Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 450: Super Mario Bros. (The 1993 Movie)

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

In 1993, Hollywood did the seemingly impossible by releasing the first true video game adaptation: Super Mario Bros. And to put it simply, things didn't exactly go as planned. Thanks to studio meddling, fired directors, injured actors, and compromised visions, Super Mario Bros. lurched into theaters in May of 1993, and quickly retreated in shame when the general public didn't know what to make of it. But are there hidden gems lurking underneath this film's fungus-covered exterior? On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Ray Barnholt, and Ryan Hoss and Steven Applebaum of Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive as the crew explores this fascinating mess of a motion picture. Listen in, and learn to embrace mustache-free Luigi! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us in more great shows at podcast.hyperx.com. This week on Retronauts, this ain't no game. It's a podcast. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie. Today's topic is the 1993 movie Super Mario Bros. Yes, this week we're ending the month of April or Marplell, as I like to call it, with our second podcast about the 1993 live action Super Mario Brothers movie. So earlier this month on the Patreon, we posted a full commentary for the film. If you want to listen to it, you have to sign up for the Patreon at patreon.com slash retronauts at the $5 level. That's available there. but today we're going to be talking about the movie at length with some serious experts on the topic. So let's introduce who is here today on the show. Who is our first time guest on retronauts?

First time. That would be me, Ryan Haas, founder and editor-in-chief of the Super Mario Brothers and movie archive website. Welcome to the show, Ryan. And long-time retronaut. Who else is here today? Hi, it's me, Ray Barnholtz. Cooper straps towed into a chair. That's true.

I don't know which narrator that is, but it happens. in the movie. We'll talk about it soon. But yeah, so about a year, sorry, about 10 years ago, not one year ago. I did a thing called Retronauts Movie Month. I looked at like the four most popular video game adaptation movies and we did cover Super Mario Brothers the movie back then. But I had an hour to talk about it. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare. So it was what you expected, just a lot of people dunking on a movie that's very easy to dunk upon. But for this episode, I've watched the movie twice. I've dug into so much research on the Super Mario Brothers movie archive and we have Ryan here with us as one of the two members of that website so I feel

like it will be a more informative discussion about a movie that is not good but it is a movie that is very interesting especially the behind the scene stuff for sure so before I continue I want to ask you Ryan what is your relationship with this movie how far did you go back and where did your obsession begin with this 1993 film so I guess the you can trace my history back to the fact that I kind of saw the movie before I was really into the games and then worked my way back. So I remember as a kid, I did not see the movie in the theater. I was born in 87, so I was a little too young to just, for my parents to go take me to see in the theater.

But I do vividly remember it coming out on VHS and going into the video rental store in town and seeing the big billboards and being like, oh, that looks awesome. like it looks like Batman but like Chrome and what is that dad and he's like oh that's super Mario Brothers and I remember them renting it and watching it and not letting me see it because they thought it was like too too intense um but then a few years later it was on TV and it was just the beginning part of the movie where they're still in Brooklyn and I was watched the first 30 minutes what is this and he said oh that's the Super Mario Brothers movie and I was very intrigued with it and I was

in elementary school still at the time and I was about to go to a friend's house for like a sleepover and I didn't finish the movie then but I was but I asked my friend let's let's rent that movie tonight so we rented it I watched it and I was and we played the games and stuff by then so that was where my you know the origin point of me just knowing even then as a kid that like

there something happened here there's like There's definitely some kind of translation, adaptation thing going on. Yeah, so throughout the years, I just have always been interested in video games and movies and comics and adaptations. That's my day job. I'm a visual effects artist. So this stuff is really interesting to me. And when I was in college, by that point, I had acquired as much Mario movie stuff as I could. And it was around 2007.

and that was where internet discourse around the movie kind of started to grow and like you said Bob it is just kind of one of those things where when you would search for it on the internet you would just get to this point of it being

oh that movie sucked or that was weird but I wanted to know why and I kept searching for the why and then around that mid-college era when I had all this stuff and merchandise and memorabilia and some light behind the scene stuff

I kind of realized, well, nobody's going to do this if it's not me. So I decided to make the website, just put all this info out there to catalog it, and I didn't really know where it was going to go. But a couple years into it, that's when my partner on the website, Stephen came in, and we started to interview people involved with the film, and then that's just one thing led to another, and eventually we've got this gigantic archive of a website. That's where we've interviewed as many people as we can that's involved in the film,

from actors to directors to producers. And we've just uncovered so much material and information about the film. And we've been able to support a couple of Blu-ray releases and documentaries and things. And it's just a crazy fandom that just somehow keeps growing. And there's never run out of fun things to figure out. It's such a fun topic. There are still so many mysteries left to uncover. And yeah, I mean, it's so easy to do.

your nostalgia critic style take down of this movie, but I think it's more productive to watch it and then ask the question, why? And then go to your website and you'll find some of the answers because as we'll talk about it, this is a very compromised production in terms of writing and shooting

and special effects. Like, so many things went wrong and the fascinating stories that come out of those that really make this movie worth talking about. So, Ray, we met up recently and I asked you like, would you be interested in this topic? I had an inkling and you said, Yes. So, Ray, I want to know, like, what is your relationship with this movie?

Well, I don't even remember. Was I on the one 10 years ago? I actually, I don't recall. I know you're on one of them. I can look it up now while you're talking. Well, this is the podcast for Old Men. But anyway, yeah, I was just going to say, I didn't want to repeat my story, but it doesn't matter, does it? So I was kind of there since the beginning, I suppose. I mean, there were always the little rumors that they were making the movie in the years prior to release and stuff like Nintendo Power. I believe in other magazines newspapers and such but then I didn't but I still wasn't really aware that they were making a Super Mario Brothers movie until like I walked into the local theater to watch something else and up dangling from the ceiling were like the two promotional cards for it and posters and stuff and I was like oh my God what is

this they're finally doing it and Mario has a beard you don't understand it was the illustration on the thing it looked like he had a beard And Luigi is clean-shaven and all this stuff. Oh, my God. And, yeah, ever since then, it was just, like, immensely fascinating to me. And I was very hyped for it as, like, as a 10-year-old, essentially. I was 9 or 10. And, yeah, I still always liked it.

I got as much of the merchandise as I possibly could back then. Wow. Yeah, watched it multiple times, countless times. And, yeah, it's just been a part of. I guess my early early gamer life let's say along with like the wizard as well it's like those early kind of video gameish movies

that you know you didn't really think would ever be a thing until until they actually happened and it's just like wow this is exciting to me it didn't matter if it was inaccurate or whatever it was just like it's a Super Mario Wars movie I'm going to be into it for me as a kid I was kind of indifferent towards the movie

because as a pedantic little kid I mean it's why I'm a podcaster now when I saw the movie previews for it. What bothered me were all the things that, in my opinion, were wrong. Well, it's like, well, Mario doesn't look like this, and you know, Luigi needs a mustache, all of these things. There's a laundry list of things that are inaccurate compared

to the video game. You could probably find lists of them online. I remember not being interested in seeing the movie because of that, but it was a friend's birthday. We were being driven to the movies, and the choice was between Hot Shots Part Duh and Super Mario Brothers, and it was

the Dollar Theater, so this was July. Mario Brothers... Dress at Park was out by that's true it was not at the dollar theater yet although i didn't see drastic park in theaters but i saw this in theaters in 1993 believe it or not but yeah like i knew hot shots was funny and i liked the first one but i thought i kind of owe it to myself to see super mario brothers and i saw it in the theater uh i don't remember us even talking about it when it was over and i never really thought about it again until we did that retronauts in 2012 and that's my relationship with the movie like i didn't find it insulting or i didn't think it was

like the worst thing ever. I just thought, well, this is a weird experiment and Nintendo made sure it never happened again for a reason. And then for this podcast, I'm realizing like, oh, here are the reasons why it is the way it is. And that's really fun to talk about. But yeah, this is never in the back of my mind. It's like, oh, it's like the room or plan nine from outer space. It's so bad. It's good. I never thought of it like that. I just, I never thought of it. But it's, it's really a fascinating movie at the end of the day. And I'm sure we'll talk about the many details that tell us why very soon. So, uh, you. So, uh, you. You Yeah, I encourage everyone to go to the Super Mario Brothers, the movie archive at SMBmovie.com

because I normally send out notes for these episodes to our guests, but in the case of this, I did make my own notes for the outline, but essentially all of the primary sources and secondary sources are on that website. So I didn't want to send Ryan quotes from his own interviews or anything. And I felt kind of insulting to me, but there's a lot of stuff going on there. I do want to start, you know, dissecting the movie in order. And I do want to talk about pre-production because, I mean, normally movies go through a process. It's not uncommon for there to be multiple writers attached to a project, multiple drafts of a movie. But I believe Ryan, there were like possibly up to eight different versions of this in production. Can you talk about like the steps that it took?

