The Bechdel Cast - Super Marios Bros. (1993) with Abby Russell

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Wahoo! Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Abby Russell fire up their Nintendos and discuss Super Mario Bros. (1993)! Lets-a go! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @ybbaaabby on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELPSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hey Jamie, I've got a really good intro. Ready? Okay, let's do it. It's-a me, Bechdelcast. What? Hello. Oh my god. It's pretty good, right?

Listeners, I just want you to know that Caitlin, right before saying that, said, I've got a really good intro. No, and I'm going to leave that in the episode. All right, All right. I thought you were going to do something like really heady and be like, do you believe in podcast? Because that's for some reason the journey of this movie. Mario has to believe in dinosaurs? Question mark.

Which is also his journey in the game so it makes total sense yeah that this he would be on a dinosaur based journey right the reliance on the source material yeah it's it's there it's palpable we can feel it you can feel i can feel it in my in my little freaky dinosaur bones well i thought that was a great intro, even though I insulted it immediately. I was just being insecure. I wish I thought of it myself. You know, that's why this is a collaborative effort. It's true. Welcome to the Vexelcast.

My name is Jamie Loftus Mario. Oh, wow. My name is Caitlin Mario Durante, which actually almost works because my middle name is Marie you should one letter off of Mario you should get that changed you should you should figure that out it's not gonna be a big deal but like I think it would really turn some things around thank you I agree I'll work on I'm going to change my middle name to Bethano or something. I'll change to the last. Let's just slap an O on the end of both of our middle names. Well, here's the thing. Loftus Luigi. It doesn't sound that similar.

Jamie Loftus Mario. Yeah, it could have just been Jamie Luigi. It was right there. I'm keeping Jamie Loftus Mario unfortunately it's already legally reflected on my birth certificate I should have asked people no it's it's your choice anyway yeah I'm Caitlin Mario Durante my voice remains sounding like this I like this yeah it's the new you baby and thanks this week we're covering a movie that is no longer available publicly i would guess i don't know how long it's been unavailable publicly but i would guess partially because and this is why we're releasing this now because of the new mario movie i think this movie has such a bad reputation that maybe the like studio didn't even want it out for comparison. Huge mistake.

There's no way Chris Pratt Mario is going to be able to do the things that are done in this movie. I bet there's not even going to be a horny fungus. Where's the fungus penis coming out of foreskin? It's probably not going to be in this new movie. And that's a huge disappointment. It's a disaster. I really, I mean, whatever. I guess I'm rooting for this movie to be good.

I don't really know why. I feel like Chris Pratt, well, I don't know. We've got to get our expert in here. Because I need some thoughts. I need some experience. I need to understand what's happening here. But yes, we're covering Super Mario Brothers 1993 today. And we have an incredible guest. But first, we have to tell you what the Bechdel test is so that we can explain to you how this movie does

pass it. Right. So the Bechdel test is what we use as a jumping off point on our podcast, which we also didn't explain what this is. Here's what we do. We examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a much more thoughtful conversation, okay, about representation and such. And the Bechdel test, our version, requires that two characters of a marginalized gender who ideally have names, they must speak to each other about something other than a man. And ideally for us, it's a narratively relevant conversation.

I was so pleasantly surprised by so many things that happened in this movie. But that was one of them. And without further ado, we have an incredible guest today. Let's get her in the mix. We sure do. She's a comedian and gamer and a friend of ours. It's Abby Russell. Hello, that's me. I love games. I love i love games wow that feels good yeah have you ever said that before i love games yeah no i try to keep it deep down but this feels like a safe space where i can be authentically myself as a gamer and virgin exactly i mean look we we accept all kinds here thank you so okay we have been wanting to cover this movie with you for a while only to realize a few days before recording that it is not available anywhere however if uh listeners are interested i don't think john leguizamo is getting uh residuals

from this movie anymore so i would say don't feel bad about watching it illegally online which is what we all did yes it's worth it it's worth your time because this movie rocks yeah spoiler alert we all really like this movie I loved it I was kind of shocked I didn't think I would like it as much as I did I know well it was so like I feel like I knew about this movie's reputation a lot and then I was like ready for something that was way less like comprehensible or like fun to watch than it I I don't know like yeah the ending's a little confusing but it's like who I don't know Abby what's your history with this movie and I guess the Mario franchise in general wow okay I guess with this movie I've never seen it heard a lot about it I heard it was one of those like oh it's so bad kind of movies and i found it to be genuinely fun and a lot of really inspired

choices and i guess my history with mario i've been working in the gaming industry for far too long now so i've played quite a number of mario games i'm familiar with mario mario mario excuse with Mario. Mario Mario, excuse me. Canonically, he is Mario Mario. Do you have a favorite Mario game? Oh, gosh, there's so many. I mean, I love the Mario Party games. I know that they're the first choice. I love Mario Party. I think Mario Party is so fun. There are a billion of them. I think it's just a good time to be had all around. Also Mario Kart. Hard to go wrong with Mario Kart. Oof. Perfect game. No notes. Agreed.

Jamie, what is your relationship with this movie slash Mario in general? Ooh, I'm not a gamer girl. And I'm trying to fix that about myself. But I'm not. Yeah, that's a huge flaw of yours. I'm really trying to change as a person fundamentally. I just didn't, I feel like we've talked about, because we've covered a handful of video game movies on this show before, not too many.

We've covered Lara Croft. Is there anything else? Mortal Kombat movies. Never did a Mortal Kombat. There's always time. Maybe this is the second one we've covered. I just didn't, I don't know. I wasn't allowed to play video games growing up um and so by the time I got them yeah we had a hand-me-down

console from my cousin that we had to use like in secret and then when I got older my brother was allowed to play video games and by that point I didn't care but so I played very very few video games I watched my cousins play video I watched my cousins play Mario Kart a lot. I loved Spyro the Dragon. And that's kind of it. But during lockdown, I played top to bottom. Like, I've played a lot of Mario Party. I've watched a lot of Mario Kart.

And then I played Luigi's Mansion top to bottom during lockdown. And I loved Luigi's fucking mansion I don't really know what makes a good game or a bad game other than is it fun for me and did I finish it and so that five mansions for Luigi's Mansion and I just love Luigi as a guy too he's just a long piece of pasta I love that guy and i love john leguizamo's horny naive luigi that he i like what is sweetie pie yeah i think i'm just like first and foremost a luigi head and i would always like if i did play mario kart with my um oh that's another question i have for for both of you when i would play mario with my cousins I would always be Luigi because they're like you're tall and your your favorite color is green I was like damn they're right honestly I will say Jamie you do feel like a Luigi and Caitlin you feel like a

Mario I feel like this makes sense for the pod wait that's so uh what are your go-to uh characters if you're in mario kart who you who you who you jumping for i love yoshi who i guess is canonically a dinosaur we can confirm it there are a lot of questions about it but now we know he's a dinosaur yes yeah i also love shy guy who i don't think was in this movie unfortunately there's a shy guy and there is room for him. Right. It depends on the Mario Kart in question, because I was a big Mario Kart 64 head as a youth. And I would almost always, actually, I did not discriminate. I was every character in equal parts. Played the field. I was playing the field.

