as Neil Jordan's The
Speaker 2: Butcher Boy from ninety seven, that ill conceived nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight Avengers movie. She had a fun witch role on
Speaker 2: HBO's True Blood, and she has a tremendous role in
Speaker 2: Star Wars and Or playing and Or's mother. So I
Speaker 2: think a lot of folks a lot of folks are
Speaker 2: probably familiar with her from and Orr as well, but
Speaker 2: she's also up on some of their big shows like
Speaker 2: Flea Bag and Killing Eve in recent years.
Speaker 3: Give us Lena, we love Lena. Do we agree? We
Speaker 3: love Lena?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah? I thought she was great in this. I mean,
Speaker 2: she's she's smoking, she's she's very fashionable, and they have
Speaker 2: her done up as this you know, kind of vamping villain,
Speaker 2: which of course is you know, very different from from
Speaker 2: Aunt Dursley. You know, Fano Shaw had a great deal
Speaker 2: of range, and I feel like she tends to eat
Speaker 2: up her scenes rather nicely. There's there's one scene though,
Speaker 2: where she lunges and puts a knife to a princess's throat,
Speaker 2: and I legit jumped because it felt real on Shaw's
Speaker 2: part in a way that nothing else in the movie
Speaker 2: had felt real up till that point. I was like, Ah,
Speaker 2: she's got a knife.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, she's great. She's she's a lizard queen,
Speaker 3: but with the kind of bride of Frankenstein edge. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's good.
Speaker 2: Okay, we get into the smaller roles here. We're almost
Speaker 2: done with the lineup here. But Mojo Nixon is in
Speaker 2: Sea plays a character named Toad. This is one of
Speaker 2: the very few screen rolls of the rockabilly psychobilly icon.
Speaker 2: Mojo Nixon born nineteen fifty seven, probably best known for
Speaker 2: such songs as Don Henley Must Die, Don't let Him
Speaker 2: Get Back Together with Glenn Fry That's of course, and
Speaker 2: he at one point performed that song with Don Henley,
Speaker 2: but also such songs as you Can't Kill Me, Bring
Speaker 2: Me the Head of David Geffen, and many more. He's
Speaker 2: known for having this kind of like wild gonzo persona.
Speaker 3: If you don't have Mojo Nixon, your store could use
Speaker 3: some fixin.
Speaker 2: All right, So more on Mojo Nixon in a bit.
Speaker 2: Lance Hendrickson is in the cast here, as we alluded
Speaker 2: to earlier, I think playing King Bowser, the deposed King Bowser.
Speaker 2: So he's not really in this movie. This is more
Speaker 2: or less just a cameo, and it's kind of a
Speaker 2: crummy cameo because if you're not looking for him, you
Speaker 2: might not realize that this is Lance Hendrickson.
Speaker 3: And he doesn't even have anything interesting to say. He
Speaker 3: just like pops up and he's like, well here I
Speaker 3: am I love plumbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, love those plumbers and that's so yeah. Somehow,
Speaker 2: we've never watched the Lance centrix In movie on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema, so we're not going to get into him here.
Speaker 2: We'll come back when we watch a proper Lance synrix
Speaker 2: In movie if you have suggestions for what that might
Speaker 2: be right in, But obviously he's best remembered as the
Speaker 2: role of Bishop of the Android in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: is Aliens, and then finally, the music on this one
Speaker 2: is the work of Alan Silvestrie born nineteen fifty session
Speaker 2: guitarist who broke into Hollywood composing in the seventies and
Speaker 2: went on to score a ton of big movies, including
Speaker 2: Romance in the Stone in nineteen eighty four, Back to
Speaker 2: the Future, all the Back of the Future films, eighty
Speaker 2: seven's Predator, ninety five's Judge Dread, Forrest Gump in ninety four,
Speaker 2: and some of those big marvel A Injurs movies as well.
Speaker 2: He's a two time Oscar nominee. Nothing wrong with this
Speaker 2: score at all, but I hate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, solvester. He's done a lot of great stuff.
Speaker 3: Back to the Future scores magical, I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it makes the movie, it creates the feel. But I
Speaker 3: thought the movie that I don't know. I thought the
Speaker 3: music in the Mario movie was kind of trash, except
Speaker 3: for the George Clinton cover of Walk the Dinosaur, which
Speaker 3: I don't know, how could a person not love that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, that that is a great track. Wonderful. P
Speaker 2: Funk cover of Walk the Dinosaur love it.
Speaker 3: I think it's credited to George Clinton and the goom buzz.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's actually p Funk or George
Speaker 3: Clinton and some other I don't know.
Speaker 2: No idea.
Speaker 3: All right, you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's talk about the plot.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to note the music of the opening credits.
Speaker 3: The first thing we get is the original Super Mario
Speaker 3: Brothers theme song from the game you Know, D Do Do,
Speaker 3: But there's something different. There's like a jazzy high hat
Speaker 3: beat keeping time with it, and then a sort of
Speaker 3: minor chord pad fills in, and then the Mario theme
Speaker 3: gradually fades out and a traditional score comes in. I
Speaker 3: think there's a sort of eerie flute melody, and that
Speaker 3: is even that musical transition I think is emphasizing a
Speaker 3: theme that will come through in many other design choices
Speaker 3: about the beginning of the movie. I'll come back to
Speaker 3: that in a minute. But so, first of all, we
Speaker 3: see like a weird pixelated landscape, looks like it could
Speaker 3: be from a Nintendo game, and a voiceover narration begins
Speaker 3: and it says, a long, long time ago, the earth
Speaker 3: was ruled by dinosaurs. They were big, so not a
Speaker 3: lot of people went around Hasslinom And I immediately thought,
Speaker 3: why does this sound like a voice from the Simpsons.
Speaker 3: But I looked up the narrator and I immediately understood
Speaker 3: why it's Dan Castellanida, the voice of Homer Simpson a
Speaker 3: bunch of other Springfield characters.
Speaker 2: I like this choice. I felt like this instantly grabbed
Speaker 2: my attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the narrator goes on and while this is happening,
Speaker 3: the pixelated landscape starts to reveal dinosaurs. They're eating leaves
Speaker 3: and stuff, and the animations are i'm gonna say not strong.
Speaker 3: They kind of look like something from a five dollars
Speaker 3: educational CD rom you bought it com Usa in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kind of feel like they're intentionally crunchy. All right,
Speaker 2: I assume it was intentionally an intentional act.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 3: So the narration says, actually, no people went around Hasslingam
Speaker 3: because there weren't even people yet, just the first tiny mammals. Basically,
Speaker 3: life was good. Then then after this, the dinosaurs they
Speaker 3: start talking to each other and one of them is
Speaker 3: chewing on what looks like blonde hair. By the way,
Speaker 3: the dinosaur says, you know, it just don't get no
Speaker 3: better than this, and the other dinosaur says yeah, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, why do they have New York accents?
Speaker 2: I think you're about to find out that's right.