Because I know, like, even I get confused trying to break it down because there are so many steps along the way. And then old writers coming back on to carve chunks out of the movie while it's being filmed. There's so much going on there. Yeah. So I'll try to my best to not monopolize the podcast with the history, but there is so much of it. It's such a making of the movie is pre-production of the movie, the production of the movie, and the movie itself and the reception of the movie is like gigantic topics, which is why the website exists to wrangle this beast of an event.

So it being the first video game adapted into a movie, you track the production of it, that you kind of see why it wound up the way it did. These people are just pioneering trying to figure out how do we do this. You know, what is this? And it starts with the producers. You know, you've got your Roland Jaffe and Jake Ebert's working together to secure the rights for the film. And Roland Jaffe is not the first person you would expect to try to land the rights, the film rights for Super Mario Brothers.

He means a very serious film director done the most. mission and killing fields and things like that and so but he didn't want to direct it he just wanted to produce it he was trying to start to dip his toe into the producing side of things after directing for a long time

but they were up against you know the bigger studios like like a universal or and things like that and but they were able to secure the rights because they did this traditional approach rolling Jaffe flew at Nintendo and met with the president of

Nintendo and, you know, just did things their way and they seem to really respect that and respect that angle. So they gave him the rights of the movie for a lot less than a lot of people thought that Nintendo would let them go. The big thing was, Attindo's big thing at the end of the day at that point was, we trust you, you're the filmmakers, make the movie, but we'll take all the money from the merchandising. We care about that. So they kind, so that's, so that's why the filmmakers had so much latitude is because at that point Nintendo thought we're the game people

you're the movie people we trust you just do your thing see what happens they let it be very experimental and that's pretty much to be applauded I mean that's one reason why the film is still in conversation after so long so it started with the pre-production

the getting the rights and so they started getting a writer and trying to attract talent the first writer on the on the on the on the project was barry morrow who wrote rain man and he wrote this very introspective strange uh script uh like an existential road trip kind of wizard ish kind of not much like the game script but they were trying to attract talent it's actually the uh script we have the least amount of information on barry morrow actually just talked about it for the first time a couple years ago when the film hit it's

one of its most recent anniversaries so that script didn't last too long and then they jumped to the Jim Genoenowen Tom Parker era which a lot of people are very interested in because that is the more fantasy game-like version of the movie and we have

versions of those scripts on the website and at that time they paired that script with Greg Beeman as the director and he was doing mom and dad's save the world at the time and then the story goes that there was a test screening of that movie and that movie didn't do well and then the producers thought i don't know if this is going to really appeal have the wide appeal it's like a movie if we make this it's going to be goofy and just for kids we want to broaden the audience we don't know if this is the right take it's going to just be like the mario super show on the big screen

that's not really what we want to do this is the movie this is the movie um so then they were already pretty deep into spending money on trying to get it off the ground it was my understanding they i mean they we've got concept art from that era we've got uh set mock-ups really cool stuff um images on the website about like fourth perspective things they were trying to do to make it really cool um but they sunk a bunch of money into it at that time but then scrapped it at that point and then the haunt was on for we now we now we just now we just need directors we just need visionary directors to shepherd what this thing is and then that's when they were able to get rocky morton and annabel jenkel on board who of course

uh were very hot at the time because of their involvement and the creation of max headroom and they were you know music director music video directors and they were very into technology and emerging like CG stuff. They even worked together on a computer imagery book. That's, I think, maybe even the first book

on computer graphics that was actually published maybe, I believe. It's a giant copy table book. So they gave the project to them, they were the ones that actually that came up

with the whole concept of, let's tell the real story of the Mario Brothers and the game was made after, and they came up with the idea of the evolution and dinosaur world and stuff like.

that. And then they were from that era they were paired with the original two writers of their version which was Terry Runte and Parker Bennett. And then that was a very goofy, not goofy, but it was a very

broad, expensive, crazy script and they were newer screenwriter. Yeah, I was going to mention that it looked like the directors assigned to the movie. They had directed one traditional movie before. this and that was the remake of DOA

in 1988 so not not like the most sure thing and so like I said a lot of interesting stories came out of the research for this and one of them I mean it feels kind of insulting to call it interesting but I write

your interview with the one of the writers Parker Bennett one of the credited writers and I was like oh what else did he do oh not much else what about his writing partner oh it looks like he passed away and looking into that brought me to like a very shocking story where he was murdered shortly after this movie was made and in a pretty brutal way and it seemed to derail Parker Bennett's writing career entirely

and I mean it kind of messed me up for a little bit I was just like wow I was not expecting a story that dark to come out of the super Mario brothers movie yeah it's a it's a very it's a very sad story and and Parker is such a I mean a lot of these people I don't get to meet in person we've held through the website of screenings of the film and I've got to meet Parker and he's been some of the screenings we've had. He is such a great guy and he's got great stories and he actually has recently launched a website for

for Terry and he's been telling stories and posting writing work that he's done to kind of keep his memory alive. It's really kind of a great memorial. Yeah, I did see that like the bittersweet ending to this story is that his friend did build this memorial to him

much later in life, but it's very tracked to see these two young writers working on their second movie where they could have gone if this tragedy didn't happen to them. But again, a story I did not expect to come out of the Super Mario Brothers movie. Yeah, so they... There's a lot of stories. Yeah.

It had every emotion. Yeah. So they, those two guys were very instrumental in trying to add the video game stuff back into the movie. You know, the directors had their high level spin

but Parker was the guy he was like a cartoonist also so he was writing making doodles next to the script pages on like well this is how the coin boxes could work and this is how this could be like the games and stuff like that but their script was too broad and it was too

unmovie-like to wrangle in and so that's when the producers and directors needed to kind of I don't know harder edge or class up or get it into more more of a filmable state, and that's when they brought in the Dick Clement and Ian Lefrenay writing duo. So joining us mid-show is Stephen Applebaum, also from the Super Mario Brothers Movie Archive.

Welcome to the show, Stephen. Hey, great to be here. Happy to have me here. And we heard from everyone up front, including me, how they found this movie. Can you talk about your relationship with the movie and your obsession with it? Yeah, I was like most kids, grew up in the 90s, loved Super Mario series. Something about that fantasy setting just appealed to me. And my mother, knowing that, you know, I was into Super Mario, she recorded it off TV for me.

a TV series airing, so it had commercials and everything. She drew a little Mario on the VHS label, and I had never heard of the movie before, but she gave it to me. It was Mario. I accepted it for what it was. And it wasn't until I was much older that I revisited it, and I found Ryan Haas's website,

and I began this deep dive. And ever since I've been a big fan, and probably more of a researcher. Well, a custom VHS tape, a custom label. That's very adorable. Yeah, I still have it, actually. I keep it right next to my other dozen VHS copies. Maybe if my dollar movie theater ticket had a little drawing on it that was done for me,

I would have liked the movie more when I first saw it in 1993. But Ryan, you were talking about the next group of writers that were brought on after like the broader, wackier script by Bennett and Rente. Yes. Yeah, so once Dick, Clement, and Neil and Phrenay were brought in, and we actually, just a couple years ago, finally got to have a good Zoom interview with those guys on their experience and on our YouTube channel.

They were brought in to kind of wrangle the script, get into a filmable state, and basically put a lot of good character work. The previous script had a lot of really good world building, but the characters were just kind of all over the place would come and go, and they didn't have like a good story, like, you know, backbone. kind of thing. And so they really worked on a lot of characters.

That's where some characters that non-game characters like Lena really started to take form, take shape, and that's where a lot of the interpersonal relationship between Mario and Luigi and Daisy kind of kind of get there. And that's the script that attracted most of the talent, you know, like your Fiona Shaw

and your Bob Hoskins. And so then right before filming is when they got some final financing for the film and that's when it was decided that oh Disney bought the film and it'll be distributed through Hollywood

pictures and that's when the mandate to have another script revision to get more family friendly elements in like bring this down make this a little less adult and so that's when only a couple weeks that's where you got your like Ed Solomon, Ryan Row

came in, Ed Solomon's pretty popular worked on Bill and Ted in Black and he had very quickly have a hit list of things that he needed to accomplish and worked on the script to bring it to a producer

approved level and that was handed in without the directors didn't get say in what that script was going to the changes basically. They were ready to film the other script and it was just a couple weeks before filming so they had to kind of work on the fly to figure out

if they were going to see if they were still going to make the movie or if they're going to walk away as directors and they decided to stay. But then that's kind of set everybody off the movie was in flux and then when they were filming the movie that's when they brought the original two writers of their

iteration Parker and Terry back on set to do the daily changes and rewrites and they even came back later to work on the extensive amount of ADR that was another whole pass of like trying to shape the film

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Yeah, it sounded like everything got off on the wrong foot. It also sounded like the directors were kind of checked out before. I mean, at some point in the movie, they left. and the movie was filmed by like the second unit director it sounded like. Yeah, they were asked to leave. Yeah. They filmed, they were, and they were, they were direct, they were directors. They have the vision, but they were inexperienced and making, working on something this gigantic.