I was kind of a slut, actually, when it came to, proud slut, when it came to who I who I was driving around as in Mario Kart 64. Mario Kart Wii is the next one. Oh, I may maybe I don't know enough about like which Nintendo games showed up with which consoles. I now have a Switch. I don't know if there's like a specifically a Switch Mario Kart game or if it's just sort of like a carryover from... Abby, do you know? So there is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which is originally on the Wii U,

but because a lot of people didn't buy the Wii U, they ported it to the Switch. So Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is on the Switch and they've released like DLC just for the Switch since then then there's a bunch of dlc that's come out i play a lot of mario kart 8 deluxe to be honest so i think that is like the best mario kart they haven't made a new mario kart in years but mario kart 8 is still very good so i accept it it's okay god we'll allow it this was all to say that i have no go-to characters i just play as everyone all the time yeah i think that and also well again not to just keep piling on the luigi praise

but with luigi maybe this is just a list of questions i have for abby in relation to luigi who is waluigi? Okay, interesting question. So like Mario and Luigi are brothers, right? And then Wario and Waluigi are like the anti-Mario and Luigi. But I like to think that Wario and Waluigi are lovers and not brothers. But I don't think that's canonical. I think that's just a me thing. But I think they have lover energy. And I like their dynamic, personally. I don't know if that

answered your question. But I just wanted to talk about my fan fiction, I guess. I think it does. I think that that yin and yang, you know, that that makes sense to me that that scans. I feel like Wario and Waluigi aren't like true villains. They're sort of like fun anti heroes. I think they're goofy. People love Waluigi. They're true villains they're sort of like fun anti-heroes i think they're goofy people love waluigi they're a couple of rascals i like their mustaches they're spiky because they're evil yeah yeah i'm like real luigi's mustache that's smooth as butter baby abby have one more question before we start talking about the movie oh great and then oh wait no wait Caitlin what is your history with the Mario franchise oh my gosh I thought you'd never ask sorry I just I'm bursting with questions this morning uh I had seen this movie once before

but it's been like probably 20 years since I've seen it I I knew at the time that it had like a cult following and that it was like widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. I watched it, but I think I wasn't paying very close attention to it back then because I was just like, man, whatever. Like it was a weird, not very good movie. And then when I watched it again for this episode, I was like, wait a minute, we've been sleeping on this movie for decades this movie rocks and like no it's not good quote unquote but it's awesome it's so much not boring which is it's not boring it looks amazing the production design is incredible the performance it's funny there are jokes and they land yes the casting is incredible. The performances are incredible.

It's just like camp trash. And I love it. Yeah. Even like from our perspective, the movie did much better than I thought it was going to do. They made Daisy a paleontologist. It's also so wild that this movie comes out a few months, I think, before Jurassic Park. It's like, well, oh well steven spielberg must have been so happy that people hated this movie it's so silly to hate this movie what's it doing wrong i loved it this movie to me felt like if you asked an eight-year-old boy in the 80s like

okay you want to make a mario movie what's it gonna be and then the the child wrote the script like that's what it felt like to me but in like the best way yeah it reminded me a lot of like the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies it reminded me a lot of like Power Rangers I mean it reminded me of like Casper too like it just like it's like all of these I don't know I think it's funny that like this movie seems to be singled out as uniquely bad when it's like doing, I think, so many things that like attempting to adapt older properties or like just properties that hadn't been adapted to like Hollywood movies. It's like you wouldn't. Casper was like such a goofy, like nothing poofy cartoon that they turned into like a gritty kind of like overly horny live action movie with really fun practical effects and that's exactly what this is doing and it's like yeah i don't know why it caught so much shit i truly don't know yeah the third act kind of falls apart and the climax is barely a climax but other than that it's a perfect film there's a snow tunnel

and it's ladies from brooklyn and she doesn't even lose her cigarette and you're just like well I have no complaints it's great so yeah I love the movie and then as far as like Mario properties in general I grew up playing I didn't have a Super Nintendo but I had like a regular ass Nintendo so whatever Mario game was on that I played quite a bit as a kid and then my sister and I got a Nintendo 64 when I was maybe like 12 or something like that and I played Super Mario 64 I played Mario Kart 64 then I got my Switch at the beginning of the pandemic I've been playing Mario Party. I started replaying Mario 64. But then I was like, I have to move on to other things such as Zelda and Pokemon. Well, there comes a time in every person's life. Exactly. And I will say controversially, that Smash Brothers, I don't like it.

I don't like it either. Thank you. I don't think it i don't like it either thank you i don't thank you so much that good i also don't like crossover stuff i think it is unnatural and unright i don't think mario should be anywhere near link or any of the other little freaks they put in that game the animal crossing people with bowser i don't think so oh that's the one where they all play together yes and they like beat each other up no people are like do you want to play smash and I'm like no I want to have fun yeah yeah exactly wow anyway so that's just my tirade about Mario stuff I mean I have one more question for you before we get into this discussion which is do you have any opinions on video game movie adaptations in general?

Are there any video game movies that you are like, this is a good one? Because I feel like they generally, and maybe I'm wrong here, but I think they generally kind of get a bad rap. I think, yeah, I would agree. I think most do get a bad rap and most are not very good. I think the live action ones of like the 80s and 90s are typically thought of as like pretty terrible, but fun. And then I think like live action ones today are sort of like, they're so rote, they're boring, like the Uncharted movies.

And then I think things like the Sonic movies, and I expect the new Mario movie that will come out is like a perfectly passable movie for children. Like I think people go in and be like, it's going to be so stupid. I'm like, this is just for families. It's not really for you. And I think that's ultimately okay yeah yeah i think in general a lot of adult viewers should

maybe keep in mind that not all movies are made for them yes but this seems to be a very difficult thing for large groups of people to accept but then it's like the the last of us just came out and i feel like that i mean that's been extremely well received but that's also a mini series for the last of us is also based off of a game that is incredibly cinematic and narrative like so i think it adapts really well to television especially now in the age of like prestige tv whereas like mario does not have a coherent narrative so you're really gonna have to make some big choices to make a narrative happen i guess and they do they really do also i was like as i was watching this movie i was like wow a world covered in fungus what is this the last of us there's parallels yeah mario walked so last of us could run exactly Exactly. Yes. Yes. I haven't watched The Last of Us.

Neither have I. Because it seems long. Because you hate having a great time and looking at Pedro Pascal. It does not. Okay. To be fair, The Last of Us, I don't look at that poster and say, that looks like a great time. Maybe it looks like a good show, but it doesn't like, oh, I'm going to have a great time.

It's from the guy who made point oh i i i can't talk about the guy who made the last of us i have a positive opinion of him but it's his his career so wild he wrote two hangovers and then chernobyl and then last of us you're just wow he's honestly good for him i know I was like god I was talking to my boyfriend about it the other day and I was like men can do anything they're they're allowed to try so many things it's not fair I wanted to share speaking of um actually this is a male director I really really like and I think most people do this isn't a take, but there's a quote I found from Edgar Wright about how he thinks that video game movies don't work in general. And then like said kind of concisely why?

Because he's a gamer girl, Edgar Wright. He said, quote, there's never been a good video game film. The reason for that is staring you in the face. A video game is a unique experience to you. You are playing the game. Just like watching somebody else play a video game is not fun. I disagree. It's not fun watching a video game adaptation if you're not playing it.

There is no game that I would like to adapt. Maybe Rampage, but somebody's probably already doing that. Unquote. I believe someone did do that. Did that happen? Yeah, wasn't The Rock? I think so yeah i'm pretty sure yes oh my god i agree with parts of that but i think like you said people

love watching people play video games like twitch is huge i also think there are some good video game adaptions and i think there are so many video games like the last of us where you do it does add something to play the game but also because it's so narrative and kind of trying to be a movie anyway it like adapts really easily yeah whereas something like mario yeah is a different challenge again yeah damn well uh should we should we get into super mario brothers 1993 let's do it john legoisano is so handsome all right and yes let's do it right after this break. Yes. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers.

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I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Rudy. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it.

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subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Okay, so here's the recap. So for anyone who has not seen this movie, Fix it. Fix that right now. Yeah, go find, go watch this movie that's impossible to find. Literally, Caitlin messaged me and I, unfortunately, I'm a deviant and i know

how to find a movie if i can't find it and i was like just google the name of the movie and then one two three movies you'll find it your computer will explode but you'll find it and so it was and sure enough it is there yeah thank you for the link so just for anyone who hasn't seen this movie if you're picturing like an animated or, you know, like something aesthetically similar to the Mario games you're familiar with, that is not at all what this is. This movie is a live action reimagining of Mario where Mario and his brother Luigi are plumbers in modern day Brooklyn or like 90s 1993 when it came out. Okay, so that's what we're getting into. But first we open on animation of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, which also I don't know if anyone has seen 65 starring Adam Driver. No, I did not like it was that is there an adam driver dinosaur movie that's literally in theater well at the time of this recording it's in theaters what's going on

i did see it and it's another live action movie about humans interacting with t-rexes and other dinosaurs do they show a big dinosaur egg that then a baby girl comes out of? That almost happens in 65. The opening sequence with the woman running to the church reminded me of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, except it goes way better for her. Ooh. Oh, no.