Speaker 3: So we cut back to the pixelaid landscape. It says
Speaker 3: Brooklyn sixty five million years ago. Then the narrator says,
Speaker 3: then something happened. A giant meteorite struck the earth. Goodbye dinosaurs,
Speaker 3: and we see the impact, and the narrator says, but
Speaker 3: what if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? And now we
Speaker 3: start zooming through a bunch of abstract, grainy CG stuff,
Speaker 3: And all I could think is, you know, everybody knows
Speaker 3: Custer died at Little Bighorn, but what this movie presupposes
Speaker 3: is maybe he didn't. So the narrator says, what if
Speaker 3: the impact of that meteorite created a parallel dimension where
Speaker 3: the dinosaurs continue to thrive and evolve into intelligent, vicious,
Speaker 3: aggressive beings just like us, And hey, what if they
Speaker 3: found a way back? And then we are slammed with
Speaker 3: the title super Mario Brothers. I want to talk about
Speaker 3: the title design because I feel like it's kind of
Speaker 3: getting at the same thing that music transition was a
Speaker 3: minute ago. What is the title suggesting with this like
Speaker 3: gleaming gray metal surface and the industrial rivet font. I
Speaker 3: think the implication is like, oh, you played this as
Speaker 3: a video game, but playtime's over. Mario's not just an
Speaker 3: innocent fantasy anymore. Mario's in the real world now, where
Speaker 3: things are made of metal and held together by rivets,
Speaker 3: and there is smog and acid, rain and crime and
Speaker 3: probably a guy with a mohawk carrying a boom box.
Speaker 3: Let's see what happens.
Speaker 2: I also think that the title card here for Mario Brothers,
Speaker 2: it looks like a like it's from a commercial for
Speaker 2: a hard hitting law firm that is ready to fight
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah optional, Robert Vaughn, Yeah, Robert Vaughan. Yeah, it's time
Speaker 3: to get tough, Mario.
Speaker 2: Tough Mario and Mario fighting for.
Speaker 3: You anyway, So it says a cut to Brooklyn twenty
Speaker 3: years ago. So we're gonna get more prologued. It's like
Speaker 3: a rainy night, woman's running around. She leaves a strange
Speaker 3: metallic capsule on the steps of a convent. The lady
Speaker 3: runs away, she climbs down into a manhole. I guess
Speaker 3: into the sewer. She wanders off into some kind of
Speaker 3: like tunnel, and then she bumps into Dennis Hopper. There
Speaker 3: he is. He's lurking in the shadows wearing a military
Speaker 3: uniform that has so many metals. I guess it's the
Speaker 3: dictator look or you know, he looks like Patent or something.
Speaker 3: And he says, where is the rock? And she screams
Speaker 3: and runs away, and then the tunnel seemingly collapses. Back
Speaker 3: at the convent, the nuns open up the capsule. There
Speaker 3: is apparently an egg inside. The egg hatches and then
Speaker 3: out comes a human baby. Yeah, all right, and then
Speaker 3: there is a weird, jagged crystal left with the egg.
Speaker 3: One of the nuns holds it up significantly. This means something,
Speaker 3: and then we cut to another setting. It is Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: Now I see buildings, I see traffic, I see a
Speaker 3: billboard ad for newports that seems telling about what kind
Speaker 3: of movie this is going to be. Again, presumably this
Speaker 3: is for children, but one of the first things we
Speaker 3: see in the modern world is a cigarette ad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we meet our heroes, Mario played by Bob Hoskins
Speaker 3: and Luigi played by John Leguizamo. Their plumbers, rob would
Speaker 3: you say they are down on their luck plumbers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they seem. They talked about how they're like
Speaker 2: three bills behind on paying their rent. They're having a
Speaker 2: tough time, and they're having a tough time just getting
Speaker 2: anybody to hire them.
Speaker 3: A major source of their financial woes seems to be
Speaker 3: that Luigi is addicted to paranormal, fringe and conspiracy media.
Speaker 3: So he's like spending their last dime to buy copies
Speaker 3: of some weekly world news type publication with articles about
Speaker 3: a scientist that turns people's brains into cheese. Also in
Speaker 3: Luigi's media diet, he's watching a TV show called Miraculous World.
Speaker 3: That is this supposed to be in search of I
Speaker 3: think so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definite, in search of vibes here.
Speaker 3: So he's like watching a segment He's like, Wow, this
Speaker 3: guy just found out he was in another dimension. So
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of conflicts between the characters established.
Speaker 3: The differences are that Mario takes their dire financial situation
Speaker 3: seriously and Luigi does not seem to worry too much.
Speaker 3: Also conflicts between them Mario does not believe in parallel
Speaker 3: dimensions and the scientist who turns people's brains into cheese,
Speaker 3: and Luigi says, but Mario, you gotta believe in something,
Speaker 3: love that Mario is generally just more stressed out and serious,
Speaker 3: and Luigi's kind of happy, go lucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes sense. He's got more spring in his step,
Speaker 2: he can double.
Speaker 3: Jump, Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so they have some arguing
Speaker 3: in banter and traffic while they're driving to a job.
Speaker 3: I think they're literally just shown like driving over garbage cans,
Speaker 3: absolutely reckless, dangerous behavior. Once they get to the job site,
Speaker 3: a rival plumbing company called Scapelli has taken the job. Now,
Speaker 3: what's the deal with Scipelli. Scapelli is not a blue
Speaker 3: collar plumber like Mario and Luigi. He's a rich big
Speaker 3: wig who rides around in a limousine. And when I
Speaker 3: saw him come out, I looked up the actor and
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, that's Carlo Ritzi from the Godfather.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, it was Barzini. I guess this means
Speaker 3: he is implied to be a mobster in addition to
Speaker 3: running a plumbing company.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because it's not long before we get a
Speaker 2: scene where he like blatantly threatens our heroine and says
Speaker 2: like it'd be a shame if you were to disappear
Speaker 2: on the streets like these other young women have been disappearing.
Speaker 3: Super Mario Brothers, the movie Children.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: So from here we move on to a sort of
Speaker 3: news segment that I don't know what's going on with
Speaker 3: the narrative here, Like there's no established character watching the news.
Speaker 3: It's just suddenly a news segment. And there's a construction
Speaker 3: site that has been controversially shut down by university students
Speaker 3: who are digging for dinosaur bones. And there's conflict between Scappelli,
Speaker 3: who wants the site open for business, and Daisy, this
Speaker 3: character who comes out and she is the head paleontologist
Speaker 3: at the dig site. She wants to keep the dig
Speaker 3: going in the name of science, and this is when
Speaker 3: Scapelli threatens her. He's like, lot of girls been going
Speaker 3: missing in Brooklyn lately, which implies that he is responsible
Speaker 3: for that, but we find out he's not. It's dinosaurs
Speaker 3: kidnapping girls from Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but still one of the many one of the
Speaker 2: many points in the film where it's like this is
Speaker 2: for kids. This seems a little little hard edged.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So later we see a duo of twitchy guys
Speaker 3: dressed like they're from the movie Hackers, and they're tailing
Speaker 3: Daisy around. This is Fisher Stevens and Richard Edson playing
Speaker 3: Iggy and Spike, and it's first it's like, maybe these
Speaker 3: guys are not from around here, because Spike comes back
Speaker 3: to the car with a couple of hot dogs and
Speaker 3: he's like, they said it was dog meat. And then
Speaker 3: they throw away the buns and they eat the hot dogs,
Speaker 3: and they identify Daisy from a description which is that
Speaker 3: she has two legs, one head, and two arms.