Right. The first person we interviewed was Mojo Nixon, who played Toad, and he told us about his first day on set. It was very hilarious. So he said, I walked in, and they were filming this car chase, and things were exploding all around me. And I was just looking at Rocky, and he just looked like, what the hell did I get my? and it was it was just a really interesting i mean there are and everybody i've talked to that's what worked on the movie has stories like that like it was crazy you don't even understand it really was it's a miracle it got made and it's as cohesive as it is yeah they were inexperienced and so that

so at some point they were asked to leave so they could finish the film and get it done yeah it sounded to me like i don't want to speak for the directors but it sounded like they're in over their heads uh and also they didn't get to make the movie wanted to make so they were a little checked out and I remember I was reading your interview with the uh the actor who played uh Spike I for sorry I forget his name but um it made it sound like they had all these ideas for their characters but the directors were just like just do whatever and it sounds like a lot of the movie uh an astounding amount of the movie was like improvised on the day of filming especially the characters of Iggy and Spike who were not reading what was

on the page they're coming up with their own bits together Fisher Stevens and the other actor and And even the turn in the movie where they become smart, that was just their idea they'd improvise on the set. And that just changes the trajectory of the movie entirely in terms of where those characters end up and their fates that we see in the Stinger. Yeah, do you want to talk about that, Stephen? You're pretty, you're the Iggy and Spike experts, basically. Because their characters have a very crazy trajectory. And we even have to lead the scenes that also completely change how they can be perceived. Yeah, Richard Edson, who had played.

Spike. He was previously a founding member of the band, Sonic Youth, probably best known for parts in various films like Ferris Bieler's Day Off as a parking garage driver. But he had experience with music, lyrics, writing, that kind of thing. He was very invested in the character, especially when he realized that, hey, we're going to do a dance club, nightclub type scene. So he developed this revolutionary rap for him and Bisher Stevens character to sing. He recorded it on a little tape recorder and he set up a boom box and they went up to Rocky and Annabelle while they were setting up a shot or a scene. It's like, hey, guys, we put together this song and we thought maybe you'd like it.

Maybe if you, you know, you feel it's good enough if we can put it in the film. And they're like, yeah, yeah, just let us listen to it right. No, we'll let you know how we feel. And they did it right there on the spot. Everyone stopped, had to listen. And when they were done, they're like, we love it. Let's put it in. Why not?

And it made sense at the time because, as Ryan had mentioned, they brought back the original writing pair. They were desperate for writers. They needed people to get you from point A to point B. There were so many threads in the film that were afraid because of the constant rewrites that by the time they got to filming they realized

it wouldn't make any sense to get, you know, story-wise. And in terms of Iggy and Spike, their characters had been severely written down. Same with Moto Nixon's Toad. Toad was supposed to survive all the way to the end of the film, but to, you know, save on time, story,

they didn't want to pay that. actor too much. They had MD evolved almost instantly into a goomba. So most of the story that would have gone to the unevolved toad, they ended up shifting over to Iggy and Spike's characters. So although Richard Edson and Fisher Stevens were like pitching new ideas for their characters, it sort of already fit the original script that the directors and writers had agreed upon.

So they're like, everyone wanted to try to get back to where they were to the scripts that they had agreed on that they had signed on. No one was happy to get that Ed Solomon script when they arrived on set. They didn't agree to it. So it was a very collaborative process for the actors and the directors and the returning on set writers to try to get it back to where it was. and everyone was happy to do that. They weren't satisfied with the script they were given. It was a good opportunity for them to do that. Yeah, in terms of actors, it felt like based on all the materials I read,

Bob Hoskins, probably one of the most angry people about this movie, but the one who hit it the best, Dennis Hopper did not hide it very well. But one thing I wanted to mention, I want Ray's feedback on this as well, is that rewatching the movie it's interesting to see not just how off-brand it is but how little it actually references the products that this movie is trying to

also market to you where I feel like with the Illumination movie coming up this year Nintendo has a very watchful eye on this saying you know Gumbas can do this, Kupas can do this they can't do that, a lot of rules it's interesting to see the mishmash of references because reading your interview with Parker

Bennett he had not played Super Mario World a lot of the things in the movie are from Mario 2 at that point a five-year-old game and there's like a reference to the golf game as well like the Kupahari Desert so you have babams you have Kupas you have Gumbas

but despite it taking place in Dino Hatton there's very little Mario world in here and at that point that was the newest main Mario game I think you're right on that and it goes back to something I wanted to also talk about what Ryan was mentioning the attitude

during the development of the movie which was like, this isn't the cartoon, this is a movie. And I feel like that must have been inspired by, like, Batman, but also more particularly like the Ninja Turtles movie, where, you know, the Ninja Turtles and Mario are two different things, essentially, like Ninja Turtle's cartoon is pretty goofy, but Mario games are probably even goofier. So it was very strange to, you know, hear that, you know,

and eventually we did get a movie that's really not like that. It is a movie. It is not the game. It is not the cartoon. And I just think that was really fascinating. And it seems to be just kind of a prevailing attitude during those years of like the late 80s, early 90s where like you take these big, let's say, kids franchises and you try and just to grow them up a little bit and make them, you know, inaccurate on purpose, I guess is one way to put it. And it really goes to show you how soon things changed like almost immediately after this movie. like I think the next big franchise example would be like the Flintstones and that leaned so hard into the cartoon and that movie was written by Tom Parker yeah okay there you go some of the same writers so I mean it really goes to show out things really changed I guess for the better in terms of accuracy and like yeah now we have in the past you know maybe 15 even 20 years we have things that are more accurate to the franchises are

based on and it seemed like the Mario movie was just like this weird this weird like cliff or like midpoint word like everything was ready to change in terms of like the attitude from Hollywood about these franchises. Yeah, I find that really fascinating. That's a great point, Ray, because I feel that I think in a negative way, studios are too focused on pleasing the fans. They want all the fans to be happy. It's funny how this movie doesn't care about any of the fans.

It's just like the tagline is this, this ain't no game. Me as a fan of the games, it's like, no, I'm here for the games. And like you said, with Ninja Turtles, I think the tagline was even something similar like, yo, dude, this ain't no cartoon or something like that. Where I feel like part of it probably was also appealing to the parents saying, this is different than we have Mario at home or we have Ninja Turtles at home. This is a different experience. But people just want a bigger experience of the things they get in their house now. They want the faithful adaptations. And I think you're right.

Like Flintstones was a big turning point. Even something like the Adams family, which is a great movie, that has a very. that has a very strange twist and that the idea is there's like an imposter fester that they quickly rewrite into being the real thing but even then they were like let's shake things up let's make one thing

majorly different exactly exactly to your point Bob we have a promotional guide that shows how the film is supposed to be marketed from Hollywood Pictures and there are specific things in there from Nintendo

like Nintendo did get all the merchandising rights but they were also very strict about when you market this market it as the movie don't you can't you have to put movie stuff in it don't put the movie and put images of like the game characters in it we don't want any game stuff associated with the movie

I don't know if it's like just in case the movie's bad or that was just kind of a stipulation yeah it was also an earlier time too where I mean I think games are still getting over this but there was sort of a stink to games or it was like, oh, this is the newer, lesser medium where you're not going to get the video game stuff in this movie. You're going to get a movie style experience here. So maybe they were aware of that bias against games that was happening in the early 90s when, you know, it was a much more controversial and new medium than it is now when it kind of like everyone just plays video games and we're fine with it.

Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons the directors have given for where the film failed. they felt that they were unfairly judged for it being a video game adaptation that parents just didn't understand what they were doing and you know that as a genre as a medium it was still it was still had yet to mature and they felt that parents hadn't appreciated it and it was just you even get the sense of that in the reviews at the time There's a lot of reviews talking about how the game is nonsensical blipping and beeping and jumping, and you can't really track it and the film's the same way.

Yeah. I mean, watch Siskel and Ebert's review. It's like they're really trying to make sense. They're like, what is this crazy thing we just watched? I mean, it's very interesting. Yeah, I think in a way, people really overthought the Super Mario Brothers concept where it's no stranger than something like Alice in Wonderland. but they were overthinking like well how do we turn this into a movie well

there's enough elements there that you don't really have to rewrite too much I mean there was not a lot of Mario Canon in 1991 or 92 there's a lot more now I mean you can buy the Mario Encyclopedia you can look at the wikis that wasn't happening then there was like the

Mario Mania Guide and that's basically it but still I think they were really overthinking the idea of what is the Mario story I think it's extra funny because like the story I mean the canon that existed was basically the cartoon to begin with like maria and luigi are two plumbers from brooklyn and they get sucked into a different world that's essentially what i think every approach uh maybe not every approach from all out of the scripts you and

we're going with and it's just like that was it and um i you know you don't think about that i guess when you're a parent as a bystander just watching the beliefs and blooms but it's like that's that's all they had really it's kind of funny yeah And that's been of my chief thing when people, you know, the youngsters complain about, why don't they call the Princess Peach? And then that's, there was no peach in the United States. Then I had to come up with the, but I'm going to call her Toadstool in the real world. Yeah.

