Super Mario Bros. (film)
Encyclopedia
Super Mario Bros. is a 1993 American action film directed by Rocky Morton
Rocky Morton
Rocky Morton is a British director. He was one of the co-creators of Max Headroom and co-director on Super Mario Bros.. Various music videos by Rush, Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads, Led Zeppelin, Orgy and Miles Davis are credited to Morton. He also directed the 1995 UK launch commercial of Sega...

 and Annabel Jankel
Annabel Jankel
Annabel Jankel is an award-winning British film and TV director who first came to prominence as a music video director and the co-creator and director of the pioneering cyber-character Max Headroom...

. Based on the Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...

video game and its entire franchise
Mario (series)
The video game series, alternatively called the series or simply the series, is a series of highly popular and critically acclaimed video games by Nintendo, featuring Nintendo's mascot Mario and, in many games, his brother Luigi. Gameplay in the series often centers around jumping on and...

, the film features Bob Hoskins
Bob Hoskins
Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday , and Mona Lisa , and lighter roles in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Hook .- Early life :Hoskins was born in Bury St...

, John Leguizamo
John Leguizamo
Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo is an Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian.-Early life:...

, Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...

 and Samantha Mathis
Samantha Mathis
Samantha Mathis is an American actress. The daughter of actress Bibi Besch, Mathis made her film debut in Pump Up the Volume , opposite Christian Slater...

. It tells the story of the Mario brothers, Mario
Mario
is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation...

 and Luigi
Luigi
is a fictional character, featured in video games and related media released by Nintendo. Created by prominent game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Luigi is portrayed as the slightly younger fraternal twin brother of Nintendo's mascot Mario, and appears in many games throughout the Mario series,...

, as they find a parallel universe
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

, where King Koopa is a dictator. They have to rescue Princess Daisy and stop Koopa from attempting to merge the dimensions so that he could become a dictator of both worlds.

Super Mario Bros. was released on May 28, 1993, and received mainly negative reviews. It was a box office bomb
Box office bomb
The phrase box office bomb refers to a film for which the production and marketing costs greatly exceeded the revenue regained by the movie studio. This should not be confused with Hollywood accounting when official figures show large losses, yet the movie is a financial success.A film's financial...

, recouping only $21 million of its $48 million budget. Despite this, the film was nominated for two Saturn Award
Saturn Award
The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within...

s (one for Best Costume, the other for Best Make-up
Saturn Award for Best Make-up
The following is a list of Saturn Award winners for Best Make-up:...

).

Plot

Mario
Mario
is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation...

 and Luigi
Luigi
is a fictional character, featured in video games and related media released by Nintendo. Created by prominent game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Luigi is portrayed as the slightly younger fraternal twin brother of Nintendo's mascot Mario, and appears in many games throughout the Mario series,...

 are two Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...

 plumbers living in Brooklyn, New York. The brothers are being driven out of business by the mafia-like Scapelli Construction Company, led by contractor Anthony Scapelli. Mario is the elder of the two brothers, being close to the late 30's, and Luigi is in his mid 20's. Luigi falls in love with an orphaned NYU student, Daisy, who is digging under the Brooklyn Bridge for dinosaur bones. After a date, she takes Luigi to the dig and witnesses Scapelli's men (who, along with Scapelli himself, had previously threatened her to end her research on that specific piece of land for their own interests) sabotage it by leaving the water-pipes open. Luigi tries to stop it but he does not have his tools on him so he can not fix it. They rush back to his apartment where they inform Mario about the incident. The three go back to the flooding and the brothers manage to fix it but are knocked out by two strange characters, Iggy and Spike. The two crooks kidnap Daisy.

Mario and Luigi awaken a minute later and head deeper into the caves following Daisy's screams and discover an interdimensional portal through which Mario and Luigi follow Daisy. They find themselves in a strange dystopian parallel world where a human-like race evolved from dinosaurs rather than the mammalian ancestry of true humans. Sixty-five million years ago, a meteorite
Chicxulub Crater
The Chicxulub crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named...

