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bulgariansumo · 2 days

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Welcome to the third part of my Mario retrospective. Here are the first and second parts if you want to read. Or don't! I'm not your boss. Since this movie is somewhat recent, I'm gonna put part of this under a spoiler. There's not really much to spoil; I just wanna be on the safe side.

Super Mario Bros. (2023)

The final movie, for now. Despite the critiques I’m going to give later on, I enjoy it quite a bit! It’s a very fun movie and is what it set out to be even if there’s a few places where it stumbles.

A lot changed about the Mario franchise in just one decade after the live action movie’s release: characters’ clothes, names, the complete disappearance of anything related to Brooklyn, New York, and so on. Imagine what can change in three decades!

…Not too much more that’s relevant here. The series aims to be a static one, and this was very much the case during the 2010s. It’s only recently maybe kind of sort of getting away from that? Just a little bit. But this cementing of the Mario series identity is a big change in itself, and with Nintendo looking over Illumination’s shoulder, they couldn’t exactly get away with putting the Mushroom Kingdom’s inhabitants in leather and chains.

Nintendo choosing Illumination to take on this project makes sense the more I think about it. Not only are their movies generally well-received, they have experience doing adaptations like The Grinch (2018), and of course, The Lorax (2012).

Let’s consider the Mario Movie Dilemma: How does Super Mario Bros. (2023) balance being a movie and being Mario? With Illumination’s talent and Nintendo’s strict oversight, it maintains this balance the best out of all three movies. Sure, there’s some wonky casting choices, some licensed music that doesn’t quite fit, and a feeling that the movie is about to burst from the seams with references, but it keeps its balance much like a unicyclist juggling on a tightrope.

The decision to keep in line with the last two movies and follow Mario and Luigi’s first foray into the Mushroom Kingdom is a strange one. As mentioned before, Nintendo had since made it so that they were born there, and hadn’t mentioned Brooklyn since. When this plot was announced, many fans were confused, assuming Mario always lived in the Mushroom Kingdom. I don’t think this movie had to be an origin story, there’s other plots that could’ve been made to fit the Mario Formula™, but it does make it easier to establish the characters.

Speaking of the characters, another big change that separates this movie from the other two is that the game characters have established personalities now. Mario is a happy-go-lucky guy with a lot of determination, Luigi is timid and easily frightened, Bowser is a brute that’s evil for the fun of it, Peach is sweet and dainty, Donkey Kong is an easygoing meathead, and Toad sounds screechy.

These are simple characterizations, but they’ve had a good 20 years to marinate. They alone struggle to carry the kind of mainstream movie this one wants to be, so let’s see how they’re built on.

Mario - He’s an average guy, not as gung-ho as his game counterpart but not world-weary like the live action movie version. His family doubts his dreams, giving him underdog woes, yet further bolstering his determination. The beginning of the movie demonstrates that he’s already skilled with jumps and stuff before the adventure but inexperienced enough that there are still challenges for him to face during it. He is an acceptable protagonist …and yet, it feels like there’s something missing. Many have said that canon Mario doesn’t have a personality, and I’m not going to argue that he’s complex or anything, but he’s an endearing little guy. This Mario is just a guy. Despite having the most going on out of any depiction of Mario I’ve seen, this one feels the blandest to me. It’s not his design, it’s not even entirely his voice (though his voice actor’s lack of energy was an issue). He’s not very animated, I think. There’s never any moments where Mario stands out to me. His expressions in the OVA were really charming. In the games, he’s not always the most animated in expressions, but his voice is. Aside from the things that are required of this Mario as a protagonist, there’s little to endear me to him other than his and Luigi’s relationship. And that leads into a whole other issue. As for whether he sets the tone of this movie... I can't say for certain. The movie is dead set on making the world of the games look fun, and Mario is having fun, but he seems kind of muted compared to the rest of the cast. If anything, I'd say everyone but Mario sets the tone here.

Luigi - Along with being easily scared like his canon counterpart, this Luigi really cares for Mario and thinks the world of him, which is also true to canon, but it really has a chance to show here. It also leads into some of the funniest lines in the movie. He’s also portrayed here as kind of helpless. It’s established that Mario is his protector, and wherever he goes, Luigi goes. Charlie Day’s performance is really spirited; I hope he was compensated for all twenty of his lines. That’s exaggerating, but yeah. He gets captured instead of Peach, which I understand why, though it did make me sad to know that he wouldn’t be a part of the adventure, especially after seeing how his and Mario’s relationship is depicted here. It would’ve been interesting to see an escape plan regardless of who got kidnapped, and Luigi taking steps to escape on his own would help tie together the character growth he has at the end a little better. But the movie doesn’t go that route. He sits there, barely getting lines.

Bowser - Perfect. No notes. Whenever they give Bowser lines in the games, he’s an evil jock who's larger than life. He’s basically the same character here, even down to the voice, which I was shocked to hear Jack Black pull off. The only difference in his characterization is the running gimmick of how insecure he is about wanting Peach to like him, which is fun.