Oh, thank goodness. There's Daisy and Mario Lans. Yeah. There's one other woman in this game series. Let's use her name instead. And going over the research for this, it made me realize like, oh, yeah, this, this movie was first at bats. I mean, there were movies based on fake video games. There was like Tron and Last Starfighter.

This is the first movie to be based on a game. I guess a game series, but still, I mean, because right after this, we have Street Fighter, we have Double Dragon, we have Mortal Kombat, but this is the first one to do it, so you can see, like, they should get a lot of credit just for, you know, charting those new waters, when you would see things like Mortal Kombat, play it a lot safer, be a lot more closer to the canon and the storyline of what was going on in that game. Yeah, and Mortal Kombat, especially benefited from that greatly. Yeah, I feel like everything made after this movie was made as a reaction to it in terms of video game movies. Like, this was people doing it for the first time, but now we know like what the audience wants for sure. And in some weird way, I always feel like it's a little weirdly ahead of its time. In a lot of ways, it's ahead of its time. You track other movies like, and I love it when Rutronauts talks about Batman and Batman games.

But when you get to things like Batman begins, you get to the, oh, we've seen comment book. interpretations before. What happens if you take Batman and try to explain everything? Well, that's kind of what they do with the Mario Brothers. The game, what happens if the game was real and let's explain it all? Let's take what the story says in the NES manual and

explain that. Yeah, it's funny and interesting how so much of this canon was made up by western, in the western world, where the whole plumbers from Brooklyn thing was, from my understanding, really an American invention. Sort of like how, in the

earlier as a Sonic the Hedgehog, there were so many different Sonic cannons. There was like the comic, the cartoon, what was said in the game, what was said by like Sega marketing. It was them just... The British comics, too, way different. Yeah, like, it did feel like, going in this movie, I knew where Mario came from based on what the cartoons told me. It's like Mario, you know, got sucked down the drain as the rap tells us all at the beginning

of the super, the beginning of the super show. And then you can see after this movie, Nintendo, quickly pulling back from that idea where no more cartoons, no more adaptations, and then we get to Yoshi's Island, and the retcon is Mario and Luigi are from the Mushroom Kingdom, and then now these days

Nintendo denies, like, Mario is not a plumber. I don't know where you heard that. We never told you that. The kids aren't really the kids either. Yeah, the manual. Exactly, but, I mean, I don't know if it was in reaction to this. I think it was just in terms of, like, to build a stronger brand. They needed a consistent like IP mythology

to speak in, like, cynical corporate terms. But it is funny to see, like, all the Brooklyn stuff is over pretty much in the mid-90s. And I do want to talk about some of the casting choices. So Bob Hoskins, an interesting choice. He was not a family movie guy. There are a few exceptions, and this is one of like maybe three or four, because of course, this movie has some serious Roger Rabbit energy.

This is a special effects comedy, not on the level of Roger Rabbit in terms of the money and the talent involved and the amount of effects, but it's still in the same realm. and I understand that's why they got Bob Hoskins also he looks like Mario I mean I don't know if Danny DeVito was in the works if there were discussions if he was too expensive but it's one of two instances in which people want Danny DeVito cast as a video game character

but it never pans out the other one was Detective Pikachu which that never happened and it's been very heartwarming to see John Linguamo who this is like one of his first big roles like he was acting probably like a decade before this even um but it was heartwarming to see that uh he does not think it's a good movie uh he didn't really enjoy his time on the movie but he looks back on him fondly as like oh somebody gave this latin american kid this role like when you think of luigi you do not think of john

legozamo when i think of john legozama's career i have to remind myself that he did this and it's been kind of nice to see him look back uh fondly in some uh some uh some Somewhat recent videos and in the documentary, This Ain't No Game, the interviews there were pretty eye-opening, the aspect of how much this changed his career. Yeah, I think also he was just more aware of the fact that people are now appreciating this movie more in recent decades. So, yeah, I think that leads to him just, you know, not being a sour-puss about it. Yeah, and it didn't destroy his career. I don't think it destroyed any careers outside of maybe the directors who did not really do much directing after this. And of course we have Dennis Hopper as King Coupa

An interesting choice again I don't know Ryan and Steve Do you know any other alternate casting choices I mean I've heard I've heard Tom Hanks for Mario or Luigi That sounds outlandish now But this is pre-Philadelphia Tom Hanks That's how Toy Story got Tom Hanks

Because his career was considered over Like yeah you made some fun comedies in the late 80s buddy But it's over for you now But I'm curious like what other choices were out there for the cast for the casting of this movie so there's a there's a lot of books and things that had been written uh which seemed to throw out like not super accurate information uh but we we actually acquired legit early documents that show the the lists an or prioritized order of who they wanted for the film stephen i believe has that stuff memorized way better than me so

let him grab it but they really the producers really wanted michael key as whoever Michael Keaton would be. They had him, like, early top picks for Mario or Cupa. They really wanted him. In the fantasy version, they really wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger to be Cuba. They would have a concept art of what Schwarzenegger would look like with, like, aesthetic stuff. But Stephen, does any major stuff come to mind for the film that got made for other alternate choices? It was Tom Hanks' Luigi, actually, right?

Yeah, Tom Hanks was considered for Luigi. what's interesting is that they had potential pairs so even if they considered one actor for Mario if they considered them for like Luigi they'd have to get a completely different set of pairs so they had all these different

potential pairs and you know they were considering Keanu Reeves as like a younger Luigi John Tortoro as a slightly older and more battalion Luigi. They were going getting all over the place

in terms of actors Bob Hoskins was in terms of the sci-fi film that we got he was always the top choice for Mario and John Laquisama was always the top choice for Luigi because the writers had seen him do his one-man

show Spicorama and they just felt he perfectly encapsulated that New York vibe that young Gen X aesthetic that they wanted for the character but christian slater was a choice for luigi we'd have a sarcastic luigi at that point after of the time was considered for luigi oh sorry i was talking over you steven i apologize

what was the last name you said i said um pretty much any hot young actor of the time was considered for luigi um but they had a much narrower list for mario and bowser like they really truly had someone in mind for those characters and they didn't want to um you know diverge from those visions too much um Bruno Kirby was considered for Mario but unfortunately he passed away not long afterwards by the time the film was actually produced it seems like they got most of who they wanted ironically Dennis Hopper isn't really on the lists for anyone it seems like they only got

him to play Cupa because he had a pre-existing relationship with Wilmington, North Carolina where they would film the you know, the film. He already had a place there. He was setting up like different clubs.

He loved... Arts installations. He just wanted to be there, hang out with that particular up-and-coming film. artistic industry and he felt the film was a good opportunity to do that

but unfortunately it almost seems like because of the film it gave him a bad experience and he didn't really return to Wilming and said too much afterwards. It tainted the entire state

for him. I'm glad you brought it up because going over all the details of this, this movie filmed mostly in North Carolina. Do you know where they filmed the exteriors

like the Brooklyn-E style exterior shots also Wilmington really okay yeah although they get some coverage shots of New York with like second third units that they could fill in

but the actual on the street stuff was filmed in Wilmington okay yeah so the movie filmed in North Carolina I think a lot of the reasons why things happen the way they did they're way off the radar of Hollywood but because of that they built this incredible set inside of a cement factory

Dino-Hatton. Even if you don't like the movie, it is a fascinating set to just look at all the details of because we're living in the year 2022. It's been like this for a long time, but when you see a movie now, nothing is real.

Light is actually not hitting objects. You're just in a green void, and sometimes people make that void look compelling. Oftentimes it doesn't work out. But it is still, we're still in an era in 1993 where you have to build everything. You have CGI.

It's very limited. There's a few little, funky scenes in this, but they can't actually build a set out of it. So the one major appeal of this movie is production design, and it's very off brand for Mario, but it's the same production designer as Blade Runner

and Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and just, it's extravagant. Like, looking at these sets, they are just so wonderful, and it's fun to see actors in a space after being the opposite of spoiled by modern movies, by modern

action movies. Bob, I think to go back, you were mentioning how there were a few references in the movie overall, but we could have seen a lot more, I think, because all the signage on that set is like a game reference, some name to something. It's really quite cool. I wish you'd seen more of it. We've spent a lot of time cataloging and categorizing all the references in the production design. And yeah, the production designer, David L. Snyder, who's the art director on Blade Runner, He is so great, and he's dedicated a lot of time and energy and effort into helping us catalog things. And that dude, he saved all kinds of stuff that he's sent us that we've grown up on the website.