The church is nice to her. So it's 65 million years ago. Then a meteorite hits hits and voiceover says yeah this meteorite hit the earth but what if not all dinosaurs were destroyed what if the impact of this meteorite created an alternate dimension where dinosaurs continue to thrive and evolve into intelligent species. And you're like, what movie did I walk into? Then we cut to, I think, the 1970s, where a woman is running frantically around Brooklyn.

She leaves something on the stoop of a church, then goes into the sewer where she runs into Koopa played by Dennis Hopper. Wild. And he's mean and she's scared of him. And then maybe like the tunnel collapses on him. We're not really sure. We cut to the church. What has been left on this stoop was a large egg, which hatches and inside is what appears to be a human baby yeah so it's a bunch of nuns who are like touching the egg you're like oh my god what is it and then like a human baby comes out and they're like whoa a miracle better raise it ah yeah like i'm saying i mean it just turns

out way and then later this is the being raised in a church thing is only brought up one other time. And she's like, yeah, it was great. I was like, wow, huge divergence from Hunchback of Notre Dame. He had a brutal time in that damn church. What was it? Oh, at first, at first I like assumed that the baby coming out of the egg was Mario. So it made me laugh when it was like 20 years later. I'm like, are they going to try to tell me Bob Hoskins is 20 years old?

But it would have been fun though. Along with the egg, this woman also left behind a bluish crystal, which will become important later. We then cut to present day, AKA 1993. We meet Mario played by Bob Hoskins and his younger brother, Luigi played by John Leguizamo. Just incredible. Perfect casting.

Perfect casting. It's so good. You wouldn't think that. I mean, I guess it's just like two people with just like off the charts levels of charisma. We were like, I guess they would work together. How could they and they do and they do they are plumbers who get called in for

a job but their competitor the mean mr scapelli gets there first mr scapeelli is also trying to shut down a paleontological dig where NYU students are digging up dinosaur bones, which is a project led by Daisy, played by Samantha Mathis. This is also like 80s and 90s kind of villains where I mean, and I kind of miss this in like big cartoonish real estate developer villains who get humiliated by the end of the movie like this happens in almost all of these kinds of adaptations and i always like it yeah and it's always some scrappy kids that are like don't build them all here and then they don't it's wild they don't and it works and we love it just like in real life yeah exactly um then we meet these two goons spike and iggy who work for koopa and it seems like they are fish out of water they're eating hot dogs the wrong way. Which, Jamie? Cheering. I was cheering.

They think that they're eating actual dog meat. They throw away the buns. It's hilarious. I mean, depending on where you source it, you could be eating actual dog meat. Sometimes the rumors are true. And I appreciated that deconstruction of the form. Oh, sorry. Guys, Flea just pooped. and so he's walking around and screaming that's what i do too he's sometimes when he really lays an egg

it has to he's like call the nuns scream it out call the nuns We get a live one. Okay. All right. Sorry. No worries. So Spike and Iggy are maybe from another dimension, but they are trying to kidnap Daisy. Yeah. Daisy, meanwhile, crosses paths with Luigi and he's like, hubba hubba hubba awooga who is that but luigi is really bad at flirting so mario steps in and helps mario smooth as hell mario women are dropping at this guy's feet

yeah i love and he's a good boyfriend oh i know I know. I was like, wow. He treats women right. I was into it. He does. Both of them. They're so sweet to the women in their lives. And it's like, wow. It's really nice. We never see this.

I was like jealous. I was jealous of Daniela. Yeah. He's so affectionate. He's so nice. I know. And then, so they offer Daisy a ride and then luigi asks her to dinner that night cut to dinner it's a double date between luigi and daisy and mario and his girlfriend daniella

this is where we discover that daisy is the baby who hatched from the egg at the beginning because she has that blue crystal, which she wears around her neck as a necklace. And we're like, wow, blue crystal necklace, heart of the ocean much? Also, there's a moment where Luigi's like, I'm flying, Mario. I'm flying. And you're like, whoa. James Cameron ripped it off 100% okay so then Luigi is like wow Daisy your job digging up dinosaur bones is so cool and she's like I'll show you

so she takes him down to the sewer meanwhile Spike and Iggy kidnap Mario's girlfriend, Daniela, because they mistake her for Daisy, but they realize they've gotten the wrong person. So then they follow Daisy and Luigi into the sewer. Meanwhile, Daisy and Luigi are about to smooch, but then some pipes burst. And this is maybe my favorite joke of the movie where Luigi, who is a plumber, she's like, oh, my gosh, thank goodness you're here. You're a plumber. And he's like, that's right. I know exactly what to do. Cut to them going to Mario for help because Luigi doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah, it's like I also like that it's sort of canon that Luigi doesn't know what he's doing yeah it's like i also like that it's um sort of canon

that luigi doesn't know what he's doing he's just an apprentice true he's still learning god also john not to like keep thirsting after john leguizamo but i was like wow he's probably like 22 here he's 33 really oh my god i was like he looks so young. Good for him. Look, I mean, I have no explanation. I just have the truth. I will say I did appreciate how many times that they got out of situations via plumbing, either like messing with plumbing or repairing the plumbing. I thought that was a really fun way to be like, look, they're plumbers. This is what they know how to do. They are going to plumb. Yeah, they're not Mary Sue plum plumbers they use skills they already have all the time there's even like it got more i was like wow this is getting kind of granular like mario's talking luigi through some hvac

shit at one point and you're just like this is like pretty intense working class heroes blue color heroes and then they mentioned their union yeah plumbers famously have like some of the strongest unions in like the world so it's also like man i believe it these guys work class heroes luigi has like a rainbow tool belt he's an ally oh he's an ally god i love these guys they rock i also wondered the the way that they set up like it seems like the way that mario and luigi get plumbing work is by like walking around i'm just looking for i was like don't they call you why are you walking around looking for plumbing problems but i don't know i've never worked i've never apprenticed so i can't say for sure

sure um okay so now they all go back down to the sewer to fix these pipes but oh no the goons kidnap daisy and bring her through this porthole but her crystal necklace gets left behind luigi and mario grab it and then they jump through the porthole as well which is just like a rock face they go into the sewers and then it's like kind of an underground like cavey canyon thing yeah they jump into like a wiggly rock essentially precisely this like helped me understand a little better when like the two directors who did this also invented that character Max Headroom who looks similarly bizarre it was like an 80s um I associate it with MTV but it was like this 80s tv host that was just a computer generated head and I think he wore sunglasses

and it was supposed to be like this cool futuristic like Gen x kids will love this and they did and you're like all right um but it like the graphics are super similar and that was well i'm excited to talk about the production of this movie because it's there's so much too oh my god one of the directors poured hot coffee at an extra you're like what the fuck is going on John Leguizamo like injured Bob was driving the Mario like their plumbing car drunk because they were drunk all the time yeah I read he hurt Bob Hoskins and he had to wear a cast for most of the movie he's wearing a flush flesh-colored cast anyways the backstory is wild good trivia they did flip a lot of cars I was kind of amazed at how many big action sequences there were.

I loved it. They spared no expense. It felt like almost Tim Burton Batman-y, the way the action was at some point. Whereas like big action sequences with like a pause for jokes. Yes. Loved it. This is not really the tone of the script, but more the aesthetics of like, especially how the villains dressed.

Have y'all seen the movie Dead Ringers? No. No. It's a freaky weird movie that is very tonally different but it's about these two twin gynecologists based off of like i think real life and then they like i think maybe start like mutilating and murdering people well and then also like each other and they have these weird freaky tools but anyway i felt like real similar aesthetics like they were in the same world kind of vibe.

Okay. God, that's wild. All right. So Luigi and Mario jump through to this alternate dimension, which is similar to New York City, but it's really kooky. And some people look like reptiles and everything is covered in fungus. And Mario and Luigi are are like what the fuck but they have to keep chasing the goons who captured daisy meanwhile koopa and his sidekick slash girlfriend or i don't really know what their relationship is exactly it was unclear

but she definitely like it's it that character well we'll get back to her but yeah it's like or I don't really know what their relationship is exactly. It was unclear. But she definitely, like, it's, that character, well, we'll get back to her. But yeah, it's like she definitely is primarily motivated by ambition. But it also does seem like she's kind of in love with Dennis Hopper. Yes, it does seem. So this is Lena, played by Fiona Shaw, who some listeners might recognize as Aunt Petunia from the Harry Potter movies. Is that her most famous role?