Speaker 2: But so do they Well, it's recurring joke that there
Speaker 2: lizards and they can't tell mammals apart, so they'll, you know,
Speaker 2: come back to that. I will say one other thing
Speaker 2: about Fisher Stevens character in this If there's someone in
Speaker 2: your life that is thinking about growing sideburns and you
Speaker 2: don't want them to grow sideburns, show them a picture
Speaker 2: of Fisher Stevens from this film, and I think that's
Speaker 2: going to take care of all your problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the Koopagons here try to chase Daisy, but
Speaker 3: they are foiled by running face first into plate glass. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Daisy and Luigi run into each other at a pay
Speaker 3: phone and they have a meet cute and Luigi is
Speaker 3: just instantly in love. He's adorably awkward. He's like, wow,
Speaker 3: I haven't heard the name Daisy around here before, or wait,
Speaker 3: he has heard it because it's also the name of
Speaker 3: a flower. And Mario and Luigi end up giving Daisy
Speaker 3: a ride back to the dig site. Luigi asks her
Speaker 3: out on a date and she agrees. So it's later
Speaker 3: that night and it's a double date at an Italian restaurant.
Speaker 3: They're having a big old mess of Spaghettian meatballs and
Speaker 3: I was like, whoa, whoa, who is Mario's date? Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're all talking and Daisy has expertise on iridium layers
Speaker 3: and geological strata, and Mario's date is talking about how
Speaker 3: not to get tan lines. And it's I think it's
Speaker 3: said that they all wrote out to dinner together in
Speaker 3: the plumbing van.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, cool, this is the I want to say.
Speaker 2: We're like twenty minutes into the film at this point,
Speaker 2: and it was and you're watching and you're like, wow,
Speaker 2: this film has really given children so little to latch onto.
Speaker 3: This is so little, It's true. So we learn a
Speaker 3: bit about Daisy's backstory at dinner. Here, she says she
Speaker 3: was left at a convent as a baby, raised by nuns,
Speaker 3: and that she has this weird crystal necklace that was
Speaker 3: left with her and she still wears it, though she
Speaker 3: does not mention that she hatched from an egg. I
Speaker 3: don't know if anybody ever told her that. Now, Spike
Speaker 3: and Iggy are still following Daisy around, but they get
Speaker 3: confused and think Mario's eight is Daisy, and they throw
Speaker 3: a bag over her head and kidnap her. They take
Speaker 3: her to another dimension. Meanwhile, Luigi and Daisy are they're
Speaker 3: just having more cute date stuff. They're awkwardly flirting and
Speaker 3: they're they're hitting it off, and the dialogue in these
Speaker 3: scenes is atrociously unnatural, but the actors are almost charming
Speaker 3: enough to pull it off. Almost uh. They end up
Speaker 3: going back to the dig site, and then they go
Speaker 3: down into the underground tunnel and Daisy shows Luigi some
Speaker 3: of the dinosaur bones they have unearthed, and she says,
Speaker 3: so they're looking at a dinosaur. It's got big reptilian fangs,
Speaker 3: but she says it has opposable thumbs, and she says,
Speaker 3: it's almost as if he was a monster. Trying to
Speaker 3: be a human being. It's beautiful, and then Luigi's like,
Speaker 3: you're beautiful and then they kiss.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, just you're you're you're kissing, kissing, saying in
Speaker 2: the sewer.
Speaker 3: But they're interrupted because Schipelli's sabotage plumbers that like his
Speaker 3: sapper team is there and they have just sabotaged the
Speaker 3: dig site. So they like blow up some pipes or
Speaker 3: something and everything's flooding. Mario brothers come to the rescue.
Speaker 3: There's an action packed plumbing scene until Daisy is kidnapped
Speaker 3: by the Cooper brothers and Mario and Luigi they're chasing.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, we got to get her back. They
Speaker 3: discover that she has been taken through some sort of portal,
Speaker 3: a wall of solid rock that is also a dimensional rift.
Speaker 3: Luigi jumps through it, Mario reluctantly follows because he's afraid
Speaker 3: of heights. They tumble through a bunch of hideous CGI
Speaker 3: before popping out on the other side unharmed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the CGI is definitely hideous, especially when they're
Speaker 2: sticking their faces through it. There's a real help me
Speaker 2: I am in Hell. I also have to comment on
Speaker 2: the plumbing sequence. Because yeah, that was amazing, because it's
Speaker 2: almost like there was a note at some point from
Speaker 2: the producers and they're like, aren't Mario and Luigi plumbers?
Speaker 2: Shouldn't we have a scene where they're actually plumbing, Like
Speaker 2: this is clearly the appeal of the character to young people.
Speaker 2: We need more plumbing, Like, well, this is right, It
Speaker 2: just doesn't work from a character creation standpoint if we
Speaker 2: don't see them plumbing.
Speaker 3: Well, they have a lot more plumbing later. They have
Speaker 3: plumbing in like the third act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like this is the point that at least some
Speaker 2: of the writers who worked on the script were like,
Speaker 2: gotta get that plumbing in there.
Speaker 3: So they pop out in a kind of crowded subway station,
Speaker 3: but it's a weird crowded subway station. There is this
Speaker 3: fibrous gunk hanging out all over the place. We will
Speaker 3: later learn this is the fungus. And it's hard to
Speaker 3: describe the vibe of this place. It is sort of
Speaker 3: it has elements of country Western, but also heavy metal
Speaker 3: and cyberpunk. It's like they're outdoors, but it seems indoors.
Speaker 3: It's constantly night time. There are neon lights everywhere. I
Speaker 3: was thinking it's a little bit Vegas Strip, a little
Speaker 3: bit Biff World, a little bit Blade Runner, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And of course there's a big sign that says vote
Speaker 3: for Koopa, so at least they get to vote here.
Speaker 2: I think all of these sequences were filmed in a
Speaker 2: like a giant industrial space in North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Wait literally literally yeah, oh wow, Okay.
Speaker 2: So for the rest of the film, we're somewhere at
Speaker 2: North Carolina in a big like former factory or something
Speaker 2: or warehouse.
Speaker 3: So a lot of the attempted humor in this movie
Speaker 3: doesn't work, But there are a few moments here on
Speaker 3: the streets when they first arrive and I forget what
Speaker 3: this place is called Koopa World or whatever, that are
Speaker 3: actually kind of funny. There was one part I laughed at, like,
Speaker 3: so there are lizards everywhere because this is you know,
Speaker 3: Dino Manhattan sort of, and there are lizards fighting in
Speaker 3: the streets, and there are people with sort of various
Speaker 3: reptilian features, and then there's a lady pushing a big
Speaker 3: egg in a stroller, and I did laugh at that.
Speaker 2: That was good. I like how we start seeing some
Speaker 2: dinosaur mutants in there, but not that many. It's kind
Speaker 2: of the reverse of sometimes you know, you have like
Speaker 2: your Star Wars Cantena scene and you have a lot
Speaker 2: of great aliens and then you have a few humans
Speaker 2: in the background just to sort of fill things out.
Speaker 2: We get there, it's mostly humans that are presumed to
Speaker 2: be evolved reptiles, and then also some reptile mutants thrown in,
Speaker 2: but only like one or two.
Speaker 3: Another funny gag here, there's a brief glimpse of a
Speaker 3: marquee outside of Grindhouse Theater and it's showing a movie
Speaker 3: called I Was a Teenage Mammal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Triple X by the way, for kids.