And you just look at the before and after pictures of what they were able to do with that cement factory. And it's just absolutely incredible. And everybody that we've talked to that's worked in the movie would say, like, it was hot and awful to work on the movie. But just stepping into that thing, it really was like being in another world. And the fact that, you know, when you see shots in the film where you, the, it starts on the street and it goes up into Kupa's apartment, that's all real. Like in shot, like they had the cars in the factory on the street. And then that's a street set. And then right above it is Kupa's apartment.

And it all works and it all makes sense. Yeah. David had even said that the sets that he had to work with on Super Mario Brothers were so much more than he had with Blade Runners. I mean, you wouldn't really get the sense of that. I feel like Blade Runner does much better with a sense of scale. But for Super Mario Brothers in interviews at the time, and since he was very excited about the opportunity to have an actual structure to build onto and into multiple levels, as Ryan said,

when the camera pans up from the street level into a Kupa suite, that's all real. that's multiple levels. Yeah, and it sounded like the budget really did spiral out of control. This was going to be a much cheaper movie. I think originally planned it at around $20 million, but then like almost three times as much was the final cost of the movie. Yeah, they spent so much just paying for spec scripts.

They got Barry Morrow of Rain Man to do a spec script. They wanted something existentialist, very realistic from what we've heard unfortunately we don't have the script but from what we've heard it was going to be a road trip uh with an older mario and his mentally challenged younger brother luigi uh as they bond and you know everyone on the production who had read it they're like this is like rain man this is pretty much drain man i it just wasn't what they were going for um but they wanted the prestige attached to the script writer

unfortunately that it didn't pan out so they moved on to the fantasy production and once that didn't work out and they brought on Rocky and Annabelle to do the sci-fi vision they still counted those previous spec

scripts in terms of the development budget so when they finally started filming they're like we're already 20 million in the can and now we have this script with all these action set pieces and CG and stuff we can't afford to do this we've already spent 20 million so what we need you to do is we need to get a script doctor at Solomon bring them in

and essentially cut out as you know 20 million dollars worth of effects and that script that they handed it to the director it was just so much less that and they had already started building the sets they had already started designing everything they had storyboards so even though they had attempted to save money by rewriting the scripts they ended up losing more money because they had to throw out those storyboards and the sets that they had built they had to build new ones to accommodate that new script and from what we have heard unfortunately almost every department went over budget except for visual effects wow um and the visual effects department they came under budget and they

said hey we have time we have the money we'd love to do some extra visual effects you know just polish the film and they were considering bringing the bfx people into l.A. to do that to do that to do some final touches for the climax because it's a very quick very um low v effects climax and they wanted to kind of pump it up but ultimately they decided we saved money why should we spend it and they decided against that and put the film out yeah i do want to talk about the visual effects in a second here but you're bringing up the original script the original idea for the movie the the rain man style idea that sounds uh crazy but i think Ray will agree with me that uh the movie they made like the the other version of rain man is

the wizard the wizard is like rain man for kids right yeah i think that even that was brought up in interviews regarding the wizard as well so yeah Ellen, in 15 seconds, what is Nice Game Club? It's our Game Dev podcast. Stephen, help. Game mechanics, accessibility, art, animation, level design, prototyping. Everything that goes into making video games. How's that, Mark? Nice. Listen to Nice Games Club wherever you get your podcasts. or at nicegames.com.

Need some adventure in your life? What Mad Universe is a podcast where two guys delve into the history of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, and the impact it's had on pop culture. Everything's the same politically, but we have Rayguns. The actual motive isn't to explore

something that's, quote, scientifically possible. But neither is Star Wars, and I know there's arguments about that, but I would definitely consider Star Wars science fiction. You haven't read Dune. No, I haven't. You can never be the Quizette. Teterac. What Mad Universe on the HyperX Podcast Network.

Visual effects, it's pretty interesting to see. A lot of things curse this movie. We also have the unfortunate timing of Jurassic Park. Now, I just recorded a podcast about Jurassic Park, so I've just seen it, like, twice, and I have Jurassic Park on the brain. So we have this movie in May of 93, and then we have Jurassic Park in June of 93,

like the biggest 1993 movie of all time. And both movie heavily featured dinosaurs, although there's not as many dinosaurs. dinosaurs in Mario. But I will say, upon watching this movie, I will applaud the Yoshi puppet. Not enough Yoshi in this movie. The puppet is constantly chained up. It can't really go too many places.

But I like seeing it, and it's a good puppet. I think it's on par with the puppet versions of, like, the rafters, and the Dolophisor in Jurassic Park. They did a very good job. But you can see, like, a lot of the money on the screen, this is an over-budget movie, and the idea of Dino Haddon is interesting. because it seems like the idea was a bit compromised and that you can't have a ton of extras with makeup and prosthetics.

So there's some people with makeup. There's a few dinosaurs. It's very scattered. But when you see an actual dinosaur, it looks like, yes, there's millions of dollars on the screen right there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And it's interesting that came from so many different angles, that whole different departments working together to make that happen. I mean, Yoshi alone, I believe, was half a million dollars to make that happen. And as opposed to Jurassic Park, I mean, it is a much smaller, more intricate thing. And it took so many puppeteers to kind of make that performance work. So you had the Yoshi, but then you've had all the Gumbas with the done by makeup and effects laboratory. And those are its own crazy way to make that work. And then you had the cup a puppet at the end was done by another with Rob Berman's team.

And then the people with makeup, as you said, was almost like that wasn't even supposed to. be a thing and um the the makeup team um it would been been squastini i think is the way he pronounced his last name he kind of had a rogue unit where they were able to kind of make more stuff and make prosthetics and the idea was like well these are people that have been like thrown in the debo chamber for like minor offenses that have like partially devolved so that's when you get some people that don't have scars but some people that have little like scales and things popping through their faces. So they, that one, that was like on the fly thing of like, what can we do to like sell this movie that is, is, that we might not be able to completely do the vision justice, but

they wanted to do their best. Yeah, I'm sure other people notice things, uh, besides me, but whenever I go back to the movie, I always notice like new elements of world building in the set design, in the makeup, uh, because upon first viewing, it's a kind of a movie that's hard to follow. you can see interviews with Parker Bennett saying we weren't sure people would understand the alternate dimension thing so that's restated a lot by characters especially in ADR. I'll tell you what when I was a kid I didn't realize they were in another

dimension I'm like oh they're just like through that hole under New York I didn't realize it was like another another world a parallel world but looking at the movie just like oh yeah like Cupa was like a military commander who staged a coup and you could see there was like basically like an illegal

election that happened or something like that and then other world building details like all the cars run on these electric cables presumably because dinosaurs didn't die and there's no fossil fuels in quotes so just like all of these ideas that are never explained but when you go back to the movie you can see like oh like

there are these lore building things on the screen that are not being explained despite how often the movie wants to explain other stuff to you yeah it does operate on some level of internal logic and they try to even though it is wacky and crazy they the filmmakers and writers, they tried to do

the world building to where, and not all of it, like you said, not all of it winds up on screen, but on multiple viewings, and if you're like me and Stephen, and vote a whole website to it, you're always searching for the answers. And one thing, I always forget to look for this when I'm watching the movie, but

this came out, I was at one-up when this story came out. I feel like you guys were behind it, because I feel like one of you was messaging me when I was at that website, but before I did that podcast 10 years ago, there were the behind the scene stories that were starting to come out, especially about Bob Hoskins' broken hand and how that came about, where at one point on the set, there was, there was some drinking involved.

Bob Hoskins would partake when he was having a bad time and fight John Leguizamo for a little nip. And because of that, there was an accident with the van and the door slammed shut on Bob Hoskins' hand. And so some parts of the movie, he has a cast painted look like a hand. I assume rewatching it this time, it's why he's wearing those gloves and the the club scene. It's like just another way to hide his hand, although I don't know the timeline of the shooting and the broken hand. But again, a lot of things went wrong and that was one of them. Yeah. I mean, I haven't, you know, I haven't done a finger watch watch of myself. I think it was just on his finger. Okay, okay. Like was on was slam the door. And

there was another really harrowing example that we heard from, from, I think it was one of the producers. Was it Rothbard maybe that told him, where the scene where Marie Lue, you jump off of the catwalk into the sludge gulper when they shot that the two stunt guys missed the sludge gulper and fell on the ground and like both had to go to the like you know intensive care at the er or whatever they really got messed up so and and things like you see old interviews with bomb hoskins and he's he's not just making it up he's like it got stabbed they got electrocuted yeah because one of the you know cattle prod like shockers didn't have the safety on it He really got shocked, like, in a scene.

He looks like he's got pain on his face. Hoskins is a great actor, but he was probably in one of those scenes really getting shunsapsed, you know? Not to mention the smeltering heat from the cement factory filming in that space in the summer of 1992. And, you know, yeah, it was pretty nuts.

I didn't realize, I mean, Mario and Luigi receive a lot of abuse in the movie. It is interesting to see as, like, a fan of the series going back, like, wow, they are just, like, beaten in jail and just in bad shape for about half the movie before they have their, you know, they escape and they get their suits and everything.

And yeah, I mean, that's another thing whenever I see this movie, I'm like, wow, it is the Mario prequel movie and I don't have the specific time codes written down, but it's like you have to wait a long time before you get a Mario jump, and then the Mario and Luigi in their clothes is like the big reveal.

Like, this is, they've arrived. They're the Super Mario Brothers now. In fact, that is like, they're given that type of, at the end of the movie. And I mean, I don't know how much was, I mean, they weren't really thinking like this in 1993, but as much as they are today where there's like a roadmap of movies, but was there the idea like there will be more of these?

This is just the prequel because from what I read in the doing research, it felt like this is always meant to be a prequel of sorts, like an origin story of sorts for the characters. Yeah, it was always from in the director's minds, it was always, this is what really happened. And then the game was made after it. And as far as a sequel hook, that was added by Parker Bennett and Tara Rente at the end. They needed a way to end the movie, and they thought, well, hey, if we write a sequel hook in, maybe they'll make a sequel, you know, maybe we can write it.

So that was, and it was course like Back to Future inspired, even in the workprint they used Back to Future score to kind of like underpin that, like, yeah, it's the back to the future thing where there's another threat. So they, but Stephen might be able to add a little bit more to the. the sequel hookness. Yeah, like you said, the sequel hook was a very last-minute edition. And it wasn't so much intended to be a sequel hook as a, and so the adventure continues type of way to, you know, just end of the story. And it also referenced the ending of Back to the Future where Doc Brown shows up. It's like, oh, your kids, your kids.

got to go and have another adventure. And as we know, that ended up having a sequel. And they spent like the first 20 minutes just trying to get rid of the passed out girlfriend because they didn't know how to write around her. Right. So it's one of those instances where, yeah, they kind of implied a sequel might happen, but they had no idea where it would have actually gone. In the earlier scripts prior to the sequel book, there's a lot made.

during the merging of the dimensions where Mario and Coupa are sort of transporting between different dimensions. And there's an interview with Rocky and Annabelle, the directors, where they're asked about a sequel. And they don't give much specifics other than, oh, in the games, there's a lot of different worlds. And in the film, there's a lot of different dimensions too.

So if we do do a sequel, you can rest assured that they'll be visiting those other dimensions. nothing specific beyond that but it did show that they might not have been so concerned with this one little Mario themed universe the mushroom kingdom they might have felt like they could branch out and tap into other I don't know I don't want to say that they would go to like donkey Kong land or anything like that but it doesn't seem like they felt too constrained by the Mario property that if a sequel had been made, it might not necessarily have been more true to the games. It might have diverged even more. Interesting. On the other hand, that also that idea

in general also does just leave it open for subcon, right? Which is like Mario 2 is the game. That's basically a different dimension as well. It's not exactly the mushroom kingdom. So I think perhaps it would have been developed in that. It's all very speculative. But yeah, yeah. It's easily missed that Daisy's mother, who's only very briefly shown at the very beginning of the film, she's wearing like a sort of red cloak. And according to the script, she's part of like a secret society, a cult that worships the meteorite and kind of like an electromagnetic connection to it. And the insinuation is that this cult are the film's version of the shy guys. They wear these red clothes, and Kupa is responsible for kind of committing genocide against this cult.

And you're led to believe that most, if not all of them, are dead other than Daisy. She got slipped away. That's why she has the power. Yeah, but it's very easy to imagine, hey, what have some of them just fled into the desert? So there is a lot of our person, you know, as far as the scripts are concerned, they touched a lot of on this cult and it's the nature of it and why daisy in particular is necessary for merging the dimensions and it feels like if they had done a sequel they might have kind of circled back on that gone deeper into daisy's background gone into her mother and her father and their connection to

this cult so i do think you're on the right track as far as subcon being a potential plot line Yeah, upon reading your Parker Bennett interview, it did answer a lot of questions, but also raise more questions that I didn't really think about where I think even admits like, oh, yeah, we never really explained why Daisy had this power and other things like, oh, yeah, Iggy and Spike are at the end of the movie because they don't really get an ending in the movie proper. They are jailed, and that's it for them. And then suddenly they're in Mario and Luigi's apartment giving an interview with, sorry, talking to two Japanese businessmen for some reason. but yeah there's so much going on in the movie like story wise that you can see they're trying to patch all of these holes in the story that are we're there because of budget we're there because of you know different drafts there are just a lot of things that I always think about it's like oh uh Coupa's plan I mean I think even Parker Bennett admits like yeah there's not a logic to some of this where Coupa's plan is like I'll merge of the dimensions and then I'll rule the world or something it's just my own thought is and I'm thinking too much about this but I'm a podcaster just like if Coopa's plan is like if Cooca's a lot of Kupa makes it to the real world, what's the guarantee that's still him? Isn't the real world version of Kupa going to merge with him?

I could be thinking about this too literally, but... Oh, yeah, merge logic is not, yeah, it's a little different. I think the issue for me is, like, I love Back to the Future. Like, it's my favorite movie series. And they are very careful to explain with, like, a literal diagram. Like, here is what an alternate world means. And we come into this movie with that knowledge, because we've all seen that Back to the Future, too.

but the movie still needs a chalkboard segment we still need for the idea of parallel worlds to really make sense we need to see like well what is this version of Mario what is this version of Luigi and I think that's why as a kid I never thought like they're in a parallel world because in my mind 1985 A there's like a different Biff

and there's a different Marty and all this stuff and some people are dead and some people are alive but they don't really commit to that idea and I'm just doing script doctoring at this point but there's a lot of issues with the story itself that really prevented from being coherence. Yeah, the scripts are

very unclear. You know, it says parallel dimension here, it says sub-dimension there. You're never quite clear on the nature of this other world. And, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, you're going to merge the dimensions. What does that mean? So,

you're going to merge that entire wasteland onto our dimension. And, you know, there's some, implication that oh actually Cuba's only merging the one city he has this gigantic grid network

where the power it is yeah he's only going to merge this one city in over New York City and the sub-dimension's still going to exist they're not really merging the dimensions he's just merging a piece of it

he's just not clear like you said kind of copy pasting they ever quite determined yeah he's kind of copy He pasting Dino Hatton over Manhattan. And on some level, too, it is looking at the game analog version of it. He is a villain. He is kind of this,

he's a dictator in a position that shouldn't be a dictator, and he's just doing whatever he wants, and he's being evil a-hole. You know, and he kind of doesn't know exactly what's going to happen, and probably doesn't really care as long as he gets to merges the dimensions, that's what he

can do. He gets off that world, and he's going to rule. I mean, and at the end of the day, that kind of that force of chaos destructor kind of guy that like is enough for me like as a as a game analog to like King Bowser or King Cooper

to for that part of it to make sense even though the internal logic of the movie I kind of just have to go with yeah it's a shame I feel like if they had more money and more time a third act would be Cooper isn't in the real world let's stop him instead of that's what it was oh okay

I assume he was a giant see I'm wearing the shirt he was like the giant Kupa monster with a giant tail and he was crawling up the Brooklyn Bridge and Mario had to fight him and it was going to be this insane like Yeah they actually built a model Brooklyn Bridge

never got to use Wow and he was going to kill Kupa by like He was going to have like a long tongue like Yoshi only the more awful like President Evil liquor version of it and Mario was going to throw like a bab bomb and he was going to eat the bab bomb and explode

at the end or something like that. Because as it's stands in the movie the third act he comes to our world for about 30 seconds it's shockingly brief he turns one guy into a monkey

and that's about it's so like yeah I feel like if they had money and clearly they had bigger plans like he just does not seem to be that big of a threat for the villain of this film for sure

they were constantly cutting down the script to accommodate a lower budget climax the original plan was a Brooklyn Bridge set piece but after that they were going to

have the characters merge into Times Square and have a huge battle in Times Square Kupas Gumbas transforming everyone into monkeys that sort of thing and then they realized we can't have another set that's you know how are we going to do Times Square so let's just do

the set we already have the dig site the dirt lot doesn't make any sense like you have the characters merging from yeah kupa and mario merging from kupa square to the dig site when they should be merging into time square so right but they wanted to use the cyst that they had it just became less and less sensical because of the budget yeah i've always been fascinated by the surprising lack of even though that Dennis Hopper's very, like, imposing and threatening as Cupa. In the film, there's a surprising lack of direct physical interaction between Cupa and others.

Like, it's always, like, sending you to the Devo Chamber. I'm doing this and do that. Like, he that Mario and Cupa don't actually, like, they almost, like, if you watch the movie again, he reaches, almost, they almost start to fight, and he reaches for the rock, the fake rock that he thinks Mario has, and then they start to emerge. and that wasn't because he's kind of a germaphobe too and he kind of like sends others to do his dirty book and that wasn't always the case in other scripts like he is like this like I'm going to grab you with my iron fist kind of guy and I don't know if that was more on the script side or if that was a Dennis Hopper thing but I don't really I haven't it'll track like how that slight shift happened in the character but it is very interesting yeah they are separated for most of the movie I was rewatching it for our commentary and I was like, wait, why is he disguised as the lawyer, like, for a one-minute ruse? And my pal Henry was like, well, otherwise he would not be in contact with Mario for the entire movie.

And I was like, oh, good points. Good points. Recently, in recent years, you folks discovered a, well, I mean, I believe it was sent to you, but a workprint of the movie with about 15 minutes of deleted scenes, how much did those add? and do you think that they should be restored or do you think they were cut for the correct reasons? It's very interesting. It's the shining example of like why the site exists for things like this to happen.

We had always, based on the scripts and people who talked to, we've always knew that there was more of the movie. It's true for most movies, right? They film more than they get released. And with all the ADR that happened, I feel like there's a better version of the movie, out there, but really it's really just for us, like, I think.

It adds a lot. It adds, but for me, it adds a lot because the deleted scenes that are in there make character is a little bit more interesting. It does put a little bit more of that edge back into it that some of the earlier scripts had. So it makes sense why things were cut or trimmed, and it changes

some characters entirely. It gives Ziggy and Spike an entire other story. Like, they could have been part of the sequel in terms of how things happened. but yeah the guy that found that was able to get the VHS tape got it for the right reasons

and became a partner with us and we were able to get it that work print tapes and then restored as best we could and it's been released online in a few various versions you know it's up on the internet archive but we've also been able to

get on the most recent it's a special feature we worked with umbrella entertainment on their recent Blu-ray release. So you can watch it right now. You can see the extra footage. And we've also got clips on our YouTube where we actually take out the deleted scenes and explain like what they are and why it's cool and where it references other scripts

and things like that. So for us, it's definitely a cool curiosity. And it makes the film better. But for the general movie go, it probably wouldn't make it huge. Yeah. Oh, Ray, I heard you're trying to jump in earlier. Oh, yeah. No, I also watched that version because, you know, another reason to watch the movie.

I'll take it. Yeah, it was really interesting. I would say I'm in agreement with Ryan there. As a fan of the movie, I was really happy to see it. I'm glad someone put it together. I am so excited it exists. I don't fully agree it makes the movie better, having all those scenes restored, especially the rap scene.

And my apologies to Richard Edson, and I'm sure they tried to make the best of a bad situation there. But that one in particular just stuck out to me. Like, yeah, this, this isn't. Didn't need to be there. And, but nonetheless, I would say it is a great thing that that stuff was found. And because also, I remember seeing like some of those cut scenes from the trading cards. Exactly.

Like I said, that was our only reference for a while, yeah. Yeah, which is a thing that happens, I think, with a lot of movies, you get trading cards at referencing scenes that ultimately get cut. And this was one of them. And so to finally get that, to see those scenes in motion finally, was very cool in general, so yeah. Or they'll, like, even be in the trailer for the movie. They'll never be in the final movie. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we even had, and that was another thing we did a few years ago. I had film of the trailers, and we've got some great people here in Raleigh, and he was able to 4K scan some of the trailers. So we were really nice things. So, like, even in our Alamo draft house, like, before the Sonic movie a couple years ago, they're, like, playing the 4K restored Mario.

Oh, awesome. So it's cool to see that stuff up on the big screen. And, you know, even having screenings of the film, a few years ago at Thalian Hall, like, we were able to screen the film versions of the trailers and the movie. And it's just a cool experience to see this kind of stuff up on the big screen. Because it's just, it's bringing that era back. You know, speaking of cut content, and I'm only half kidding about this. I honestly feel like this movie invented Wario and Wa Luigi before Nintendo did or around the same time. Because when looking at the Sakepelli brothers, I'm like, well, this is Wario and Waii.

Luigi. These are the evil counterparts to Mario and Luigi and I assume there's more on the cutting room floor and deleted scenes, but it's just like that is another very underplayed part of the movie where these guys are like in there stealing all the plumbing jobs, but they play such a minor role and they should be

like the real world villains and I guess one gets their comeuppance, but it's just an element of the movie where you feel like there was a lot more there before the movie took its final form. Yeah. I would ask you this, Bob, do you think maybe Lina was some sort of prototypical version of

Balzette. Oh, oh wow. You know what? I buy this theory now. Okay. And if more people know... Listen, if more people knew that, I think the movie would be more popular. Yeah, exactly. Especially online.

Yeah, Lena, that is one character where I was just thinking, well, she has no basis in the game at all. Like, there was no character like her. You know, Iggy and Spike, another confusing pair, where Iggy Cupa is a cupa kid Spike is the name of an enemy

but they're not Cuba kids, they're cousins. Just the mishmash of references the grab bag, if you will, is very fascinating to see some of the major things they barely touch. I guess some things are recontextualized. There's no fire flowers, but there are fire flamethrowers.

Things are given a very literal take in this movie, a very like organic take. They have one secret mushroom. As soon as Mario trusts the fungus, then he's got a mushroom. And much like in the game. And he powers up. And when they re-merge,

he has the mushroom and he grows bigger as they hurt back. That is something I caught the second time I watch it for this viewing. I was like, oh, for some reason, either Cupa shrinks or he grows. It's hard to tell. But I think he became Super Mario temporarily. But, I mean, like, I wanted to ask Ryan and Stephen before we go here, what was the most surprising part of this journey for,

each of you like in terms of like a certain discovery because again like learning about the murder of the screen of the other screenwriter I was shocked I was not expecting to find that story attached to a Super Mario Brothers movie for both of you what was the most surprising or most interesting discovery you made

on this very long journey both been taking it's tough because there it's weird to say at this point we've had so many ridiculous blessings like going through this process And I guess as a whole for me, it's just been, I have not really interacted with anybody that has worked on the film that's provided things for us or talked to us or be included with the site that does not remember that experience as something very profound in their lives. It good or bad or nobody's indifferent. You know, everybody has a story.

And it seems like it's really cool that it's been pretty gratifying to have a place on the internet to kind of hold this knowledge. and hold the story of this film and the people that worked on it because that was the mission the whole time just to yeah it's fun to dunk on it or whatever but like dunk on it with context you know this is the internet so yeah so that's been

and every time I think we found everything you know somebody turns up with the work print that we thought we would never find and then it just goes on the Blu-ray and people like that you never think you would really get to that would care that much you know do things

for you like Roland Jophe recording a interview for us for the Blu-ray or Johnlinguizama recording a special anniversary video just so we could put it on our YouTube and things like that

and then that combined with the just the ridiculously passionate fans that messages all the time on Twitter and Facebook that people are just kind of understand at this point that this

that it's fun to be a fan of this iteration of Mario Brothers and so yeah it's hard to pinpoint one thing yeah I will say that pouring over the many interviews and things you guys have done over the years it's very nice to see that while many people who worked on the movie don't think it's good they are just

happy and grateful to see that somebody cares and to remember this very strange and interesting time in their life just having fun in North Carolina and wondering like what are we doing here what are we making uh Stephen have you had any like really interesting finds along your way, this journey of researching the movie?

Not for me personally, but a story that does stand out is come across a lot on Twitter, and this was a few years ago, but voice actor A.J. Locasio, he happened to find like a whole binder full of the film's storyboards in the gutter in L.A. Literally in the gutter. Wow. he looked over he saw a binder and it said Super Mario Brothers he opens it up

it's a bunch of storyboards it's completely bizarre but he sent it to us we got all the scans of it some of it we already had some of it we didn't but it just goes to show that you know for as long as we've been

doing it we've always been scared that things were just thrown out there was a ton of where now is calling up light motive studios like every week to say, hey, because can I get into your storage facility? Can we ask about your whatever materials you might still have? And it finally got to a point after like two years of calling, they finally answered. And they're like, yeah, we shut down the company a month ago. We liquidated the storage facility. Everything was thrown out. I'm like, I've been calling you for two years.

Yeah, that's heartbreaking. No, the workprint showed up. The storyboards show up in the gutter. Things keep still showing up. And it's just utterly fascinating to see what people have still held on to. The props in particular, there's a lot of those props that, like, the boots, for example, were made of foam. They just tossed them into a dumpster behind the,

the cement factory when they were done, and you would imagine most of them were destroyed, but we found like four or five pairs of thlamp stomp or boots so far. So it seems like some people had the wherewithal to hold onto these things. And one of the people on our site, Blake Dumas-Nill, he has a pretty good collection of materials, mostly props. He's been able to get in touch with a lot of people. prop makers in the industry as well who have materials from the film i mean that's pretty interesting to discover that actual film industry veterans are interested enough in the film that

they themselves are collecting it um but it's just a very interesting artifact and uncovering what it still remains and how it all ties together it's just been a very satisfying process for me That's great. Like I said up front, there are still so many mysteries to solve about this movie. And the work print that was discovered is only three years old. I'm not sure if this has happened to either of you, Ryan and Steve, Stephen, but was the, have you ever taken a field trip? Was there a North Carolina trip to the shooting locations? Is that still in your future? Well, I mean, I've taken field trips to where Stephen is.