That was what I recognized her in. Oh, I guess I know her from like Killing Eve. Oh, yes. She's great in Killing Eve. Yeah, she's so good. She's great. And this is like peak good villain costuming for her. Yes.

Such good outfits. So Koopa and Lena reveal their plan. So Koopa needs the missing piece of the meteorite that had split the two dimensions. Because they're in the dimension where the people evolved from reptiles. So Koopa hates mammals because he's like a dinosaur man. And he also resents that mammals get to live above ground with clean water and fresh air. And that he and his reptile people are stuck in this like sewer dimension. So this piece of the meteorite will help them merge the worlds because he's gonna like stick it in

the big meteorite and it's gonna bring these two worlds together and he wants to rule over everyone and if you're if you don't understand that's fine like it doesn't really i kind of really forget it i was like something about merging the word. And then it gets really, really heady where it's like, we want to do. And then there's like some attempted commentary on like fascistic societies because Kupa is like this fascist leader. And then he's trying to like brainwash people into being goombas that don't question him. And then he can also make people smarter. But if you make them smarter, they become socialist revolutionaries there's like a lot of like stuff going on um correct and i liked

it all but i was like this is i don't know if mario is like able to handle this level of of commentary but i like that they tried right they're like this dinosaur realm is a police state and Mario and Luigi have to come in and dismantle it they arrest Toad for singing like a Bob Dylan song about Koopa you're like whoa this is this is intense it's wild yeah yeah okay so as Mario and Luigi are trying to navigate through the chaos of being in this alternate dimension a woman with a red and very spiky outfit yes the judge from legally blonde yes great character actor moment wait what is her what is that she was my favorite part of the movie i loved everything about her incredible just incredible uh francesca p roberts yes whose name we will learn is bertha a little later on

but she steals the necklace from mario and luigi well really an old lady steals it and then she comes along and throws the old lady over a bridge and steals it for herself yes what a two-punch uh women can do anything it's really we're still recording this during women's history month and in that moment i was like wow i felt it yeah girl power because the the older lady i think takes advantage of what the marios assume of her which is that she's weak and defenseless and then she mugs them and then bertha throws her off a bridge iconic but she continues to fight and then she steals a car or something. Yeah. Oh, that sequence was so fun.

I loved it. It's great. Okay. So then Mario and Luigi meet Toad, who is, like you said, Jamie, like a musician who's singing songs. Very weird adaptation of that character. Yeah. Like swirly hair.

They made some choices on that one. Yeah, did anything about the care am i like i mean i'm not super well versed but like is there anything about the character toad that's like particularly musical or counter culture i was like why did they make those choices toad is just like a little dude who's like here's the tutorial for the game right in the later games he like goes around exploring he's like a captain toad but yeah i was like that's the little guy that tells me what lap i'm on that's exactly his job queer icon toad he's just doing his job you know but i mean i i thought again just like another fun weird swing that this movie makes you're like yeah i guess that he's an acoustic guitarist sure yes so they all get arrested and thrown in jail for like no reason really and koopa shows up

and he's like hey mario and luigi give me that meteorite piece and they're like we don't have it. So Koopa gets mad and de-evolves Toad because he has this machine where you can either evolve or de-evolve people. And so he de-evolves Toad into a reptile with a tiny head and makes him join the Goomba army. Because in this version of Mario, Goombas are not the little mushroom guys no goombas are fascist soldiers with tiny heads very small huge bodies tiny little heads it's clearly an adult man sticking his head up and controlling a puppet yes which we love to see i wish we saw more of it, but it is. Yeah. And then also the,

I mean, again, like they attempted, like they're like, but the Goombas can be deprogrammed by showings of human kindness or something because they bring Daisy vegetables. Well, that's,

that's toad Goomba. Oh, that's how the fuck am I supposed to know that? They gave him a harmonica immediately that's how you appreciate it yeah because he's got the harmonica clearly i'm not operating on the intellectual level this movie is i was like wow that's so nice there was a lot of layers going on with the plot i was just like i'm here to vibe i'm not here to follow what's happening at any point yeah i think that that's the intention and if it isn't that's the way to best enjoy this movie well i was analyzing it

through a like narrative storytelling screenwriting point of view and i was like honestly things track i'm following it's working for me it basically works and that's honestly more than most movies do and it's not boring and that's definitely that's the thing is like even if the new mario movie is good i bet it will be boring oh yeah i think it's going to be perfectly milk toast and a perfectly passable movie to watch with your nephew yeah which fine sure whatever no minions it's no minions honey i tell you what they're taking risks over in minion town damn right they're making swings yeah uh okay so mario and luigi are like still

being detained they fight back and escape in a stolen cop car and they drive through a tunnel and end up in the desert also this thing keeps happening where it seems like the fungus that's covering everything is like helping them and giving them little trinkets that they are gonna use later like little bombs little bombs yeah meanwhile koopa decides to evolve Spike and Iggy to make them smarter so that they'll be better at helping him. And then Lena goes to Daisy and she's like, here's the thing about your mother and father. Your father was the king. Your mother is that lady who we saw at the beginning who left the egg at the church. she was trying to keep her later egg in front of a bunch of nuns and so we realized oh daisy is this like princess

from this alternate realm and lena also tells daisy that the reason koopa wants her is that he thinks daisy is the only one who can merge the dimensions. Like her body can withstand the force that it will take. It's all very like royalist-y, but you're like, it's Mario. I just gotta, I just gotta roll with it. I don't have time to think about royalist bloodline bullshit. I can't do it today. But, you know, noted.

This is also when Daisy meets a little dinosaur named Yoshi, who is nice and who is also treated as Koopa's prisoner. So Yoshi and Daisy become friends. Back in the desert, Mario and Luigi run into the goons, Spike and Iggygy who are trying to get the meteorite piece still then they all head back into the city to take the meteorite piece from the woman who stole it Bertha who works as a bouncer at a nightclub so Mario and Luigi go to the club Mario gets the necklace from Bertha by flirting and dancing with her they have a very sensual dance moment it's honestly very well done I was into it yeah I loved it oh I I really loved it yeah like it was um they played it straight in a way that I was like it's so cool that they hired like mostly classically trained actors for this.

Because they're not out of context. You're like, this could be in so many different movies. Yes. And I loved that Mario Mario was like, the way I'm going to win over this woman's heart is by being like, I am horny when you punch me. Please keep doing that. And she's like, okay, big boy. Let's do it. And it works like a charm.

But also I'm like, i think he's kind of serious right yes yes so there's like a kink element to this movie too it's awesome thrilling yes yeah so he steals the necklace back she realizes what has happened but she's like shrug they're my friends now so she helps them escape and also steals the little kiss oh yeah they kiss but they have to escape when lena shows up with some goombas and immediately steals the meteorite necklace from mario and luigi so now lena has it mario and luigi show up at koopa's house slash headquarters slash layer whatever suddenly dressed in far more Mario and Luigi outfits that we hadn't seen them in before. Yeah, they're wearing like really generally 90s

clothes up to this point. Yeah. There's a scene in an elevator where they get the Goombas to dance. They really just like disarm a lot of the villains by dancing with them, I realized, which is beautiful. Meanwhile, Lena approaches Daisy and she's about to stab Daisy, but Yoshi saves her. Daisy escapes, Lena stabs Yoshi, but he doesn't die for some reason. I thought for sure he and Lena died in that scene

but it turns out they're both fine and Yoshi's just wearing a little collar yeah which then she just took off it was like he'd been wearing the collar like you could have just taken it off earlier I was surprised that she was suddenly able to take it off nothing really changed that's true no that was a little confusing to me but i was just like honestly i just i was i was bummed out when i thought lena had died and i was like oh i guess i guess she made it great no she just dies later yeah and in a really cartoony way she's just skeletonified yep uh okay so daisy with the help of goomba toad and Iggy and Spike, who have turned on Koopa and are loyal to Daisy and her father, the king. Which is weird because it's like, but they're talking like they're socialist revolutionaries.