 crashed into the Earth and in doing so ripped the universe into two parallel dimensions. All the surviving dinosaurs of the time crossed over into this new realm. Iggy and Spike turn out to be henchmen (and cousins) of the other world's germophobic and obsessive dictator, King Koopa, descended from the T-Rex. However, the two have failed to also bring Daisy's rock, a meteorite fragment which Koopa is trying to get in order to merge his world with the real world that separated from Koopa's world during the meteor strike. It turns out that Daisy is the Princess of the other dimension but when Koopa overthrew Daisy's father (and turned him into fungus), Daisy's mother took her to New York using the inter-dimensional portal. The portal was then destroyed, killing Daisy's mother in the process, but when Scapelli was blasting at the cave, the portal was reopened. When Koopa hears about the re-opening of the portal, he sends Spike and Iggy to find Daisy and the rock to merge the dimensions and make Koopa dictator of both worlds. Spike and Iggy, however, who had grown more intelligent after being subjected to one of Koopa's experiments, decide to turn on Koopa and join forces with Mario and Luigi. Koopa thinks only Daisy can merge the worlds, but Mario and Luigi were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Daisy is eventually rescued by the plumbers.

Eventually, the two worlds merge, during which Scapelli gets his comeuppance when Koopa devolves him into a primate by mistake while aiming for Mario, but Luigi and Daisy take back the rock and the worlds separate. Mario gains his courage and fights Koopa and eventually wins when he and Luigi devolve him, transforming him into a ferocious, semi-humanoid Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...

. Koopa then leaps out for a last attack but Mario and Luigi devolve him into primeval slime, destroying him. Daisy's father turns back to normal and reclaims control over the kingdom stating he loves those plumbers. The citizens destroy anything involving Koopa. As the brothers return home, Luigi and Daisy admit their love for one another but Daisy cannot return to New York until the damage caused by Koopa is reversed and she spends more time with her father. Mario rephrases Daisy's words to Luigi but he does not care. A deeply hurt and saddened Luigi kisses her goodbye and the two brothers return to New York, while Daisy watches them leave. About three weeks later, Daisy returns for Mario and Luigi's help in fighting more villains. Meanwhile, Mario and Luigi's story is televised, giving them the name; "Super Mario Bros".

In a post-credits scene
Post-credits scene
A post-credits scene is a short clip that appears after some or all of the closing credits of a film have run...

, two Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....

 executives talk about a video game based on their adventures but they are asking Iggy and Spike instead of the Super Mario Bros. and they decide on a title called "The Super Koopa Cousins".

Cast

  • Bob Hoskins
    Bob Hoskins
    Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday , and Mona Lisa , and lighter roles in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Hook .- Early life :Hoskins was born in Bury St...

     as Mario
  • John Leguizamo
    John Leguizamo
    Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo is an Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian.-Early life:...

     as Luigi
  • Dennis Hopper
    Dennis Hopper
    Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...

     as King Koopa
  • Samantha Mathis
    Samantha Mathis
    Samantha Mathis is an American actress. The daughter of actress Bibi Besch, Mathis made her film debut in Pump Up the Volume , opposite Christian Slater...

     as Princess Daisy
  • Lance Henriksen
    Lance Henriksen
    Lance James Henriksen is an American actor and artist best known to film and television audiences for his roles in science fiction, action, and horror films such as the Alien film franchise, and on television shows such as Millennium....

     as The King
  • Fisher Stevens
    Fisher Stevens
    Fisher Stevens is an American actor, director and producer. His most recent successes include the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for his film The Cove and 2008 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature for his film Crazy Love...

     as Iggy
  • Richard Edson
    Richard Edson
    Richard Edson is an American actor and musician.-Biography:Edson was born in New Rochelle, New York. He has one brother, Steven, who resides in the Boston area, and two sisters: Andrea, who resides in Newton, Massachusetts and Jennifer, who resides in New York City. His father Arnold was one of...

     as Spike
  • Mojo Nixon
    Mojo Nixon
    Mojo Nixon is an American musician, known for playing psychobilly music...

     as Toad
  • Gianni Russo
    Gianni Russo
    Louis Giovanni "Gianni" Russo is an American actor, singer and alleged possible member of organized crime, or Cosa Nostra....

     as Anthony Scapelli
  • Dan Castellaneta
    Dan Castellaneta
    Daniel Louis "Dan" Castellaneta is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, singer and screenwriter. Noted for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, he voices many other characters on The Simpsons, including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble,...