Speaker 3: For the kids, yeah, exactly. And Mario and Luigi just
Speaker 3: keep saying where are we? This is crazy, and they're
Speaker 3: making jokes about how Manhattan got really bad since we
Speaker 3: were last here. So finally we meet the villain and
Speaker 3: again this is Koopa played by Dennis Hopper. My god,
Speaker 3: what would you call his hairstyle?
Speaker 2: I guess it's kind of like Dino rose something to
Speaker 2: really allow them to lean into the reptilian vibe that
Speaker 2: they've cultivated for him. And it's he's one of several
Speaker 2: extreme hairstyles that we see in the movie.
Speaker 3: It's like he has blonde hair, but yeah, it's styled
Speaker 3: up into the kind of rows of like the things
Speaker 3: on an Alligators back. Yeah, and he's hanging out with
Speaker 3: his creepy lady friend Lena. Oh, I mean, maybe we
Speaker 3: should go a little bit deeper on what's going on
Speaker 3: with Lena here. She's like Jillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher,
Speaker 3: but with the charm turned down to zero and the
Speaker 3: body temperature dial set to room. There is a scene
Speaker 3: later where she's being irritable and Koopa says, looks like
Speaker 3: someone woke up on the wrong side of the nest
Speaker 3: this morning.
Speaker 2: That must be an ed Solomon line that way. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But anyway, I like Fiona Shaw on this. Again, this
Speaker 2: is not a character that comes from the Games as
Speaker 2: far as I know. This is a creation just for
Speaker 2: ninety three's Mario. But it's a lot of fun. Anytime
Speaker 2: Lena is on on screen, I'm interested in what she's doing.
Speaker 3: Yes, love Lena. So Dennis Hopper gives a speech where like,
Speaker 3: while he's doing this, he's dipped. Did you understand he's
Speaker 3: like dipping his hands in hot wax and making whack
Speaker 3: gloves for himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. It's something. He's talking about the dangers
Speaker 2: of fun guy. So I thought maybe it was some
Speaker 2: sort of decontamination thing.
Speaker 3: I don't know, So he says, look at this place, pathetic.
Speaker 3: It gets worse every day. The humans on the other
Speaker 3: side have a world full of resources ready for the taking.
Speaker 3: Imagine an endless supply of food, clean air, water, And
Speaker 3: what are we stuck with this pit hole? Germs everywhere,
Speaker 3: fungus sixty five million years, we've been exiled here after
Speaker 3: that meteorite struck, while mammals roam free and the other dimension, well,
Speaker 3: not for long. So he lays out his whole plot
Speaker 3: right here in this first scene. He says, finally, when
Speaker 3: he gets hold of the Princess Daisy and the rock,
Speaker 3: he'll be able to finally merge our world with theirs
Speaker 3: and get rid of the mammals. So Spike and Iggy
Speaker 3: show up to report that they have the princess, but
Speaker 3: they forgot to get the rock, and Koopa needs the
Speaker 3: rock too where he can't merge the dimensions, and they say, oh, well,
Speaker 3: a couple of plumbers took it, and so Coopa puts
Speaker 3: out an APB on all plumbers. Now. Meanwhile, back with Mario,
Speaker 3: and Luigi. There was another I thought actually intentionally funny
Speaker 3: scene that works where they get mugged by a little
Speaker 3: old lady. It's like this little old lady who's like, oh, hello, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: you know this is a dangerous neighborhood. Are you too armed?
Speaker 3: And they're like what no, And then she pulls out
Speaker 3: like a laser gun and she's like, give me all
Speaker 3: your coupa coins.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This felt like something out of the old like
Speaker 2: out of an old Judge Dread comic book. If you're
Speaker 2: not familiar with the Judge Dad comic books, they had
Speaker 2: a pretty wacky vibe. For instance, in the comics, Judge
Speaker 2: Dread had an elderly cleaning lady named Maria who spoke
Speaker 2: with an exaggerated Italian accent. And this was not a
Speaker 2: one off character.
Speaker 3: I like, you included a panel here, maya judge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you come aback to your old Maria. Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 3: But also after this, it's like a fight breaks out
Speaker 3: in this scene, and another lady, not the little old
Speaker 3: lady who tried to rob them, a different lady in
Speaker 3: a red dress with legion of doom spikes wearing pneumatic
Speaker 3: rocket boots ends up stealing the meteorite chard from them.
Speaker 3: She'll come back then. Also, I guess a few minutes later,
Speaker 3: the Koopa police come and arrest Mojo Nixon for standing
Speaker 3: on the sidewalk singing a satirical song about King Koopa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Mojo Nixon's character Toad here has just an
Speaker 2: extreme hairstyle. It is just something else. It's like a spiral.
Speaker 3: It's good. And by the way, Mario, like this movie,
Speaker 3: takes a stand. Mario takes great offense as an avid
Speaker 3: defender of free speech. Mario angrily insists that you cannot
Speaker 3: arrest a guy for singing a song. And then the
Speaker 3: police noticed that Mario is a plumber and they arrest
Speaker 3: him too. They arrest him in Luigi and Luigi protests
Speaker 3: that he's not a plumber, just an apprentice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Mojo Nixon's not even doing any obscene songs here.
Speaker 2: I mean, depending where you stand on obscenity laws, I
Speaker 2: guess a case could be made with some tracks. But
Speaker 2: he's just criticizing the Koopa government here.
Speaker 3: Now they get in a police car and they take
Speaker 3: them to the police station. But we should stop to
Speaker 3: mention the cars in this movie for a second. Every
Speaker 3: car in the Koopa world is mad maxified. They have
Speaker 3: engines on the outside, they have all kinds of spikes
Speaker 3: and doodads poking out all over the place. And then
Speaker 3: they've also got they're all constantly shooting sparks out of
Speaker 3: their roofs.
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of movies with Mad Max cars
Speaker 2: in them, you know, and you know, some are good,
Speaker 2: some are bad. Some you see a lot of work
Speaker 2: and some it seem a little more slapped together. A
Speaker 2: lot of work went into these and they're.
Speaker 3: Really ugly hideous. Yeah. Now there was another thing that
Speaker 3: I thought, I don't know, this was like almost funny.
Speaker 3: I wasn't quite sure what was going on. But there
Speaker 3: is an atmosphere of total chaos at the police station.
Speaker 3: Like while Mario and Luigi are being booked and they're
Speaker 3: doing it, they're doing the bid about how they're both
Speaker 3: named Mario. That's their last name, so it's Mario Mario,
Speaker 3: Luigi Mario. But while this is going on, the booking
Speaker 3: officer is getting his back rubbed with the spike of
Speaker 3: a high heel on a woman's foot, which is attached
Speaker 3: to a leg that is jutting in from off screen.
Speaker 3: At an impossible angle, and meanwhile there is just constantly
Speaker 3: glass shattering everywhere and people jumping around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this really feels this is one of those
Speaker 2: things that especially felt like late eighties, early nineties, you know,
Speaker 2: it feels very MTV. It feels very in line with
Speaker 2: the director's sensibilities.
Speaker 3: But Mario and Luigi get defungused at jail. They go
Speaker 3: through a defungusing process and then they go into lock
Speaker 3: up where Mojo Nixon gives them some exposition. He explains
Speaker 3: history to them. He's like, Okay, you're in a parallel dimension.
Speaker 3: By the way, I don't know how he knows all this,
Speaker 3: but he's like, you're in a parallel dimension that was
Speaker 3: split off by the KPg impact some somehow, you came
Speaker 3: over here from mammal dimension into this one. Oh and
Speaker 3: by the way, he says that the fungus that is
Speaker 3: choking the city, he says, it's that old king. I
Speaker 3: guess the guy who used to be in charge here.
Speaker 3: Mojo Nixon says, he's been de evolved. So Koopa comes in.
Speaker 3: He's trying to find out where the meteorite piece is
Speaker 3: and he does this ploy where he pretends to be
Speaker 3: their lawyer. That didn't really work out, so they go
Speaker 3: into the d evolution chamber. Now, this is actually a
Speaker 3: major theme in the film, that isn't. I don't know
Speaker 3: how this theme became so big in the Super Mario
Speaker 3: Brothers movie. Does this have anything to do with the
Speaker 3: games in any way you're aware of?
Speaker 2: Well, just that Mario gets big and then if he
Speaker 2: gets injured, he becomes small again. Right, he loses his powers,
Speaker 2: and I guess you could say he's de evolving to
Speaker 2: some extent.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's a machine with like a chair and
Speaker 3: then the chair you sit in it, you get strapped
Speaker 3: down and it sticks your head up in a big
Speaker 3: hole that za aps you with blue light until you
Speaker 3: come out having been changed. And Koopa gives a Bond
Speaker 3: villain speech about how the machine works. He says, normally,
Speaker 3: evolution is an upward process. Things evolved to get smarter,
Speaker 3: achieve higher forms. This machine does the opposite, reducing you
Speaker 3: to a primordial state. And I hate to be pedantic here,
Speaker 3: but we got to Coopa. That is a classic rookie
Speaker 3: mistake about evolution. Evolution does not mean things get higher
Speaker 3: or better, just means lineages of organisms adapt to environmental pressures,
Speaker 3: so they adapt to proliferate in their present environment. There's
Speaker 3: no up in evolution. But unfortunately the cringe science does
Speaker 3: not stop there, because Mario gets mad at Koopa and
Speaker 3: he says, what single celled organism did you evolve from?
Speaker 3: And Coopa says Tyrannosaurus rex the lizard king, thank you
Speaker 3: very much, which I would argue as more than one cell.
Speaker 2: I did like that. Dennis Hopper makes the bulge choice
Speaker 2: to act this scene out with his arms and a
Speaker 2: t rex pose. I don't know if you noticed that
Speaker 2: or have them kind of like little t rex arms.
Speaker 2: I also have to point out that the devo chamber
Speaker 2: here major set piece in the film, and they made
Speaker 2: a toy place that of this where you like strap
Speaker 2: in an act. It's kind of like the swine ped
Speaker 2: I guess from Masters of the Universe. I can't tell
Speaker 2: from the grainy image I found of the box how
Speaker 2: it was supposed to work. And I would ask listeners
Speaker 2: out there, Hey, if you had this toy, what was
Speaker 2: it like? But let's not get ourselves. Nobody had this toy.
Speaker 3: They had a toy, a mass produced toy set of
Speaker 3: the d evolution Chamber.
Speaker 2: I refuse to believe any child actually had this toy.
Speaker 3: But so what does it actually do in the movie?
Speaker 3: Like we see it demonstrated on poor Mojo Nixon. He
Speaker 3: gets his head stuck in it and it transforms his
Speaker 3: Mojo Nixon head into like a tiny reptilian head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some great cgi there, as well as his face goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're told that this is a goomba. But
Speaker 3: that's funny because that's not what the goombas are in
Speaker 3: the games the game. In the games, they're like ambulatory mushrooms,
Speaker 3: not like people with large bodies and tiny, creepy reptile heads.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's stitching a lot of stuff together here.
Speaker 3: Now, I will say I remember that the transformation of
Speaker 3: people into goombas in this movie was an element that
Speaker 3: I found unsettling when I saw it as a kid.
Speaker 3: Something seemed to kind of perverse and wrong about it.
Speaker 3: It didn't feel good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not only turning them into creatures. He's turning
Speaker 2: them into creatures that act and look stupid, So it
Speaker 2: feels like more of a crime.
Speaker 3: There's a scene later where Cooper reveals his like grand
Speaker 3: master plan is to devote all of the humans and
Speaker 3: the mammal dimension and turn them into monkeys.
Speaker 2: By the way, this whole merging of the of the dimensions,
Speaker 2: merging of the planes, I don't know if this is
Speaker 2: truly This is not the first work of fiction to
Speaker 2: deal with this possibility, but this I do know that
Speaker 2: this becomes a major plot point in the later Mortal
Speaker 2: Kombat games. So one has to wonder did they get
Speaker 2: that from the Super Mario Brothers movie or is there
Speaker 2: some other key bit of like Warring Dimension media that
Speaker 2: I'm just not thinking of.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, so they send Toad off to join the
Speaker 3: other goombas Mario and Luigi. They sort of overpower their captors.
Speaker 3: They beat up the guards. They throw Koopa into the
Speaker 3: de evolution machine. So you're thinking, like, oh, is the
Speaker 3: movie about to be over? But no, Luigi, they crank
Speaker 3: the dial to the Jurassic setting, but he's like only
Speaker 3: in there for a second. That sort of pokes his
Speaker 3: head in and then he falls back out. But when
Speaker 3: he comes back out, he has these like morphing vertical
Speaker 3: pupils that are fading in and out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the first of several scenes where
Speaker 2: Koopa glitches. Dinosaur I guess you'd say.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. There's a big action scene where they're like
Speaker 3: fighting goombas with flamethrow and they eventually come under a car,
Speaker 3: a police car and get out of there, and the
Speaker 3: car chase ends with them going through a tunnel and
Speaker 3: getting spit out in some kind of desert. After this,
Speaker 3: there is a scene where Koopa is having a mud
Speaker 3: bath with Lena.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a pretty solid scene. Like the set.
Speaker 2: I don't know about the scene, but the set looks
Speaker 2: really dope, okay, And there's something about having your villain
Speaker 2: in the mud bath. It reminded me of the we
Speaker 2: have a mud bath scene in twenty twenty one's Dune
Speaker 2: with the baron in there as he's addressing his underlings.
Speaker 2: So similar connection there. I don't know if Denise Villeneuve
Speaker 2: was looking at this when he was putting together his
Speaker 2: dreams for his doing adaptation.
Speaker 3: Surely, surely it was inspired by the Super Mario Brothers movie.
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper has a line this almost fell ad libbed.
Speaker 3: He says, you know what I love about mud, It's
Speaker 3: clean and it's dirty at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ull kids, kids.
Speaker 3: Oh so meanwhile, remember Daisy, Remember the paleontologist. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's been hanging out with all of the women from
Speaker 3: the Mammal Dimension that I guess were all except her
Speaker 3: erroneously brought here by Iggy and Spike because they thought
Speaker 3: all of them were her. But now they're all just
Speaker 3: still here and they're like hanging out, stuck in this room.
Speaker 3: And Mario's date from Meatball Night is here. Nice and
Speaker 3: Lena shows up in the room to extract Princess Daisy
Speaker 3: from the room of the Mammal Dimension women, and Lena
Speaker 3: dresses her up in a purple gown and jewelry and
Speaker 3: gives some exposition. She says that Daisy is the daughter
Speaker 3: of the former queen of this world who stole the rock.
Speaker 3: That's what they're calling this, like Little Shard smuggled the
Speaker 3: baby into the Mammal dimension and then died. And Daisy
Speaker 3: wants to know about her father. Is he still living
Speaker 3: and Lena says, depends on what you mean by living,
Speaker 3: And later she asks Coopa about him. Coopa says, oh,
Speaker 3: he's around again, referring we will find it, spoiler, we
Speaker 3: will find out that all of the fungus that's just
Speaker 3: all over everything, in every building and room in this
Speaker 3: world is the former king. He's I guess he got
Speaker 3: really big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which in and out of itself, it's grotesquely realized
Speaker 2: in the film, but it's it's kind of a neat idea,
Speaker 2: this idea that the deposed king was too powerful to
Speaker 2: really go away, and that he's like he's everywhere. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's something kind of potent about that. You can imagine
Speaker 2: this being used a great effect in a different work
Speaker 2: of fiction.
Speaker 3: So there's a new scene where I think Coopa is
Speaker 3: punishing Spike and Iggy for failing many times, and Spike
Speaker 3: gets sent into the Devo machine. But then instead of
Speaker 3: being made to DEVO, he has made to Evo. They
Speaker 3: so they set the dial to quote advanced. Yeah, they
Speaker 3: pop his head in. He comes out with a vastly
Speaker 3: improved vocabulary and he starts doing math problems. And then
Speaker 3: they do this to the other guy as well. So
Speaker 3: now they are both smart. But in this movie, smart
Speaker 3: just means listing a lot of synonyms for a word.
Speaker 2: Somebody just said, yeah, yeah, they just book smart. They
Speaker 2: don't actually do anything smart in the film. They just
Speaker 2: suddenly have a different vocabulary.
Speaker 3: Though I think it does change their politics. Now they
Speaker 3: start sort of revolting against King Cooper. Remember, they're like,
Speaker 3: you're a fascist.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. They just have very little ability
Speaker 2: to do anything about it because they're not plumbers.
Speaker 3: That's right. That's right. Oh somewhere in here, there's a
Speaker 3: scene where Daisy meets Yoshi.
Speaker 2: I remember, Oh yeah, Yoshi is one of the highlights
Speaker 2: of the film.
Speaker 3: Yes, so there's a tiny theropod dinosaur, definitely not as
Speaker 3: cute as Yoshi in the games, but he's sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, a dog sized dinosaur, and Daisy's getting to
Speaker 3: know him, and Koopa enters the scene and says, Yoshi
Speaker 3: is a pet of the royal family. And Daisy is
Speaker 3: of course amazed because here's dinosaur. She's a paleontologist, she's
Speaker 3: always studied them, but never seen one alive of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so this was something I remember from the
Speaker 2: trailers and the promotional materials when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: I was like, yes, this this is Yoshi. This is great. This,
Speaker 2: I mean, who doesn't want to see this movie with
Speaker 2: a with a cute dinosaur that's your friend.
Speaker 3: Sure, but this scene really ends up taking a turn. So,
Speaker 3: first of all, there's more exposition. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: just explaining. Coopa explains that their dementia, well, he doesn't
Speaker 3: explain this, it like is demonstrated with a prop that
Speaker 3: their world is Aracus pretty much like the planet has
Speaker 3: one big city and the rest of the planet is
Speaker 3: an endless desert. So Coopa spins the globe around and
Speaker 3: there's only one landmark, the city. The rest is just
Speaker 3: flat desert. So like, if there's only one landmark on
Speaker 3: your planet, why would you have a globe?
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it's not nothing out there, there's some landmarks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Coopa explains to her also that she's one
Speaker 3: of them. You know, she's descended from dinah, not mammals,
Speaker 3: and we will in later scenes see her bonding and
Speaker 3: making friends with Yoshi. I guess not just because she's
Speaker 3: interested in dinosaurs, but because she is one. Then the
Speaker 3: scene takes a horrible turn and Coopa gets really creepy.
Speaker 3: He does like a cgi snake tongue thing at Daisy
Speaker 3: and tries to kiss her. It is absolutely disgusting, and
Speaker 3: in a way, I guess hats off to Dennis Hopper
Speaker 3: because I assume they probably told him. Hey, okay, time
Speaker 3: to be the King of creeps, and he accomplishes it.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, I do not understand how anybody
Speaker 3: involved thought this scene was appropriate in a movie for
Speaker 3: little kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he's playing an abusive, lecherous totalitarian, but in
Speaker 2: ways that break through the sort of simplified cartoon version
Speaker 2: of those attributes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just gross, and so like, is this a
Speaker 3: kid's movie? And then to add more to that, so
Speaker 3: Daisy rejects him, and then Coop Coopa sends her away
Speaker 3: with Gumba's and he kicks Yoshi. He kicks Yoshi, cruelty
Speaker 3: to animals. Also, I don't really blame Hopper here because
Speaker 3: I think he's probably doing what they told him to
Speaker 3: do and create this awful, detestable villain. But this, the
Speaker 3: tone is just miles off the mark for what this
Speaker 3: movie is presumably supposed to be.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, Now, of course, where at Mario and Luigi
Speaker 2: at this point they've been cast out into the desert
Speaker 2: and with the fremen.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right, yes, after having given their water. I
Speaker 3: don't know. Yeah, So they're out in the desert wandering around.
Speaker 3: They're arguing with each other at some point that they
Speaker 3: end up crossing paths with Iggy and Spike after Iggy
Speaker 3: and Spike crash their dune buggy in a mud pit,
Speaker 3: and then they fill Mario and Luigi in on the
Speaker 3: exposition that the audience already knows all the stuff about
Speaker 3: the world. Skoupon needs the Shard to merge the dimensions,
Speaker 3: et cetera. This movie spends a lot of time going
Speaker 3: over stuff that's already been covered. Character is just telling
Speaker 3: exposition to characters of things the audience already knows, sometimes
Speaker 3: like four or five iterations of the same information.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how much of that is. Just
Speaker 2: like it's kind of a clunky plot, and so they
Speaker 2: felt like they really needed a hammer at home. I
Speaker 2: don't know, like maybe if they had one less exposition sequence,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have as clear of an idea about what's
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 3: But they agree to work together. They say, like, Spike
Speaker 3: and Iggy can have the shard if they help Mario
Speaker 3: and Luigi rescue Daisy. So they make their way back
Speaker 3: to the city by knocking out some Coopa cops at
Speaker 3: a dump with plumbing equipment, and they steal a garbage
Speaker 3: truck and then they go to a night club to
Speaker 3: find the lady who stole the meteorite shard, and once again,
Speaker 3: is this movie supposed to be for kids? This club
Speaker 3: scene really seemed way too adult. Like there's just leather
Speaker 3: and butts everywhere. It's a weird vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of underwear in this scene, and
Speaker 2: I kept expecting the lady with three breasts from Total
Speaker 2: Recall to show up. You know, It's like that kind
Speaker 2: of a vibe.
Speaker 3: It is exactly that kind of setting. Yeah, So Mario's
Speaker 3: plan to get the meteorite chard is to charm the
Speaker 3: lady who beat them up and stole it earlier. Turns
Speaker 3: out her name is Bertha, and turns out it sort
Speaker 3: of works, like he goes up and he's like, hello, beautiful,
Speaker 3: and she punches him at first, but then she dances
Speaker 3: with him. Then he gets the shard back. Then then
Speaker 3: a George Clinton cover of Walk the Dinosaur starts playing.
Speaker 3: Then goombas arrived, commanded by Lena, and then Lena gets
Speaker 3: hold of the shard, but Mario and Luigi managed to
Speaker 3: escape the goombas with the help of Bertha, who is
Speaker 3: very strong and who is now in love with Mario.
Speaker 3: I think she like kisses him and calls him sugar
Speaker 3: buns or something, and then she gives them pneumatic rocket boots,
Speaker 3: which she calls stompers. And I think here is the
Speaker 3: first time we see the Super Mario brothers actually gaining
Speaker 3: some of their powers from the game, because now they
Speaker 3: can jump because they have the boots from Bertha.
Speaker 2: Now they can do again. This is something that they
Speaker 2: were like, well, they've got a jump. They've got a jump.
Speaker 2: They've got to do plumbing and they have to jump.
Speaker 3: So there's another chase they escape. There is a scene
Speaker 3: where we see Coopa taunting a big hunk of fungus
Speaker 3: hanging over an empty throne, and again we will find out, oh,
Speaker 3: this is the king. This is Daisy's father, the king.
Speaker 3: And then Coopa goes and he orders a pizza on
Speaker 3: a videophone. He wants a Coopa Special with pterodactyl tail,
Speaker 3: dino lizard, hold the mammal, no worms, and spicy. So
Speaker 3: the Marios after this, they sneak into Koopa tower by
Speaker 3: doing plumbing like they like, twist some bolts and stuff
Speaker 3: on pipes in order to turn off the heat, so
Speaker 3: the tower turns cold and this is not good for
Speaker 3: the dinosaurs. They also find the outfits of their actual
Speaker 3: colors from the game. They just like find red overalls
Speaker 3: for Mario and green for Luigi. I think it's somewhere
Speaker 3: around here that Lena starts turning on Coopa, Like, she
Speaker 3: starts to get jealous of his desire for Daisy. So
Speaker 3: she's like, well, I'm gonna take the shard and I'll
Speaker 3: merge the worlds without him.
Speaker 2: And this is great because, like I said, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: here for Lena. I'm ready to support Lena and her
Speaker 2: coup against Koopa. So let's see if she can pull
Speaker 2: it off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she tries to go to Daisy's room and kill her,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't work because Yoshi intervenes. Yoshi bites Lena,
Speaker 3: and Daisy escapes. Oh and meanwhile, Daisy has been making friends,
Speaker 3: not just with Yoshi but with the Mojo Nixon Gumba.
Speaker 3: They're friends now. I guess he's like a nice one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They let him keep the harmonica that he played
Speaker 2: in life, and so it's always around his neck to
Speaker 2: identify which one he is.
Speaker 3: That's right, And it turns another thing. The Mario brothers
Speaker 3: somehow discovered that Goomba's like to dance, so they like
Speaker 3: get them swaying back and forth to music in order
Speaker 3: to evade them while they're trying to sneak around through
Speaker 3: some elevator shafts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know those sequences. Those are some great weird
Speaker 2: scenes that also feel like they're part of a children's movie,
Speaker 2: you know, like big dumb looking monsters or dancing with
Speaker 2: each other. And I accept it.
Speaker 3: So eventually, I guess Daisy meets up with you men.
Speaker 3: There's so many characters just like meeting, crossing paths, getting captured, uncaptured, escaping,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. Just there's a lot of plot movement
Speaker 3: without a lot of significance really changing. But it's like
Speaker 3: Daisy meets up with Spike and Iggy, who explained to
Speaker 3: her that her father, the King, was the first victim
Speaker 3: of Koopa's de evolution machine. He is the fungus that
Speaker 3: covers the entire city. As we've said, she tries to
Speaker 3: talk to the fungus father, then she frees Yoshi from
Speaker 3: his chains. Then she just hacks the computer system. She
Speaker 3: starts like getting in there.
Speaker 2: I have to drive home that the what we see
Speaker 2: in the throne room of the former Kings as fungus.
Speaker 2: It's just really disgusting. Looks like the failed results of
Speaker 2: a telepod experiment from the Fly or something.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally yeah. It's just a weird kind of
Speaker 3: slime and flesh gunk. Oh but somewhere here, I guess
Speaker 3: Mario and Luigi make it into the tower. They reunite
Speaker 3: with Daisy. They are introduced to the fungus King. Here's somehow.
Speaker 3: Mario gets reminded about his meatball night date, whose name
Speaker 3: is Daniella. Okay, that's her name. She's also stuck here
Speaker 3: in the Koopa World with all of the other women
Speaker 3: from Brooklyn who were kidnapped, and he's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I promised to take her to WrestleMania. That means I've
Speaker 3: got to rescue her. So he goes to rescue her.
Speaker 3: He does it, and they all Mario and all of
Speaker 3: the ladies from Mammal World go bob sledding down a
Speaker 3: giant pipe pursued by goombas. I think this is another
Speaker 3: nod of the games, like going down the pipes, and
Speaker 3: there's some kind of Kinney Loggins music play in They
Speaker 3: get spit out in the streets of Koopatown, where they
Speaker 3: reunite with Daisy and Luigi, and at some point in
Speaker 3: their Daisy and Luigi were captured, and then they got
Speaker 3: away again. I don't know how all that happened. But
Speaker 3: then there's more action in the streets. Koopa's down there
Speaker 3: aiming a de evolution gun at them. There are devolution
Speaker 3: guns now, not just the machine with the chair, So
Speaker 3: from here it's sort of action all the way to
Speaker 3: the end. There is a sequence where Lena is trying
Speaker 3: to get the shard and she gets electrified somehow and
Speaker 3: gets big hair and then runs down the tunnel to
Speaker 3: the dimensional rift. Luigi and Daisy also run down there
Speaker 3: after her. They return the girls from Brooklyn back to Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: they say, tell everyone in Brooklyn about the invasion of
Speaker 3: the goombas that's coming. Lena inserts the shard into the meteorite,
Speaker 3: but it blasts her into the wall and she becomes
Speaker 3: a cooked skeleton with frizzy hair. Luigi and Daisy are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: of course that happened to her, because only Daisy has
Speaker 3: the power to insert or remove the shard.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I.
Speaker 3: Don't recall that being established before, but maybe I missed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're leaning a little bit on the Dark Crystal.
Speaker 2: At this point, I.
Speaker 3: Think, yeah, yeah, there's a bunch of just action, like
Speaker 3: Koopa's trying to shoot Mario and Luigi with fireballs in
Speaker 3: the street. There's a big fight. But when the shard
Speaker 3: is insurged into the media rite, everything gets interrupted because
Speaker 3: they're like their bodies start dissolving. So like Coopa and
Speaker 3: Mario are in a standoff and they're turning into pixels
Speaker 3: and flying away, and Coopa's like, we're merging.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. This was a part in the movie
Speaker 2: where I was like, oh my goodness, what is happening?
Speaker 2: Like I was just for a minute there, just totally
Speaker 2: thrown off. I was like, are we about to time
Speaker 2: cop Here they're can merge together and occupy the same
Speaker 2: mass at the same time. I don't know, but of
Speaker 2: course it's the dimensions.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So the merging dissolves Koopa and Mario. It
Speaker 3: sends them to the mammal dimension Brooklyn, where they pop
Speaker 3: out on the the dig site of the Scipelli dig.
Speaker 3: We see the dissolving of the World Trade Center, like
Speaker 3: the towers dissolve, and somebody comments, those guys will do
Speaker 3: any thing for publicity.
Speaker 2: Yikes.
Speaker 3: Coopa gets there and he shoots the de evolution gun
Speaker 3: at Schipelli, who turns into a chimpanzee. Once again, humans
Speaker 3: did not evolve from chimpanzees. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, also did not evolve from mushrooms.
Speaker 3: Also true. So Coopa then says he's going to make
Speaker 3: a monkey out of Mario. He aims the de evolution
Speaker 3: gun at him, but then Mario remembers Luigi earlier said hey,
Speaker 3: we should trust the fungus. So Mario says, trust the fungus,
Speaker 3: and he holds up a piece of fungus as a
Speaker 3: human shield or a fungus shield, and the de evolution
Speaker 3: gun hits it and it gets bigger, and then Daisy
Speaker 3: and Luigi managed to get the shard out of the
Speaker 3: media orite. So Coopa and Mario dissolve back to Iracush
Speaker 3: and then, hey, all of your friends are back here,
Speaker 3: and let's do a payoff of everything that happened earlier.
Speaker 3: So remember how the goombas like to dance, Welljo Nixon Gumba,
Speaker 3: he starts playing the harmonica and they start dancing, so
Speaker 3: they're not fighting. And hey, remember Bertha with her rocket boots,
Speaker 3: Well she's here with rocket boots. Luigi puts them on
Speaker 3: and starts zooming around. Hey, remember those devo guns. Mario
Speaker 3: and Luigi get them and they use them on Koopa
Speaker 3: to turn him into a velociraptor. Remember, oh, we've seen
Speaker 3: remember bob bombs from the Mario game, the little like
Speaker 3: walking bombs, like from a cartoon. They keep popping up
Speaker 3: in the game because the Fungus is like trying to
Speaker 3: hand them to Mario. There was one that was ignited earlier.
Speaker 3: I skipped over that during the big action scene in
Speaker 3: the streets. It walks back over to Koopa, blows up,
Speaker 3: launches him sky high. He falls back down, roars. He's
Speaker 3: still dinosaurish. Mario and Luigi they keep shooting him with
Speaker 3: the de evolution gun until he turns into primordial Ooze,
Speaker 3: and then the people of Coopaville celebrate. I guess they
Speaker 3: didn't like Koopa, but we were given no indication of that.
Speaker 3: Then everybody hugs the fungus. King turns back into Lance
Speaker 3: Henrickson and says I'm back. Love those plumbers, and then
Speaker 3: we never see him again. Daisy uses the shard to
Speaker 3: magically open the portal, you know, but it's like, Oh,
Speaker 3: but I can't leave. This is my world. You know,
Speaker 3: I haven't even met Lance Hendrickson yet. So the Marios
Speaker 3: go back to their world, Daisy stays here, and so
Speaker 3: then we get a little epilogue. So back home in Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: the Mario brothers, they're hanging out with Daniella. They're eating
Speaker 3: spaghetti and meatballs. They're watching that Unsolved Mysteries show and hey, look,
Speaker 3: look we're on the show. Now there's a segment about
Speaker 3: the time that we saved this dimension from the ruthless
Speaker 3: dinosaur Dictator, and then they high five about being on
Speaker 3: TV until Daisy comes to the door. She is wearing scorched,
Speaker 3: tattered clothing. She's holding a de evolution gun. She says,
Speaker 3: I need your help, Mario Brothers. You're never gonna believe this,
Speaker 3: and then Mario says, oh, I believe That's that's the
Speaker 3: moral of the movie. Now when somebody says something, he
Speaker 3: is no longer skeptical. He just believes it.
Speaker 2: This is a great moment where they're setting up a
Speaker 2: sequel that absolutely would never happen. But it made me wonder,
Speaker 2: is this the coming of Wart the villain from the
Speaker 2: main villain from Super Mario Brothers too. That's like invading
Speaker 2: the world of Dreams or whatever was going on in
Speaker 2: that game.
Speaker 3: The second live action Super Mario Brothers movie would, as
Speaker 3: we said, involve a lot of turnip digging, you know,
Speaker 3: pulling things up, throwing them, getting on top of blocks,
Speaker 3: the good stuff.
Speaker 2: That's that's the one I actually owned. That was the
Speaker 2: one that I have the most experienced with. Still never
Speaker 2: made it to wart was not good at these games.
Speaker 3: Well that was a marathon. I knew this one was
Speaker 3: going to go long, and as we said, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff about this we didn't even get into.
Speaker 3: This is like, I really meant it when I said
Speaker 3: a I think a book length work could be devoted
Speaker 3: to Super Mario Brothers the movie, what it is and
Speaker 3: what it means and why it's so strange.
Speaker 2: Did you stick around for the post credit sequence?
Speaker 3: Is there actually one?
Speaker 2: There actually is one? Yes?
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I didn't.
Speaker 2: It's real dumb. It's where you have a couple of
Speaker 2: representatives of a Japanese video game company, presumably Nintendo or
Speaker 2: maybe they even say they're from Nintendo, and there they
Speaker 2: show up and they're like, we're here, we hear we've
Speaker 2: heard about your adventures, and we would love to turn
Speaker 2: them into a video game. We think audiences would love this.
Speaker 2: And then it's revealed it's not Mario and Luigi they're
Speaker 2: talking to. It's the Koopa cousins and they and they,
Speaker 2: they go back and forth about what the game might
Speaker 2: be called. And there's some like you know, bad humor there,
Speaker 2: But luckily it only lasts a few seconds and that's it.
Speaker 3: Totally missed it. But so they're living in our dimension now.
Speaker 2: I think so, yes, Okay, yeah, unless they are now
Speaker 2: splinter dimensions. I don't know there. If you, if you
Speaker 2: think too long and hard about this movie, there you
Speaker 2: know a lot of a lot of possibilities emerge, possibilities
Speaker 2: that could have been explored in various ways in the
Speaker 2: sequel that you, I guess, can only view in an
Speaker 2: alternate dimension.
Speaker 3: Okay, we've got to end it there. This has been
Speaker 3: ridiculously long.
Speaker 2: All right, we shall end it there. But we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from everyone out there. Oh, especially if you
Speaker 2: have experiences with the release of this movie. Did you
Speaker 2: see it in a theater? What was your level of
Speaker 2: excitement for it? As like a video game player, I
Speaker 2: don't need I'd like I say, I refuse to believe
Speaker 2: anybody owned any of these toys, but if you did,
Speaker 2: right in, we'd love to hear from. You. Might need
Speaker 2: to include photographic evidence though, to convince me. And yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll be back next week. On Weird House Cinema, we're
Speaker 2: primarily a science podcast and the Stuff to Blow Remind
Speaker 2: podcast feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on
Speaker 2: Friday's we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film. But as we if you've seen
Speaker 2: in this episode, we're still not going to let particularly
Speaker 2: bad science takes go by without some comment.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just a salo, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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