And it was really funny where they're like, they put you through the smart machine. But then it's like, but then they also are like, we love the king. I'm like, put them through the smart machine one more time. Right. They got to seize the means of productions down there in Dino York. Exactly. So Iggy and Spike show Daisy her father, who is this giant blob of sentient fungus. And she's like, hi, dad. He's just a throbbing pile of ceiling fungus and i

i loved it i loved it it's so oh the color is like nauseating it's like dripping goo everywhere kind of it's fleshy looking i was just thinking like if i were a child i think i would be scared by the fungus it wasn't even like fun and cartoony it was realistic and disgusting yes yeah like it was like a throbbing flesh colored like yeah fungus it was both wet and dry somehow wow Beetlejuice cum scabs vibes we don't have time we can't okay so mario and luigi reunite with daisy she introduces them to her fungus dad and then mario goes to rescue his girlfriend daniella and the other brooklyn women who the goons had previously kidnapped thinking they were also daisy amazing they escape via sliding down this huge icy pipe.

And then Mario, Luigi, Daisy, and Daniela, they're like ready to go back to Brooklyn. But oh no, Koopa finally gets his hand on the meteorite piece. And he's ready to like reunite the piece with the rest of the meteorite. But then there's this climactic scuffle where mario is trying to stop koopa the two dimensions start merging at one point it's this at this point it is genuinely really confusing what is going on the third act really again falls apart and the climax is like not that satisfying because it just like they pretty easily are able to blow up koopa with a bomb and then they de-evolve him into a dinosaur and then goo but also they like defeat the like mob boss in brooklyn who is like the real estate guy yes by de-evolving him into

a chimpanzee right which was also like okay we'd solve that problem pretty quick too like now we're gonna go back to the underground world and i guess that's fine yeah everything's great um so everyone's celebrating the fungus king returns to his human self and then mario and luigi go to leave and return to brooklyn's like I'm gonna stay here and Luigi's like damn girl but I love you and she's like yeah but I gotta figure out who I am and he's like respect well so and sort of Mario says that for him yeah it's because Mario's an ally and then he's watching them kiss for a little too long but it's a horny movie very horny and then mario and luigi go back to brooklyn back to their normal lives

some time passes and then one day daisy shows up at their door and is like you gotta come with me and they're like okay which is setting up a sequel that never happens because this movie was a box office flop. Yeah. Also, I did like the implication that she's like, you know, Cooper is dead. My dad's me back.

We got to rebuild the city. Things are gonna be good again. And then she comes back. Like her clothes are all torn. She's like covered in soot. She has like this huge gun. She's like, I need your help.

It's like, what happened down there? Things are supposed to get better. Right. Right. The people turned on the monarchy uh yeah maybe spike and iggy took over because they're just like death to the king actually yeah uh should we shall we take a quick break and then uh come back to discuss many of the complex themes in this incredible movie. Yes, let's. We'll be right back.

Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself.

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Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. I? I got to hawk this slalom, Rudy. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.

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And we're back. I wanted to talk about, before we get into the deeply nuanced discussion this movie requires. Yes, yes, yes. I wanted to just do some recaps of behind the scenes stuff that happened in this movie. It like is, I think, equally notorious for being a very messy behind the scenes stuff that happened in this movie it like is i think equally notorious

for being a very messy behind the scenes story as it is for being a movie that's considered to be bad there's a really good half hour short doc on it on the youtube channel gaming historian where i learned a lot including um it just like feels so of the time, the way that they were trying to build this. They originally hired the screenwriter for Rain Man to write the screenplay. And then he was fired because they didn't like the script because they said it was too similar to Rain Man. Which, I don't know what that means. To the point where they called the script Drain Man. Yes. Which is funny because of plumbing and pipes ha ha ha but is this real or is this a bit no this is true this is like really called it

drain man maybe it probably like as the working title that's still though and i think that like part of the reason this movie is so weird in a way that we obviously like, but it's like, this was the first big Hollywood video game adaptation ever. I think it was so poorly received at the time that they didn't make another live action Nintendo movie until detective Pikachu over 25 years later. Like this movie, it scared Nintendo big time in terms of like adapting their properties into movies. But in any case, at the time it was seen like as experimental and like Mario is like too big to fail. They're like, well, let's hire some experimental filmmakers and like see what they do. Because that was sort of what was done at the time. I don't like, I think it was positioned as

like, what a weird thing to do, but it's like giving Tim Burton Batman was weird and that worked out great. And like, there were sort of scrappy indie filmmakers that were given these big properties and it would do well. So like it made sort of sense. They hired this director turned producer named Roland Joffe who had won an Academy Award before for making a movie about genocide in Cambodia. So again, it's just like I wish I'm sure is a great movie but it doesn't seem like a natural fit for the super mario brothers movie but they give it to him he hires the screenwriter from rain man like it just seems all bizarre they hire the production designer from blade runner which i think is why this movie looks so cool yeah they hire an academy award-winning

cinematographer as well and then they end up like they have trouble with casting because Nintendo has opinions on who should play Mario, who shouldn't. Dustin Hoffman almost played Mario, which I think would have been fun. But also, I guess if the Rain Man issue was already an issue, that would not help. I don't know. And then Tom Hanks was almost mario i think that would have sucked yeah that would have been normal too normal you know what i mean yeah mario shouldn't be like i don't know bob hoskins makes more sense the only person who would make more sense than bob hoskins is danny devito who was offered the part and turned it down because he thought the script

sucked because he's a discerning king um and then koopa, they wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger or Michael Keaton. And then they didn't want anyone for Luigi except John Leguizamo, I'm pretty sure, which is great. In any case, they ended up hiring. There's two directors on this movie. It's a married couple, Rocky Morton and Annabelle Jankel. So we're like, yay, there's a woman director on this movie but unfortunately they're both evil uh they're very hated by everyone it sounds like they were so they were most famous for um inventing max headroom like we were talking about earlier

they didn't have feature experience they'd done like a bunch of very like 80s 90s gen x experimental music videos and shit like that and then they were like sure we'll do like the tim burton thing and give you this big movie to direct um which they were bad at everyone in the cast started drinking during the day all the time they called each other cruel names the directors i guess were really demanding and also didn't know what they were doing they They were being very disrespectful to these incredibly well-regarded cinematographers and production designers they'd hired

and were micromanaging people who knew what they were doing more than they did. It's said that Rocky Morton poured hot coffee on an extra. John Leguizamo said that. Why? There's 500 different versions of the story ultimately it seems like he was mean cartoonishly mean at some point like in production they wouldn't let the director talk to the writers anymore because the directors were constantly trying to get shit rewritten the movie was rewritten almost every day. Like everyone was miserable.

Yeah, John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins are drunk during basically every shot of this movie. To the point where John Leguizamo like almost, I don't know if he broke Bob Hoskins' leg or what happened. But like Bob Hoskins was wearing a cast for a lot of the movie. It just seems like it was pretty horrific. Yeah. Hoskins said, Oh yes. Give me that quote.

I love that quote. The worst thing I ever did. Super Mario brothers. It was a fucking nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband and wife team directing whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks, their own agent told them to get off the set. Fucking nightmare.

And then Dennis Hopper, who, by the way, I feel like is playing a similar villain to the villain he played a few years earlier in Speed. He's like invoking some of that. Wow. He also thought it was, quote, a nightmare. It was a husband and wife directing team who were both control freaks and wouldn't talk before they made decisions. We've all been around couples like that, I think. Yeah. Just a fucking nightmare um so i think i'm which always kind of elevates the fact that i'm like

all things considered i don't think it turned out that bad if people were that fucking miserable the whole time there was also like i was looking for pictures of them i couldn't find them but i guess that they the crew hated these directors so much that they started like making t-shirts that openly and they would wear them to set like it was like oh my god hated these directors it just seemed it seemed like they were really in the trenches over there whenever you like hear about these super toxic working environments it always just is like it's wild to see like people at their limits like these are people on their worst behavior and it makes everyone on their worst behavior and then they do just wild things like that where they're like i'm gonna make a t-shirt just to tell my boss to go fuck themselves like that is just wild there is

something yeah it's like i know like we've all been in like whatever job it is for you that you're like this is where i really became a different version of myself because I was so upset about where I was working. And there is like something so powerful about bonding with coworkers who are miserable in the same exact way you do, or you are, and like are mad at the same authority figure you are. And then you make a t-shirt sometimes.