He's in California, so we've had some screenings there, and we've had people come out. We've had props like Stephen was actually able to go to Rob Berman's warehouse and luggage. giant cupa heads bucket heads in his vehicle to the theater and if you go to the website and look that stuff up it was kind of a magical experience i live in raleigh so i'm only a oh okay drive away from wilmington um so i have driven there i have um i have gone to the the cement factory i had us we had a few years ago we had a screening at valet hall in wilmington and a lot of people that worked on the film and and wilmington loves their film industry they really support it and A lot of people came out to that screening and were able to reminisce

and tell stories and talk me about things and we had props there and everything like that and you can even if anybody else does make the trek you can go to the bar, Barbary Coast. They have the section

from the set of Lena's fossilized skeleton on the wall so you can go into this bar and there's like a giant like skeleton there from the movie. They excised it from the set and it's still up in that bar. I need to send co-host Jeremy Parrish there.

He lives in Raleigh. He doesn't know how close he is to the Super Mario Brothers stomping grounds. I know. He needs to watch the movie first. We will find a way to make him. He doesn't know how close he is to history. But we have to wrap up, thank you, Ryan and Stephen and Ray. I do want to end this discussion with everyone's thoughts.

What do you think the legacy of this movie is? And also, what are your hopes for this new Mario movie, if you care? Ray, how about you? Yeah, legacy. I think a lot of that has been evident. Like I said, in maybe the recent decade, ever since these guys' website got started and started growing, is that we have basically a younger generation. I mean, our guests are just a few years younger than us, Bob, but I think that's enough. I think so.

I'll take it. Yeah, and even like people a few years younger than all of us, like started to really appreciate the movie and they get excited about things like, oh man, this aesthetic rules and this is like a great example of this kind of era of filmmaking and so, so on and so forth. And you get people appreciating it on that level and people who definitely were not probably even alive when the movie came out and we're not even conscious of even like the reviews back then like us like we were. And so I think that legacy is just like a cool looking movie with some fascinating production story is probably like the best legacy it could possibly have at this point. Stephen, how about you? Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I feel it will help people realize what they were going for with the original film. It seems like it might be a little more by the numbers, a little more traditional.

and the original film was intended to be deconstructive and subversive. They were trying to, well, they were overthinking the material. So I feel like if we get a more standard straight carbon copy adaptation, people will appreciate what the original was going for a little more. I do have my worries. I don't think it's a straight comparison but I'm a huge fan of the Jim Carrey Grinch film and then Illumination later came out

with an animated adaptation which I did not like so I'm very fearful it'll be the same situation I just feel the live action version of how the Grinch stole Christmas really captured what the Grinch was about like in the in the remake the animated remake the grinch just hates christmas because he's a poo bear like i i don't they didn't really care too much it was just more of a straight adaptation and i'm hoping that they'll be a bit more bold with the the mario adaptation okay i have reservations too but first uh ryan

what are your thoughts on the legacy of the first movie and any thoughts on the upcoming movie yeah i mean at the end of the day i think i'm endlessly fascinated by by the super marion brother's movie um because it It does hit this really, we'll never have that time again in filmmaking and the history of filmmaking and the history of video games where it was this inflection point between traditional filmmaking approaches and the digital stuff. And it's right in the middle where you've got like a lot of burgeoning CG and puppetry and prosthetics and all that work. It's actually even technically it's the first movie to use digital intermediates, which is an industry standard thing now. but Mario Brothers, it was the first movie to do that. So it's kind of a pioneer in that way, and that's another overlooked little tidbit there.

So, yeah, just not only that, that aspect of it, but just the aspect of it being the first video game adaptation, and it's a very interesting look at the art of adapting something from one form of media to another. And it's definitely not one of the, by the numbers thing. me, it's, it's, it's, it's one of the, the standout examples of what could be possible or good choices, bad choices. It's just, it will always be a fascinating case study on it. And so that's, that's, that's the legacy is, is everything wrapped up into how it got made and why it got

made. And that's why the website exists. Um, as for the new movie, uh, you know, like Stephen, I, I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't think it'll, I'm worried it'll feel overproduced or just to, um, to, um, to buy the movie. the numbers, but you know, we'll see. The casting announcements leave me to believe that there's a lot, there's more world building than

you might think. You'll look on things like that and it'll be so it'll be interesting. And when the film and at the end of the day, like when that film was announced and the casting was announced, people went nuts on our social media like, oh, let's talk about the old movie. Like, we're going to appreciate that now. And I think the

audience that's grown up with the film or even after the film's been released, is a little bit more sophisticated now or is willing to go back and look at this old stuff with the new light because the people that were kids when the movie came out are now parents and so those are the kind of parents

that will take their kids to a Mario movie whether it's for them or not. Yeah, I'm thinking you might see a rush of new fans kids born in like the aughts who don't know there was another Mario movie or are just finding out. But yeah, my thoughts are very brief. Like this movie, the 93 movie, it's a movie that this thing cannot happen today.

There are things in place where this kind of movie cannot happen. So it's interesting to see a time when it did happen and it happened extravagantly. And, you know, it has a lot of problems. But if you watch it with an open mind, you can appreciate many elements of it. And if you have any questions, you have to go immediately to the Super Mario Brothers movie archive. And most of them will be answered. Again, there are still lingering questions. We'll get to them.

Hopefully in the future, there will be more storyboards. art fairies who will drop things off in gutters to answer more questions. I want to add real quick, I didn't actually answer your second question about the new movie. All I will say really is that no matter what I think

I'm going to be too old for it and that's okay. Me too, me too. I turn 40 before the movie comes out so I'm definitely too old for it. But yeah, my thoughts on that one are like to me the Mario characters and universe are what Star Wars is

and like marvelous to other people. like I'm really into it. I know a ton about it. I'm invested in it, but I don't expect this movie to be for me. I'm going to give it a chance. I think Bob Hoskins is a better casting than Chris Pratt, but who knows, maybe he'll surprise me.

I'm just happy that at least we'll get one every 30 years, so maybe I'll get to see one more Mario movie before I die. I don't think I'll make it to 101, but maybe I'll surprise you. Who knows? But this has been another episode of Retronauts. Thanks for joining us, everybody. I'll let you know where to find us online.

Of course, you can find us on Twitter. as at Retronauts and of course we are part of the HyperX Podcast Network and we are also fan supported on Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts. Sign up there for three bucks a month. You get access to all these episodes one week

at a time and ad free and for five bucks a month you get two full-length bonus episodes every month and a weekly column and podcast by a contributor to Diamond Fight and guess what folks that Mario Brothers movie commentary is on the $5 level posted earlier this month so if you want that as like the nice, the fun dessert after this serious Mario discussion

that's out there too if you want to check that out. But it's all happening at patreon.com slash retronauts. Let's go around the virtual room here. You can let us know where to find you. Let's start with Ray. Ray, what's going on with you? Sure. I'm on Twitter and Twitch

as RDBAAAA. I have a game company called Bipel Dog. I also do it with a podcast No More Whoppers here on our network, along with my friend Alex Fraoli, who I will add just saw the Super Mario Brothers movie recently as part of a

I guess a friend's double feature of Fisher Stevens he watched that alongside hackers I was going to say hackers it's probably hackers I guess that's the way to do it have your own Fisher Stevens double feature that's at no more walkers.com

our show Ryan how about you the Super Mario Brothers movie archive website is online at SMBmovie.com and we're on Twitter at SMB movie Stephen is usually the guy that's always hashtagging Trust the Fungus to you. Sometimes I'll do it, and I'll pop up in there. You can also follow me, just on my personal Twitter, at SMB underscore Ryan.

As I mentioned at the top of the show, I'm in the game industry. I'm a VFX artist, but I also do a lot of Batman stuff. Like Batman, I podcast with Batman on film, and I do a Robin and Drake podcast also. And so I'm kind of in that world as well. And Stephen, do you have any plugs? Just re-adding that on Twitter, you can find us at SMB movie, but we are also on

Facebook, Super Mario Brothers the movie archive. Both are pretty active every day. Lots of Mario and Moons. We'd love to have you join us. Awesome. Looking forward to what is coming next. And as for me, I do other podcasts. You probably know about them, but if you don't, I do Talking Simpsons. It's a chronological

exploration of the Simpsons. And what a cartoon where we look at a different cartoon from a different series every month. You can find those wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. We have a $5 level there. You get access to all of our exclusive miniseries and monthly episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talking to the Hill happening at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. That's it for us for this week. We'll see you again very soon for another episode of Retronauts. Take care. You're going to be able to be.

You know,