     as Narrator

Critical reaction

Super Mario Bros. received mainly negative reviews from film critics and fans alike. As of July 2011, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 reports that 13% of critics gave positive reviews based on 23 reviews, culminating in a "Rotten" rating, and the consensus: "Despite flashy sets and special effects, Super Mario Bros. is too light on story and substance to be anything more than a novelty." The film was ranked the 6th worst movie based on a video game by Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

. Gene Siskel
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death....

 of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

and Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

gave the film two thumbs down on the television program Siskel & Ebert At the Movies, and was on their list for one of the worst films of 1993. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

disapproved of the film's script. However, Hal Hinson of the Washington Post gave a positive review, praising the film for its spirit and later went on to say, "In short, it's a blast." Janet Maslin of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

gave another positive review, but said that the film "doesn't have the jaunty hop-and-zap spirit of the Nintendo video game from which it takes – ahem – its inspiration."

Super Mario Bros. was nominated the Saturn Award for Best Costume as well as the category for Best Make-up
Saturn Award for Best Make-up
The following is a list of Saturn Award winners for Best Make-up:...

. Despite the negative reviews, Super Mario Bros. has eventually developed a cult following. Website The Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive regularly updates about the film; often interviewing the cast and crew of its production.

Legacy

In the Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power
Nintendo Power magazine is a monthly news and strategy magazine formerly published in-house by Nintendo of America, but now run independently. As of issue #222 , Nintendo contracted publishing duties to Future US, the U.S. subsidiary of British publisher Future.The first issue published was...

20th anniversary retrospective issue, as they chronicled the games and other related releases over the magazine's life span, the film's release was listed, to which the issue stated that, while neither the film, nor its cast and crew won any awards, the fact that the film was made shows how much the game series has impacted popular culture.

Actor Bob Hoskins was critical of Super Mario Bros., calling it "the worst thing I ever did" and "the whole experience was a fuckin' nightmare" in a 2007 interview with The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

. In another interview with The Guardian, Hoskins answered Super Mario Bros. to three of the questions he was asked, "What is the worst job you've done," "What has been your biggest disappointment," and "If you could edit your past, what would you change?"

Dennis Hopper was also disparaging of the production, "It was a nightmare, very honestly, that movie. It was a husband-and-wife directing team who were both control freaks and wouldn't talk before they made decisions. Anyway, I was supposed to go down there for five weeks, and I was there for 17. It was so over budget."

Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto
is a Japanese video game designer and producer. Miyamoto was born and raised in Kyoto Prefecture; the natural surroundings of Kyoto inspired much of Miyamoto's later work....

, Mario's creator stated, "[In] the end, it was a very fun project that they put a lot of effort into," but also said, "The one thing that I still have some regrets about is that the movie may have tried to get a little too close to what the Mario Bros. video games were. And in that sense, it became a movie that was about a video game, rather than being an entertaining movie in and of itself."

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, released on Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...

, featured two songs from Roxette
Roxette
Roxette are a Swedish pop music duo, consisting of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle . Formed in 1986, the duo became an international act from the late 1980s, when they released their breakthrough album Look Sharp!...

: "Almost Unreal
Almost Unreal
"Almost Unreal" is a pop song performed by Swedish duo Roxette. The song was released in May 1993 and is featured on the soundtrack of Super Mario Bros....

" which was released as a single. The music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...

 for "Almost Unreal" was inspired by the film, featuring scenes from the film and a de-evolution theme. "Almost Unreal" was originally written for the film Hocus Pocus but was never used and ended up attached to the Mario film instead. The change angered Roxette co-founder Per Gessle
Per Gessle
Per Håkan Gessle is a Swedish pop singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonicist. He is the lead singer of the Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider and formed Roxette with Marie Fredriksson...

.
The film's score was composed by Alan Silvestri
Alan Silvestri
Alan Anthony Silvestri is an American film composer and conductor.-Career:Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone , the Back to the Future trilogy , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Death Becomes Her , Forrest Gump , Contact ,...

. It has not been officially released, though bootleg copies do exist.

George Clinton
George Clinton (musician)
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...

 (who covered the Was (Not Was)
Was (Not Was)
-Studio albums:-Compilation albums:-Singles:-Contributions:* A Christmas Record - "Christmas Time In The Motor City"* That's The Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk - "Ba-Lue-Bolivar-Ba-Lues-Are"...

 song - "Walk The Dinosaur") released a single in 1993 that contained various other versions of the same song, including a Club Remix, a "Funky Goomba" Remix, "Goomba Dub Mix" including an Instrumental version.)

Track listing

  1. "Almost Unreal
    Almost Unreal
    "Almost Unreal" is a pop song performed by Swedish duo Roxette. The song was released in May 1993 and is featured on the soundtrack of Super Mario Bros....

    " - Roxette
    Roxette
    Roxette are a Swedish pop music duo, consisting of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle . Formed in 1986, the duo became an international act from the late 1980s, when they released their breakthrough album Look Sharp!...

  2. "Love Is the Drug
    Love Is the Drug
    "Love Is the Drug" is a 1975 single from Roxy Music . Taken from the album Siren it omits the gravel footstep sound effects at the start...

    " - Divinyls
    Divinyls
    Divinyls were an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1980 and featuring vocalist Christina Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. As the focal point, Amphlett performed on stage wearing a school uniform and fishnet stockings, often using an illuminated neon tube as a prop and displaying...

     (cover of a song by Roxy Music
    Roxy Music
    Roxy Music was a British art rock band formed in 1971 by Bryan Ferry, who became the group's lead vocalist and chief songwriter, and bassist Graham Simpson. The other members are Phil Manzanera , Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson . Former members include Brian Eno , and Eddie Jobson...

    )
  3. "Walk the Dinosaur
    Walk the Dinosaur
    "Walk the Dinosaur" is a hit single recorded and released by the band Was in 1987, later featured on their hit 1988 album, What Up, Dog?-Song info:...

    " - George Clinton
    George Clinton (musician)
    George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...

     & The Goombas (cover of a song by Was (Not Was)
    Was (Not Was)
    -Studio albums:-Compilation albums:-Singles:-Contributions:* A Christmas Record - "Christmas Time In The Motor City"* That's The Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk - "Ba-Lue-Bolivar-Ba-Lues-Are"...

    )
  4. "I Would Stop the World" - Charles and Eddie
    Charles and Eddie
    Charles & Eddie were an American soul music duo, that had four Top 40 hits in the UK Singles Chart in the 1990s. Their biggest was the worldwide hit single, "Would I Lie to You", taken from their 1992 debut album, Duophonic...

  5. "I Want You" - Marky Mark
    Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch
    Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch was a hip-hop group led by Mark Wahlberg. The Funky Bunch consisted of Wahlberg , Scott Ross , Hector Barros , Terry Yancey and Anthony Thomas...

  6. "Where Are You Going?" - Extreme
    Extreme (band)
    Extreme is an American rock band, headed by frontmen Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt, that reached the height of their popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s.Among some of Extreme's musical influences are Queen and Van Halen...

  7. "Speed of Light" - Joe Satriani
    Joe Satriani
    Joseph "Joe" Satriani is an American instrumental rock guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, with multiple Grammy Award nominations...

  8. "Breakpoint" - Megadeth
    Megadeth
    Megadeth is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California which was formed in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine, bassist Dave Ellefson and guitarist Greg Handevidt, following Mustaine's expulsion from Metallica. The band has since released 13 studio albums, three live albums, two...

  9. "Tie Your Mother Down
    Tie Your Mother Down
    "Tie Your Mother Down" is a song by the English rock group Queen, written by guitarist Brian May. It is the opening track and the second single from their 1976 album A Day at the Races...

    " - Queen
    Queen (band)
    Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...

  10. "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" - Us3
    US3
    Us3 is a jazz-rap group founded in London in 1991. Their name was inspired by a Horace Parlan recording produced by Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records. On their debut album, Hand on the Torch, Us3 used samples from the Blue Note Records catalogue, all originally produced by...

  11. "Don't Slip Away" - Tracie Spencer
    Tracie Spencer
    Tracie Monique Spencer is an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, actress, and model.-Biography:She began singing by the age of three and modeling in pageant competitions at age five. Tracie performed, produced and directed her first music videos before she was ten years of age...

  12. "Somewhere My Love" - Frankie Yankovic
    Frankie Yankovic
    Frankie Yankovic was a Grammy Award-winning polka musician. Known as "America's Polka King," Yankovic was the premier artist to play in the Slovenian style during a long and successful career.-Background:Of Slovene descent, he was raised in South Euclid, Ohio...


External links

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