Oh God, I would love to see those t-shirts. Anyways, that's the background of this movie can I share a couple additional things that I learned yeah um this one is just a fun fact a lot of different screenwriters were brought on to write a draft and then fired basically and then another screenwriting team or duo would be brought on to you know write the next draft so one of these screenwriting teams that wrote a draft of the movie uh later said that

essentially what we did was what shrek did hello so they because their version was a take that was like subverting fairy tale cliches. Oh, fun. And satirizing them. So that's that fun fact. At another point, a different writing team was brought on. This was Dick Clement and Ian Lafrenis. I'm not sure how to. Lafrenis? Lafrenis. I'm not sure how to. Lafrenis?

Lafrenis. I'm not sure. They were brought on to deliver, and I'm pulling this from scholarly journal Wikipedia, of course, which by the way, the Wikipedia entry for this movie is one of the longest Wikipedia entries

for a movie that I have ever seen. Oh, I mean, there's people love talking about disaster sets. Yeah. Yes. So there's a lot here, but anyway,

so this screenwriting team was brought on to deliver a more adult and feminist tone where the version that they wrote, Princess Daisy and Lena's roles were expanded and they were the ones who added the character of bertha and it was their script that finally convinced bob hoskins to take on the role of mario i'm not totally sure how much the script was rewritten after that draft, but it seems like... Probably significantly. Probably. But also I would guess that like an earlier draft, Lena's role might have been scaled back.

And so like her prominence in the movie that we see, I wonder if that was like thanks to this draft or the screenplay. I hope so. I mean, and, and also, I mean, we'll talk about this in a little bit, but like Daisy, I don't know. That's why I was like, I feel like Daisy seems like maybe a victim of a lot of rewrites where she starts out as a super like motivated and smart and cool character. And then she's like, she disappears for a pretty big chunk, but then she comes back at the end and like becomes

a more active character at the end but she's kind of like i mean i guess it that's like uh the most mario thing in the world to do is to have a princess in a tower that's canon but i i did appreciate that like it wasn't just like we're gonna put her in a tower for most of the movie and she won't have a personality and blah blah blah like she had a lot of cool stuff going on yeah this is an aside that this all just reminded me of but have y'all ever played or do you know about the one princess peach game that they made no never played it no it was for the nintendo ds i did play it and loved it but it is like the only one where princess peach is the protagonist she's proactive and her powers no joke are is like her emotions she's very emotional so she'll cry and

it'll like flood she'll get overly angry and light on fire so it's a little bit of controversy of like you made the one woman character like overly emotional and that's her skill but i don't know this just reminded me of that. That is fascinating. I was like, I think I need the weekend to cook on how I feel about that. That's so wild. Well, I guess, I mean, in that way, this movie does better than that. Like she has. She's a woman in STEM.

She's a woman in STEM. She's running as as like an undergrad running her own paleontology department yeah because she's like 20 so she's probably like a sophomore or junior or something but she's like no i'm i'm leading this project of this like intensive new york city dinosaur find yeah you're like yeah sure great like i i thought that was great like i i like that it's also rooted in like who she is as a character like it makes sense that she's interested in dinosaurs she's part dinosaur question mark i didn't even think about that yeah not really sure but it feels like they really thought it through and with her relationship with luigi like he is doing the like awuga cartoon wolf eyes at her at first but i thought in general he was so

he was very sweet to her he was very polite he like really liked her for her they go on an actual date yeah like he's interested in who she is like it makes i liked that they connected on like not knowing who their real parents were it just felt like a real cute relationship i loved it i am so here for this romance yeah yeah like you said he's he's so sweet to her she's like insecure about what she does for a living slash her academic pursuits she's like you probably think i'm weird that i'm a 20 year old dinosaur genius and he's like no i think it's so freaking awesome and so he's like interested in her work and her mind and i love uh that moment with them on the sidewalk where um they both are like yeah if you if you think i suck and i'm not cool, like, you can totally, like, bail right now. And that would be fine.

And then she was like, I was going to say the same thing. Like, if you want to bail on me, like, that's totally cool. I just thought that was so sweet. I was like, but you guys are so great together. I loved them. And then when she introduces Luigi to her fungus dad, he's like, oh, oh my god it's such an honor to meet you he had this like ball of goo he's so cute so sweet i also love that they didn't make mario the one who was gonna like get the girl at the end like he's like i got a steady girlfriend

i might kiss the judge from legally blonde on the side but like i'm covered i'm good i'm here for my little bro. And I really liked that. I thought that was really sweet. Yeah. And his relationship with Daniela. I mean, even though Daniela doesn't get the same emphasis or like character

development that Daisy does, it seems like they have a good relationship and that they've been together for a long time. I do wish her name was Peach though. Yeah. I know. I don't know why, but,

but they really like double down on they're like they're just in brooklyn it's just brooklyn in 1993 because there's a bunch of i mean yeah i don't know i was expecting to not be into any of the uh romantic pairings introduced in this movie but i i thought especially for 1993 you're like this is really sweet they're like very affectionate sweet partners I just wish that like that Daisy and Daniela got to like participate in the action yeah right more or at all Daisy has moments I mean she doesn't really participate in the action she does have um because like at the beginning she is very motivated and does a lot of stuff. Then she's kidnapped and is kind of sidelined for a good chunk of the movie.

And then we basically just see her talking to Yoshi, which kind of gave me like Jasmine from Aladdin vibes where she's like, it's just me and my animal and we're trapped here and we're just gonna have little conversations and you're like okay and then you get a little bit of her and Lena I thought those conversations were pretty cool where I think I don't know sometimes you're like programmed with the expectation of like oh Lena will probably like feel bad for her and act maternally and blah blah blah but lena's like no i want to merge the worlds or whatever that plot point is and i'll kill anyone who's in my way blah blah blah and so you know i thought that was fine but then she doesn't really get to physically do anything again until she breaks out of the tower but i was also honestly surprised that she breaks out of the

tower yeah mostly with the help uh well because she keeps getting saved and then recaptured but i don't think at any point she's actually like physically saved by mario and luigi okay so i mean the whole premise of both this movie and mario games in general is like oh we have to save the princess from Bowser or Koop or, you know, whoever has kidnapped the princess. And usually it's Princess Peach if we're talking about the video games. In this movie, it's Daisy, who is like Daisy canonically Luigi's girlfriend in the games. I mean, I think she's like the B. I don't think anyone's canonical. I mean, I guess Peach kind

of is canonical. There's like weird canonical stuff with the girlfriends where like Bowser Jr. is maybe Peach's baby. Whoa. There's like, I think it's in Mario Sunshine, there's like a cutscene where Bowser, it was like she got kidnapped by Bowser and then later Bowser Jr. sees Peach

and he's like, Mommy? like whoa but anyway this is all to say I don't know how much of the canonical relationships that there is but I do think Daisy is the Luigi to Mario's Peach sure so the premise of the games and this movie is like we have to save the princess who has been kidnapped and damseled and then also like we have to save daniella and the other women from brooklyn who had been kidnapped so the main like again narrative thrust of the movie is like he's trying to bring narrative thrust back and it's really driving me up the wall the inciting incident is like daisy getting kidnapped yeah and mario and luigi having to like go into the alternate dimension to save her and most of the movie is them trying to

save her which so it's a very like damsel in distress narrative and i do think that there probably was a way to like remain i don't know like i there's so many elements of this movie that are in no way faithful to the mario franchise right that i'm like well why is that i mean like that element they keep pretty intact although they, like they did more with it than I thought they would. But it is still like she's trapped in a tower for a lot of it. Daniela, poor Daniela is kidnapped. And you think that's the inciting incident, but it's not because Mario doesn't even know what happens until the end of the movie. He has no idea.

I also think there's ways to kidnap a character, specifically a woman, but not completely damsel her. So if they want to remain like faithful to the source material of like the princess gets kidnapped, she can still be far save herself and make active choices that don't just completely leave her as a like a helpless damsel right they also had like the whole necklace plot too so there could have definitely been a world too where like she saves herself or like she can steal the necklace for herself and they can help break her out or something where it's like she you know because there are two things they need saving right that aren't just like the girl and the you know it's also the necklace too yeah that's like kind of another missed opportunity where she's supposed to have this like vague special ability to merge the worlds that maybe she could

have like made some use of to get herself out of the tower like if she's able to merge dimensions why is she stuck in the tower right seems a little yeah like i i i definitely think that there's things that could and should have been done different and it's also like it wasn't like she wasn't set up with a lot of abilities i was surprised that her like paleontology skills didn't come back more meaningfully either right other than like she's like uniquely able to like connect with yoshi i i think it's implied because she like understands dinosaurs but like outside of that it's like you're in dino world you should be like uniquely useful here but they but they don't really use that for a big chunk of the movie that's why jurassic park works so well the people who are in the park are dinosaur

experts even the kids timmy read a book about dinosaurs so he knows what's what so yeah i think that there there were and again it's just i mean i know this movie was written 50 times and it seems like there were i would guess that there's versions of this where she was more active in the second act and that is just like not the version we saw which is a bummer because I really liked how they set up her character to the point where I didn't like feel like the romance subplot was like taking up too much air it felt earned so yeah but then she just disappears for a big chunk and poor Daniela is even worse off even though I think daniella i think it would have been really easy to write her reductively and i feel like i've seen like lady from brooklyn characters written

off very reductively but she seems like i mean she has written to be like i think she works at a tanning salon is what we're told yeah and when she and um i liked that she and daisy were both really different but they like got along fine they like seemed to you know like i liked when daniella was like yeah to set up the fact that she's wearing a meteorite says like oh you should come to the tanning salon you'll have to take off that meteorite though it's like nice setup but i like that it's like she's like a working class person as well but like she's not made fun of or like made out to seem like a bimbo or anything like that and none of the women from brooklyn are really i mean they're like maybe a little cartoonish you could argue yeah and they all are damseled um i like that they were friends with

each other though they didn't start like fighting in the prison or anything and even the one who's like well she's from queens and they like kind of rib her but it's like all in good fun i thought that was very charming but we like her though yeah and i also like that they somehow got to keep cigarettes for the entire it was so funny they keep each other warm when they freeze the pipes yeah daisy's happy to see daniella even though they're like being held hostage together it's like oh these women like each other they get along it's sweet like and again it's like could there be more done yes do i think that mario needed to show up to save them no it seems like they probably could have broken i think i wouldn't have been

bumped by them like a bunch of like brassy women from brooklyn escaping lizard jail like that would fucking rule i would love to see that there's only one goomba there that they have to they would have to have dealt with he's outnumbered right and then like yeah i i think that they probably that would have been a cool moment for danie to kind of like unsinkable Molly Brown the situation and be like, let's get the fuck out of here. Because the second Mario shows up, they are immediately like active in their own escape. And you're just like, well, maybe like he didn't even need to be there. That would have been a fun, fun scene to have. But I did like that. They were like, like I mean they like battering rammed their way

out of there and then went down the weird snow tunnel I don't know again I'm like points for effort more than I expected but it was there were a lot of cool ways it could have gone for sure the other big thing that I thought was pretty tropey as far as the portrayal of different female characters was with Lena and I appreciate that there's like a female villain in the mix but her thing becomes that she gets jealous of Daisy because Daisy shows up in the in the dimension Koopa starts paying a lot of attention to daisy he's also like have you ever been kissed by a dinosaur and then his like face turns into a lizard for a second he tries to kiss her oh my god he's like little girls never forget their first time a lizard kisses them what is this dialogue so weird but so he's like in the gross like villainy way but he's like enamored with daisy

and lena is like uh jafari yeah right jafar jafar-esque and because she's like in love with koopa question mark she uh gets really jealous of all the attention that Koopa is paying to Daisy so she decides to like strike out on her own she goes and is able to get the necklace she loses it but then gets it back in the third act and then she tries to put it in the meteorite she gets fried and becomes a skeleton so it does kind of seem like uh yeah like she there were sequences where she was clearly jealous that but again it would like it always felt like that character was like kind of weirdly written and Fiona Shaw makes it work because she's herself but like it felt like there were always two things

going on with her at the same time. It sometimes got confusing where it was like she was in love with Koopa, but also she like craved Koopa's power. And I feel like it could have worked. It would have been easier for me if she just like wanted power and that would make most of her stuff make more sense. Or like, I don't know, the being in love with Koopa and jealous of Daisy stuff just like didn't quite track for me I felt like it was just

it makes more sense if she's just like completely driven by a need for power and ambition because the way her story ends does feel like a killed by ambition kind of tropey like thing because at the end she's like no one's gonna help me I'm gonna merge the world

and there's whatever we could talk about movies where women are killed by their own ambition another day, because this is like not, not the best. I mean, that's like some fatal attraction shit. Right. But like Lena can't have it all. But she's, she basically wants to be like the queen of fascism and it kills her. And that is a more like clean, effective storyline than like, and also I want Dennis Hopper to give me a little kiss or like. Right. And I'm going to be jealous of any other woman in the room. When realistically, if she's just driven by power, she would like having Daisy on her side is incredibly useful.

Right. Like if she has Daisy as an ally and shows Daisy kindness while she's being held prisoner, then that gives her a leg up over koopa and the story could kind of play out a little differently right but whatever i thought fiona shaw did a great job and in terms of villainous outfits i left satisfied her outfits her makeup her hair that blue dress oh everything when she got electrocuted her hair went all wild that was fun oh. Oh, yeah. It's like Glenn Close, Cruella de Vil. It's great. I loved Koopa's hair, the like bleached, like, yeah, we can't really do cornrows, but we'll do like sort of, I don't know. There's like, there's a dinosaur that has a head like that.

I'll take your word for it. They were going for that. Yeah, it's like a ridged cranial thing and they're like let's do that with his hair so i think like all like all of the women we've discussed so far lena they could have done better but they did better than i thought expected for 1993 yes yeah the last thing i wanted to say about daisy is i did like that yoshi brought her a gun that was cool and I loved that why did they always it was like the way you worked the tv was like you held a gun to it like there's at one point where King Koopa was like ordering a pizza but he was holding a gun at this like video call and it felt like he was like robbing someone through a video call and I

was like what is happening no idea and then there's that iconic Koopa line at the end of the movie where they're like zip zap zopping between the two dimensions you're like what the fuck is going on but then at one point Dennis Hopper's like give me that evil gun and then starts shooting Mario you're like what is happening um I loved that line I hope it was improvised when Dennis Hopper was drunk at work. Give me that evil gun. I also, can we talk about Mario and Luigi's like special handshake, which just seems to be a high five where they intertwine their fingers and kind of like wiggle it around. Very half-assed, yeah.

I was, yeah. I don't even remember this. It had quite a bit. It was just like this weird handshake where they, it was bizarre, but mostly pretty subtle. I honestly assumed that that was a game thing because I was like, that's weird. I guess that that looks better in cartoon form

than in real life. That's bizarre. Yeah, I assumed that was like a holdover from the game that I just didn't remember. I don't think so. There is a moment where you do find out that mario that mario and luigi aren't like biological brothers that like that mario took brother daddy yeah and then luigi's like yeah mario was like my mom and mario's like no he said okay fine you were like my dad and it's like there are two just and my uncle and

everything else you're like yeah you guys um there was like yeah there's a few very 90s like the the one like 90s no homo joke i picked up on was when luigi was like i don't hang out at flower shops and you're like what is this this? Oh, I really miss that. I was just like, so I was like, wow, people really could not relax at this time. Like, I don't hang out at flower shops or nothing. I'm like, relax, Luigi. Hang out at flower shops. I bet you'd like it.

Yeah, they're nice. They smell good. Yeah, unlike toilets, which is where you hang out most of the time. Flowers are Mario canon because of the time flowers are mario canon because of the like the piranha flower that's true you also the fire flower and yes can we talk about big birthday really quick yes um i love her i love her too i didn't realize that she was based on a mario character can someone explain that to me was she yes I think that she's like styled after a fish character wait let's double check yes they like jump out of the water yeah

yes I know this fish I mean but if I didn't look that up I would not have known that I think and it really is mainly seems like her dress is inspired by that and then there's kind of little else but i did want to say that she's styled after a big fish i see and you can make of that what you what you will but that's what i learned i love her character though i love she's like the most um she and the nameless older woman who gets thrown off of a bridge by her are the most like actiony like big Bertha. It's so weird because I think Bertha gets like the widest range of things to do of any woman in the script, possibly because she has big action sequence. She like steals the thingy that everyone needs she gets like a row a sensual romance scene she like assists the heroes and like it's a small

part and she doesn't speak a lot which kind of especially sucks as i think the only black woman with a meaningful part in the movie yeah but with i mean with the time she has on screen it's like she's got range there's a lot going on with her i loved her she's doing her outfits her outfit i wasn't quite sure why after she realizes that mario stole the necklace back that she was completely fine with it but i also don't know why she stole the necklace in the first place so you know i kind of figured that was like a rules of the town everyone's stealing from everyone so it's kind of a respect thing of like oh you stole from me that's sort of the vibe i got from it game recognizes game yeah yeah exactly and like we said i love that when so mario tries to like seduce her at first in like a more traditional like hey babe how you doing

kind of thing and then she responds by punching him in the face he goes oh wow maybe she's shy so then he goes back up to her he's like i've loved it when you punch me in the face please do it again and then she's like let's dance dance it's like one of the best scenes in the movie and then yeah after that she's their ally like she helps them escape she gives them flying boots question mark and then she shows up again at the end during the climax and does something to help also. But I forget. Does anyone remember what she does?

No. I forget. But she shows up. Maybe she doesn't even do anything, but she's just like, wahoo. Classic right. You know, not everything she does makes sense necessarily, but I love that she's there. I also appreciate. Yeah, but that's not unique in this movie a lot

of people are doing shit that makes no sense right I also love that she wasn't like okay well I danced with Mario so now he's my boyfriend forever she's just like yeah we just had this nice moment and now we're buds yeah that shot of her when she realizes he stole the necklace and it pulls out and she's like, where did he get us? It kind of broke my heart. I'll be honest. But she bounced back pretty quick. Yeah.

And she's a bouncer. So she was a bouncer. I get it. I really loved her. I would watch a whole spinoff about that movie. I was also thinking I would love to see John Leguizamo reprise his role of Luigi in a live action Luigi's Mansion. It would be so

good yeah haunted house he'd be so good he got the pipes in a haunted house yes it would be so good another thing I learned from scholarly journal wikipedia is that so John Leguizamo like once he was cast as Luigi he made a joke to the effect that he's like, oh, you know, you see a lot of Italians playing Latin people in movies like how Al Pacino did in Scarface. Now it's our turn because he's a Latin actor playing an Italian. Wow. He rocks so much. He really is the best. I wanted to, I think that's everything i have which is good

because i know we're running short on time i just wanted to shout out the two lines in this movie that reminded me of other things yes like a genius would so there was there is the line where luigi says i'm flying mario i'm like can someone edit that into the scene from titanic i would never stop laughing um if k Winslet's mouth opens and John Leguizamo's Luigi voice comes out I would just never stop laughing um the other line this is a deep cut this is did anyone else pick up on like the twilight sounding moment in this movie what oh there's okay so when Yoshi first first comes in and daisy's like what is this and then koopa's like go ahead and say it and then she says dinosaur just like

i was like and then she's like climb on spider monkey yes oh i yeah i was really sent to another time um in that moment uh so yeah if anyone's in the mood to edit that for us too i'll get on that right now i think in that one i would want the twilight voices edited into super mario that's the funnier version yeah but i'm open to options um and those are my last uh scholarly thoughts about this movie yeah that was all i had abby was there anything else you wanted to touch on no i thought it was so fun i really found it every choice i thought was inspired i had a much better time than i was expecting because i don't always love like oh it's so bad it's good i'm like let's so bad, it's good.

I'm like, let's just watch something that's good then. But I thought this was legitimately like pretty fun. A lot of fun choices. I think if you're going to reimagine Mario in a live action setting, I think this is the way to do it. I would love for this style of like big swing adaptation to come back. Things are getting so stale, so boring. Even when they're good, I forget about it immediately yeah yeah give me john leguizamo's luigi's mansion directed by an absolute freak that would make me so oh like julia ducarno's luigi's mansion like okay Give me something juicy. Okay. We can workshop ideas.

But in any case, does this movie pass the Bechdel test? I believe it does. It does. Between Daisy and... Do Daisy and Daniella pass? They do. Yeah, when they talk about the tanning salon. And that's a very important line of dialogue.

It sets up the necklace. And Daisy and Lena, I believe, are talking about power and legacy. Bloodlines. Stuff like that. And then possibly, I don't know if we, I don't remember if we get names for the Brooklyn gals. But if we do, then there's a few exchanges with them that pass as well. But yeah, I mean, again, well true but yeah i mean again it's not a lot but it's more than i expected which brings us to the one true metric the nipple scale where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining it through an

intersectional feminist lens um here's the thing there's a lot of tropes at play in this movie, namely that several women I'm a male writer and I don't know how women interact except to be jealous of each other. So I'm going to write that. So those things felt very tropey, but it was doing better than I thought it would for a movie that's based on a property that completely hinges on a man having to save a woman it's like mario's whole thing is he has to defeat the villains to save peach so while that is also basically present in the movie i was like oh at least there's like other female characters that I wasn't expecting to be there they're not doing that much um or at least not Daisy Bertha does a fair amount of things that affect the plot as does Lena um Danielle is not as much but I'll watch the spin-off whatever right right so I would give this two nipples.

Still not doing great, but hey, better than I thought. Right amount of nipples if you ask me. That's a good number of nipples. I will give one to Bertha. I will give one to Yoshi. He's a feminist icon. Yes. It is April Fool's week on the Bechdel cast. And so,

yeah, because I had such a killer time watching this movie. I think we've appropriately kind of deconstructed the reasons that, you know, it works or doesn't in for, for our purposes, but I'm giving it five nipples cause I had a hell of a time and it's the first week in April and fuck you.

I loved it. I thought it was great and they really shouldn't have poured hot coffee on that guy that was fucked up um so maybe i'll i'll dock a half nipple for it because for the hot coffee incident that was bad so four and a half nipples because i had fun and that's hard um so four and a half nipples and i'm giving them um i'm gonna give them i'm gonna give going to give them all to Danny DeVito for not doing this movie. I think that was a pretty powerful move on this part. Fair. Yeah. Abby, what do you say?

I would say, you know, more coming at it. I think also of its time, it's better than I expected as far as women speaking, just kind of in general. So I would give it a solid four nipples. Wow. I had fun i'm kind of of jamie of jamie's attitude of like i had a good time i think of the era it came out in you know could have been worse and i'm gonna give those four nipples to my cat because i don't think he has enough yes and now he has 12 nipples because cats famously have eight nipples and that's cat facts with caitlin you gotta carry around some spares like like tires abby thank you so much for joining us

what a blast this has been yeah thank you for having me this is a ton of fun and i really liked this movie quite a bit it rocks let me know if y'all watch dead ringers because i'd be interested to listen to that episode come back sure uh where can people follow you online check out your stuff etc they can follow me on twitter and instagram and also on twitch if they are a gamer gaming inclined and that is at y b b a a a b b y or you can just search ab Russell. That's probably easier. Hell yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. This was so much fun. Thank you for having me. And let's, I'm like, I guess,

let's see Chris Pratt Mario together. I hope it's good. Look, I have an empty A list. I want to see it. I bet it's fun. I bet that movie will be perfectly fun. I think it'll be. I bet I'll laugh.

Jack Black plays Bowser. bowser i'll watch that yeah i'm fine you can follow us on uh instagram and twitter at bechdel cast um you can follow our patreon aka matreon at patreon.com slash bechdel cast where we do two bonus episodes every month five bucks a month with a back catalog of i think like 150 episodes at this point you will not leave dissatisfied uh and in april we are doing fembot april so we're covering megan and life size so you should watch smart house oh oh i mean just for fun the all-star sequence in that talk about a dance sequence you can also grab our merch at tpublic.com slash thevectalcast. And with that, should we jump in some pipes?

I'm going to put on my moon boots and steal your shit. I'm going to de-evolve into a disgusting fungi. Please. Yeah. All right, bye. Bye. Bye. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. All right, bye. Bye. Bye. Hey, everybody.

This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week,

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