Donkey Kong - In this movie, he’s a showoff-y jock who really loves his dad. It’s weirdly endearing at times. He’s also Mario’s rival and bickers with him a lot. I have mixed feelings, because while I do like how he and the rest of the Kongs were handled in this movie, removing them might’ve freed up some time for the main cast to get to do more.

Toad - He’s there. The trailers propped him up as if he was going to be the comic relief sidekick, but once the adventure starts, he’s barely in the movie. I got jumpscared a few times by him because I forgot he existed. You could remove him from the heroes’ group, and it would barely change anything.

Lumalee - Lumalee is not an important character, but I wanted to single them out because their whole gimmick is “cute creature says depressing things,” which probably overstays its welcome even for those who got a laugh out of it. Personally, I found it grating, but even more grating is that most scenes that could be focused on Luigi or any of the other more interesting prisoners focuses on this character instead.

Side Cast in General - Very good! For what some of the main characters lacked, the incidental characters really made things fun. The only one I have critique about is Foreman Spike, whose role in the movie (aside from being an obscure reference) is better filled by Mario and Luigi’s family.

You may notice that I skipped Peach. This is because from a creative perspective, she’s such an interesting challenge that she deserves her own mini-essay. She’s worth it.

Having a female character whose sole purpose is to be a damsel in distress has been seen as cliche for many decades, but you could get away with it to some extent in years past. Fans of the games are fairly resigned to it, but it would not be wise to go that route when trying to appeal to a broader movie-going audience in 2023.

On top of that, Princess Peach has the least consistent characterization of the main Mario characters. In most mainline games, she’s kidnapped, so we really only get to see that she’s sweet and dainty. Those aspects are still there in spinoffs, but the ones added onto her vary a lot. In Paper Mario games, she’s portrayed as strong-willed, in the Mario & Luigi RPGs, she’s proactive and clever, in some of the party/sports games, she doesn’t seem to know what’s going on all the time (“Did I win?”), and in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, she’s so oblivious that it loops back around into her seeming too cool to care. ‘The airship we’re on is exploding? That won’t stop me from having a nice tea party with my new friends Samus Aran and Solid Snake.’ So while Peach has a few established personality traits, there’s many different directions she could be taken in.

This movie decided to make her a proactive, actiony type, willing to defend her kingdom with her own two hands if it comes down to it. On paper, this sounds close to how she’s depicted in the Super Mario Adventures comics, which is my favorite version of her. Before rewatching the movie, I was going to say that the movie version of her felt like a watered down version of that in practice. I still think so, but not because there’s anything wrong with how she’s written. She just doesn’t get a lot of chances to shine. Every character kind of has that problem. There. That saved nine paragraphs of me rambling.

Despite my complaints about how some characters were (not) used, it doesn’t impact the movie too badly. The movie’s more plot-focused than character focused. There’s a lot of care put into staying faithful to the games in both looks and vibes, which I appreciate, while also being a fun movie in its own right.

The plot itself is not super complicated: Mario and Luigi stumble into the Mushroom Kingdom’s world and get separated, and Mario wants to rescue him. In the meantime, Bowser is trying to take over the world and marry Peach. Very fitting for a Mario plot.

What the plot may lack in complexity, it makes up for in… stuff. Stuff is happening all the time. They really wanted to fit in as many things as they could from the games, and while it helps give characters things to do during their journey, it borders on feeling cramped.

Take Bowser’s beautiful power ballad, for example. I thought we were going to get a full musical number, only for it to be cut off right when I was really feeling it. The movie’s like “Chop, chop, we gotta move to the next scene.” It feels like it’s always running out of time, and it gets stressful at some points. I remember being on pins and needles during my first watch, wondering if it would give Luigi something meaningful to do in the last five minutes.

Watching this movie is like going on a tour in a beautiful city, but your tour guide is going at a breakneck pace. You still have a good time, but you don’t get to take things in as much as you want to. The movie has little room to breathe; I feel like this might be part of the reason some characters, Peach and Luigi especially, were mishandled. With so much going on, there’s no time to focus on them. I’m still looking forward to the next movie, though! Hopefully, they’ll slow down?

Let’s end things off with my personal ranking of each movie, from favorite to least.

Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! (1986): Due to being released so early in the series’ lifetime, it’s a little odd to some, but it’s cozy and full of charm like any good Mario game. It succeeds at what it’s trying to do.

Super Mario Bros. (2023): It’s incredibly faithful to the current state of the series while being a fun movie in its own right, but key characters lack charm, and the experience can feel a little rushed.

Super Mario Bros. (1993): It threw away any resemblance to Mario in order to be its own movie and somehow failed at both. Pour one out for the visual artists.

Now, I am free from my mental shackles. Thank you for reading my ramblings. I hope you found something of interest.

#text post #super mario bros #super mario bros movie 2023 #illumination mario movie #super mario bros movie #something interesting about this movie is how it mimics the live action movie's method for getting them to the mushroom kingdom #also it was so weird how mario's va would randomly mimic the game voice. like the real mario was possessing him or something

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