On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.
First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult film actually worth recommending?”
The Bait: Dennis Hopper IS Bowser… Sorta?
The first thing you hear while watching 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” is that glitchy, 8-bit “ba-da-da-da-bum!” tune. For pretty much every gamer alive today, those first few notes induce an almost Pavlovian response — sparking an urge to grab a controller on your lap that isn’t actually there and bringing to mind comfortable, warm memories of stomping Goombas and riding Yoshi on a quest to save Princess Peach. You’re in familiar, expected territory.
But the first thing you see while watching 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” is a meteorite crashing into prehistoric Earth and wiping out the dinosaurs as a man with a thick New York accent (Dan Castellaneta, aka Homer Simpson himself) intones, “What if the impact of that meteorite created a parallel dimension where the dinosaurs continued to thrive, and evolved into intelligent, aggressive, and terrible beings? Just like us.” Then you see a woman in a billowing cloak abandon a large dinosaur egg at a Brooklyn orphanage, before it hatches into a normal human girl and the baffled nuns pray to Jesus.
If you have passing familiarity with the beloved Nintendo platform games this film is ostensibly based on, you probably have a few questions. (What does this have to do with Mario and Luigi? Is this parallel dimension the Mushroom Kingdom? Who’s that girl? Is she Princess Peach?) But to truly enjoy the deranged live-action adaptation you’re about to witness, you must throw all expectations of source material fidelity to the wayside — saying goodbye to the pixelated setting you grew up exploring and hello to the majesty of the one and only Dinohatten, baby.
The first movie based on a video game to be distributed for a major theatrical release, 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” established the gaming medium’s terrible reputation in cinemas. The misfire adaptation has followed the genre ever since as a wacky, weird cyberpunk fairytale that discards the (admittedly, then scant) foundations of the Nintendo series for what best can be described as a surreal “Ghostbusters” and “Wizard of Oz” hybrid. “Super Mario Bros.” struggled through a terrible production process and faced savage reviews, before a weak box office upon release.
Directors (and creators of the cult UK music video character, Max Headroom) Amanda Jankel and Rocky Morton disavowed the final product. Meanwhile, Nintendo — which had let Hollywood Pictures take the reigns on the project — was so embarrassed by the film that the company necessitated a more hands-on approach for all future adaptations based on their products. Rights issues have left the movie out of print and unavailable via streaming for years. And to this day, its main cultural footprint is as a punchline. Seth Rogen, who voiced Donkey Kong in the 2023 animated “Super Mario Bros. Movie,” called it “one of the worst films ever.”
The 2023 animated adaptation, along with its sequel which just arrived in theaters today, is part of a new wave of video game movies making serious money. The genre may, for better or worse, prove essential in keeping movies and theaters afloat for the foreseeable future. As video games have grown in popularity — and the average age of those who play them has risen to the point that many working directors are active fans of games source material — franchises like “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “Sonic the Hedgehog,” and “Minecraft” have experienced explosive success.
Slavishly devoted to recreating the look, style, and tone of the “Super Mario” games, the 2023 movie is the crown jewel among them. It’s highest-grossing video game film by a wide margin, and it demonstrated a path for these movies to succeed. The common wisdom? Stay true to what fans remember and love from their experiences playing the games, and you can win at the box office.
But they’re also mostly really… boring? The pleasures of the first 30 years of video game cinema included not just how utterly weird many of those films were, but how unafraid the directors who made them were when it came forging their own creative paths in interactive universes. The results were rarely “high” quality in the traditional sense, but those with an open heart (and/or a substance worth being under the influence of) could mine real joy from the excesses of Paul W.S. Anderson’s demented “Resident Evil” series, or the genuinely inventive horror of 2006’s “Silent Hill” horror film. Even the so-bad-it’s-good cheese of 1994’s “Double Dragon” is worth experiencing once.
Modern video game movies may not be outright shlock, but they’re largely less interesting than they once were. Corporate slop, carefully calibrated to appeal to nostalgic fans without offering anything new on their own terms, is commonplace these days. That’s what makes 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” so worth celebrating. It’s an adaptation that takes wild swings and misses, but is never safe or dull.
What’s more, “Super Mario Bros.” is a much more influential Hollywood misfire than you’d expect. The production was the first to be edited using computer software, a beta version of the Autodesk Flame. And coming out just a month before “Jurassic Park,” it proved an essential predecessor for the transition into the CGI age of blockbusters. Its mix of computer effects with practical sets still holds up today, and Dinohatten — the parallel world where the dastardly President Koopa (played Dennis Hopper, rocking a bleach blonde cut and giving a wickedly sleazy performance) plots to merge the universes and conquer Brooklyn — is a wild cyberpunk vision you just have to see. Filled with bizarre reptilian creatures and neon nightclubs, you’ll wish you could run around this place.
Aside from Hopper’s villain, “Super Mario Bros.” boasts a strong cast that adds both dignity and gravitas to this very silly adventure. Before people were making memes about Donald Glover playing Yoshi, you had Fisher Stevens rocking a punk look to play a loose version of one of the Kooplings — while Fiona Shaw gets a small role as Koopa’s scheming girlfriend. Samantha Mathis does solid work playing Princess Daisy (Peach’s second-fiddle in the games, here elevated to leading lady), but the real highlight is stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi.
Coming out in the pre-3D era, when the two iconic characters’ personalities were barely established, the 1993 film presents a very different dynamic for the brothers than would be seen in future versions: Mario is an older, gruffer father figure, while Luigi a young hothead. But the duo’s bickering dynamic here is endlessly charming, and both actors sell the contrast between these salt-of-the-Earth Brooklyn blue-collar workers and the colorful world they’re in with a sly sense of humor. If the “Bros.” part of the title is the most important, than “Super Mario Bros.” nails that aspect, at least.
One of the best Mario games of recent years is “Super Mario Bros. Wonder,” a 3D platformer where the central mechanic is the ability to change levels through “Wonder Effects.” They can turn Mario into a spiky ball, start a dance sequence, or change the level’s perspective completely. It feels like a direct diagnosis of the imaginative streak that made the Mario games a cornerstone of console culture. Their sense of experimentation, and their ability to place the audience in a world where anything feels possible, is as classic and beloved an entertain experience as that starting-up jingle. And judged in that light, 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” suddenly doesn’t so unfaithful, does it? —WC
It’s not every day that I have to go [sinister sting] outside(!!) for work, but tracking down 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” became something of a low-stakes side quest for me this week. First stop was a used media store in the Valley with a “rare titles” section that left me empty-handed. Then I ventured across town to rent a copy that, much to my chagrin, was already checked out by the time I got there.
Weaving through Los Angeles traffic en route to Long Beach to borrow a friend’s DVD, I narrowly avoided eye contact with an ex-girlfriend on the 101. It was a surreal near-encounter made worse by the fact that she looks weirdly like Bob Hoskins (in a more… bodacious way?), which did not help me stay on mission. Eventually, though, the disc was secured, the first part of my “Super Mario Bros.” journey was complete, and as a woman who regularly places 9th on Rainbow Road? Honestly, I was pleased.
Inconvenient as it may be, that’s the right way to have to see this movie. Because whatever else it is (and it’s a lot of things, not all of them good!), “Super Mario Bros.” has a physicality that modern game adaptations don’t even attempt. Dinohatten isn’t generic IP wallpaper; it’s a damp, grimy, neon-soaked practical space you can borderline smell. The Goombas are Gremlin-like and grotesque. The fungus pulses like a living organism. The world feels built (or even… born?) rather than rendered.
Even its failures are tactile. You can almost trace the seams where ambition outran technology, and that kind of craft courage is worth preserving now more than ever. As movies become smoother, safer, and increasingly less human, oddities like this deserve the extra effort it takes to enjoy them. Hoskins (who previously anchored “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”) had a real knack for landing inside projects that marked technological turning points… and, occasionally, IP calamities. While this isn’t that film’s equal, “Super Mario Bros.” belongs in the same lineage of singular blockbusters you can’t find in theaters today.
If you’re a “completionist” when it comes to watching movies, this one is essential to collect. Not just as a video game adaptation, but as a snapshot of cinema mutating in real time. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times in my life, and never failed to find myself puzzling over something new. (This watch: What did King Koopa have against the Twin Towers?) Sure, you might waste a little gas going across town like I did, but at least you don’t have to blow into a cartridge to make a movie work. —AF
“Super Mario Bros.” (1993) is only available to watch on physical media.
Read more installments of After Dark, IndieWire’s midnight movie rewatch club: