The Big Picture - ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Is Here! Is Our Video Game Movie Future?

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Charles Holmes join Sean to talk about one of the most anticipated films of the year: 'Mario'! They discuss the new film (1:00) and how video games have been the most valuable IP in Hollywood (36:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Charles Holmes and Ben Lindbergh Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's no secret the NFL has a problem with race. Think Colin Kaepernick. Think Brian Flores. But this isn't a new problem. It's one that started as far back as the 1930s with a ban on Black players in the NFL, with a past that informs the present. Blackballed is a new miniseries podcast from The Ringer

about the four men who broke the color barrier in football. I'm your host, Chelsea Stark-Jones. You can find Blackballed on The Ringer about the four men who broke the color barrier in football. I'm your host, Chelsea Stark-Jones. You can find Blackballed on The Ringer NFL feed. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture,

a conversation show about... It's-a me, Mario! Today, we are talking about one of the most anticipated films of the year. That's right, the adaptation of one of the most hallowed stories of our time, a tale of two plumber brothers sent to a magical land to save a princess and vanquish a dragon turtle king. I am talking, of course, about the Super Mario Brothers movie. Joining me to break it down is the Wario and Luigi of the big picture, Ben Lindberg and Charles Holmes. Hi, guys. Hi. Wait, who's everybody else then? Who's Bobby? Who's Chris? Who's Amanda? Who's everybody else? It's a large cast of characters. I'm jealous that Charles gets to be internet icon and sex symbol

Waluigi while I'm stuck being Wario over here. And second, can I say, I hope you two can identify with me on this. I want to issue a preemptive apology as a New Yorker who grew up pronouncing Mario as Mario for any relapses that may occur on this podcast. Just to out Bobby Wagner. I heard you say Mario before we started recording, Bobby. It's not just me.

What? No, no. I would never say Mario. Every time Sean says it, it grates my ears. I'm always a Mario guy. I, in broadcast form, will always say Marioio but in my

private life i just like in my in my private life i'll say florida but in in broadcast i will say florida and i'm trying i'm trying to model what is wrong with you when you say private life are you talking about all of the like different clubs and groups that you go to secret room meetings to talk about super mario brothers yeah, all my Super Mario sex dungeons. You know, that's really where I live truly. Maybe in New Jersey, they say Mario, but in New York, they say Mario, or at least they did what I was going.

Mario Cuomo called himself Mario and people questioned whether he was truly Italian at the time. It was a scandal. So I just, to prep for this pod, I just went full My Fair Lady and just practicing Mario over and over again. But every now and then the regional dialect comes out. I'm really glad that you're here in New York solidarity, Ben. Charles, I'm also glad you're

here. Ben, of course, is in addition to being a great writer about many a subject and podcaster on the ringer verse, among other shows, knows a lot about video games. And Charles, of course, knows a lot about animation, among other things, and a podcaster on the ringer verse among other shows knows a lot about video games and charles of course knows a lot about animation among other things and a podcaster on the ringer verse as well so you guys are the perfect duo to break down a movie that has oddly become a a major 2023 film we all saw the film last night i do want to talk a lot about where movies are going with regard to video games and like our consumptive patterns and adaptation and also maybe just more broadly the story of the super mario brothers which i think we're still trying to wrap our heads around canonically but let's let's start with the movie because that's the uh that's the prime rep of this conversation so it's directed by aaron horvath and michael

jelenik and it features the voice work of some notable figures controversially chris pratt has been cast as Mario. To many people's chagrin, we will discuss his performance as this Italian-American icon. Anya Teller-Joy as Princess Peach. Charlie Day as Luigi. Jack Black notably as Bowser. Keegan-Michael Key as Toad. Seth Rogen as Donkey

Kong. And well, this is a story about Bowser making a bid to take over the world. And in doing so, he needs to take over the Mushroom Land, which is ruled by Princess Peach. These are words I'm saying on this podcast. With the help of a couple of Brooklyn plumbers and aspirin small business owners who have been transported by way of Rainbow Tunnel

to this foreign world, Peach, Mario, Luigi, Toad, and eventually Donkey Kong team up for an epic showdown with Bowser. Now, I am a grown man. Prepare to ask you, gentlemen, what you thought of this film. Charles, I'd like to start with you. What did you think of the Super Mario Bros. movie?

I had a weird response where I enjoyed the movie that was unfolding on the screen, but there was something itching at the back of my head because I was like, this movie almost as an animation product seems out of step with other animation where I think in the last couple of years, whether it's Puss in Boots, that most recent movie, Spider-Verse, where even Mitchells and the Machines have gotten very, very ambitious story-wise, aesthetically. And this was almost a movie that I would have seen in the early 2000s. And the whole time I was annoyed, I was like, what did this movie remind me of? What animated movie did this remind me of? And I turned to my girlfriend, I'm like, Super Mario Brothers has

the same plot as Shrek. This is quite literally just from top to bottom, this is Shrek. Not just from a plot perspective, but from, okay, instead of a swamp, it's Brooklyn. Saving a princess who actually doesn't need saving. Instead of the anthropomorphic animal being a comedian like Eddie Murphy as Donkey, it's just Seth Rogen. Like every, even the musical cues of like, oh, this isn't musical cues for kids.

This is for like their parents. When I heard Beastie Boys, I was of like, oh, this isn't musical cues for kids. This is for like their parents. When I heard Beastie Boys, I was just like, oh yeah, like this is for kids who grew up in like the 80s and the 90s. And then I was like, oh, that's what was like bothering me. When I watched this movie, I was like, I enjoyed it. But this movie almost seemed like it was made in the 2000s and not in 2020, 2030. Yeah. it's a movie that's obviously trying to simultaneously entertain children, which of course animated movies in this mold usually are, but also satisfy parents. But the way that this one chooses to attempt to satisfy parents is interesting. Ben, what do you think of the movie?

I thought it was a fun, faithful, competently made, middle-of-the-road Mario movie, which is basically, I think, all it was aiming to be and weirdly something that had not existed up until this point and was a clear hole in the marketplace and the Nintendo portfolio. So in that sense, I think it hit the target, but I think what you guys thought was also something that I thought in the moment because it really sort of plays it safe, I guess. It sort of distills the story, the essence of every Mario game down into its essence, right? It's bad Bowser threatening the princess, and Mario comes to the rescue, and the MacGuffin is a star, and

there are only some slight twists on the typical Mario formula. There's very little irreverence or subversion. We can go through a few of the ways that it does that, but largely it's a wholesome, happy-go-lucky, nostalgic exercise in celebrating Mario, right? Which I'm pretty much the target market for, I guess, unless our daughters are. I don't know if they're old enough yet. So I guess we are the target market in our households as of this point. But I was, I guess, pretty much who they were catering to. And it mostly worked for me. But I was almost surprised by just how much it was essentially what you would expect a Mario movie to be.

I think it's an unusual document of the animated times. Because as you say, Charles, like in the animation style, things have gotten really radical in certain franchises and categories and also in the tone of these movies you know puss in boots is an interesting example of the last wish a movie that is has an incredibly ornate and complicated storyline and you know dozens of characters and a kind of kaleidoscopic animation style that feels assaultive but also is very creative. And I agree with you, Ben, that this movie is very straightforward. It was very light on comedy,

particularly the kind of metacom comedy that we've come to expect, I think from animated kids fair that maybe is in part instilled by the Pixar wave, but I think has expanded broadly. You know, this movie comes from Illumination, which is one of the most successful animation studios of the last 12, 15 years.

This is the home of Despicable Me and the Minions and Sing and The Secret Life of Pets. And I think like those needle drops that you mentioned, Charles, like the Beastie Boys song, that's kind of a trademark of this studio is using more adult reference points without necessarily adult tonality, which is interesting. the thing with the

super mario brothers is they had there's all this open active text right we know all the characters if you were anywhere between the ages of i would say 20 to 40 you probably have some sort of idea of who donkey kong is of who toad is you know obviously who the mario brothers are but there's not really a there there and like i ben i wanted to ask you like even anticipation wise like i don't really know what the story of the mario brothers is amanda raised this question on the show last week she was sort of like where are these guys from and where do they go yeah and i guess i never really pondered that when i was seven years old and playing this game nonstop. So what were we even supposed to expect from the movie? It's a twisted web that Shigeru Miyamoto has woven over the years because Mario has just evolved to fit whatever container he is asked to fill.

Basically, I wrote something about Mario a few years ago for the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Brothers. And what struck me then is just how malleable a mascot Mario is. That's his real superpower, more than the jumping or the power-ups. Miyamoto has said that Mario's strength as a character is how few defined traits he has. He can fit into any game or setting because his calling card is his ability to be anything. He's a plumber, he's a painter, he's a doctor, he's an athlete. The scenario dictates his role, Miyamoto said. So the only constant really is that he has a mustache. And he has a mustache because, not because it was like driven by his character initially, it was just the easiest

way to distinguish his nose from his mouth with the limited number of pixels available originally. Like same with everything else that we think of as a defining trait of Mario, the color of his outfit or his hat, or the fact that he jumps at all. All of these things were just dictated by the hardware at the time. And the former president and CEO of Nintendo said the entire design was a case of form being dictated by function. They've also said that when they create games, the gamer is the main character. And so it doesn't even really matter who the main character is on screen. So you have Mario, who's this icon.

He doesn't really talk much more than a Pokemon, usually. His catchphrases are just exclamations and saying what his name is. And we don't know that much about him because his backstory, the canon, to the extent that it exists, has just changed over the years. He's been a plumber. He's not a plumber. He's from Brooklyn. No, he's originally from the Mushroom Kingdom. He has nipples. He doesn't have nipples. That was a big controversy a few years ago. So he's just like this everyman hero. He's pretty bland in comparison to, say, Sonic even. So on the one hand, it's not really like the character of Mario

is so compelling on his own that we needed his story to be told in this medium. On the other hand, he's just so ubiquitous and adaptable that it feels natural and I think overdue for him to be a movie star in addition to everything else. I think for a couple of people our age,

the movie will be significantly more enjoyable if you have a relationship to not just the original Mario Brothers or Super Mario Brothers 2 and 3 on NES, but Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario Kart. There are overt references, almost renderings of some of the experiences of those games. Charles, you're a little younger than us. Do you have a relationship to all of the steps of the Super Mario Brothers games? Oh, absolutely. Because I think one of the genius things that Nintendo has done, and especially when I was growing up, when I had like a Game Boy and then a Game Boy Advance, is they are constantly

updating the older games. And sometimes that means new graphics. Sometimes that means they just released the game again and it was cheaper. So I've played all of the original Super Mario Brothers games. I've played them how they originally looked. I've played them with new graphics. I think a few years ago,

they even released one on the iPhone. I think Nintendo, what's very, very transformational about Mario as a character is that that original gameplay of having the koopas and the bricks and the question mark blocks is such foundational video game language that there are five-year-olds that have played it and that's what i think actually is one of the great strengths and also weaknesses of this movie is that because Mario means so much to so many people,

it ends up not meaning that much. Once you give him emotions and Chris Pratt is talking at you. Yeah, that's what I mean. I felt very similarly. I, it feels a little silly to say, I'm not sure how invested I was in Mario's journey,

but I'm not sure how invested I was in Mario's journey. but i'm not sure how invested i was in mario's journey wait can i ask you this though were any of you confused when they're like here's mario's family because i'm like mario and luigi look like old men with mustaches in this movie and then they just have a father and like yeah mario has like daddy issues and i'm like i don't know if i needed my and Luigi to have intense Sopranos level Italian family issues. What's going on? Yeah. One of the canonically confusing things about Mario is that he's like 24 or 25 years old. He looks a lot older than that.

I think we all assumed that he was older than that. He was played by Bob Hoskins in the 1993 movie. He's 50 years old. It's so strange. That is an interesting choice that the film has made. The daddy issues thing is something I did want to circle to, which is the native wound of Mario's struggle being his failure to get approval from his father.

You know what? I'm just going to be perfectly honest with you guys. Worked on me. When the film pays that off near the end, I was like, well, that is a satisfying arc for this plumber. One of the things I think that is interesting about the movie, if you have a familiarity with the games, is there are a handful of moments where like I said, they try to render gameplay into the film and maybe it was just a kind of lizard brain reaction or a koopa brain reaction as it were but I thought that that was actually the most compelling or sort of like vaguely innovative approach to the movie like feeling the experience of playing a Mario game while watching a Mario movie Ben what did you

think of that particularly like the side scrolling and the use of the suits and some of the kind of brick and surprise, you know, question mark action. Yeah, no video game movie has ever made me want to play the video game more than the Super Mario Brothers movie. I was sitting in the theater almost feeling a phantom controller in my hands, just like moving the joystick around pressing buttons. And so on the one hand, I'd say, yeah, the movie captured the essence of Mario gameplay, all the different forms of Mario gameplay about as well as any non-interactive medium could. On the other hand, the strongest emotion

the movie made me feel was probably a desire to go play Odyssey or Galaxy or Mario Kart or Super Smash Brothers. So it functions as a great advertisement for the games, even though I think Nintendo has bigger ambitions for that. But often it does seem like video game adaptations will kind of shy away from that, right? Like they'll want to signal to the in-group, to the people who have played the game, yes, we see you and we are honoring your experience with this franchise. But also they don't want to directly translate the gameplay like The Last of Us,

which we'll talk about later, right? So much of the gameplay of that game is cut out because it's just Joel massacring people for hours on end, right? And that might be less entertaining to watch than to play. But it was done so dynamically and kinetically that it really did make me wish I was just on Rainbow Road myself, which was fun because they kept it moving. It's a tight 90. Something's always happening. It doesn't overstay its welcome. And it did really sort of translate the feeling of playing Mario for better or worse. Ben, it is a vacuum sealed 90. It is like, yeah, there were points. I don't know. Sean, how did you feel about the story? At certain points, they like introduce a new beat like donkey kong comes and

then within five or ten minutes donkey kong is just a part of the crew and i was just like whoa whoa whoa can we get like an extra five minutes some dialogue a little bit more uh paid those more donkey kong depth just a more layered portrayal of his character every single time it happened it was just like all right we, we're moving, we're moving, we're moving. This keeps coming up this year where I sit down for films made to turn your brain off or for children, and I start wondering

why is there not more to this? I sit down at Cocaine Bear and I think why is there not more to this? I sit down for Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania and think, why is there not more to this? And so I'm not going to make that mistake here because my true takeaway is this was a film made with

not just children, but like seven year old children in mind. It wasn't made with 14 year olds in mind. And it felt like a film designed for the seven year old level of patience for a movie like this. So there were a couple of interesting decisions that were made that I couldn't tell

if they were purposeful callbacks or not. In particular, Fred Armisen plays Cranky Kong straight up as Bernie Sanders, which was one of the most distracting things I've ever seen in a movie in my entire life. But for the most part, I thought the fact that it was on this kind of

rapid trajectory to its end point and kind of like with the exception of a couple of stingers wrapping up in the one hour and 23 minute mark, I was kind of relieved. You know, the idea of expanding the mythos of the Super Mario Brothers doesn't really hold a heck of a lot of appeal to me personally. I don't think that this is in the, you know, upper quartile of animated movies. It's not.

But I think it's an interesting thing when you're criticizing a work of art that is clearly designed for not you, even though you lived specifically through the era in which the original source material dominated. And so I kind of want to be thoughtful about this because I was five years old when I got NES in 1987. And so I literally spent hundreds of hours playing the original version

of this game. I spent hundreds of hours playing Donkey Kong. And so the big relationship that I have to it is sincere, but also completely lapsed. I don't play video games

at all anymore, as you guys know, too. So I don't even have that experience that you're referring to, Charles, of having a Switch, for example. I don't have anything. And so without without those things it actually just made me feel like a dad who was in a different phase of their life even though my daughter is not yet ready to watch this

movie so you know picking the story beats apart is a little bit more challenging because i don't think that they even really cared about it too much um you could this feels like not a first draft but not a 500th draft, which a lot of animated films, I think, tend to feel like they have been meticulously overwritten and overjoked and filled to the brim to entertain.

And this one had a kind of, I don't know, bare bones is maybe too austere a phrase for this movie, but there's something quite simple about this story. What did you think about that, Ben? It's just an elemental Mario movie, right? It's just boiling it down to the basics, basically. It's Bowser, it's Mario, it's Peach, I guess,

maybe playing a more prominent role than she has in many Mario games, sort of taking the place of the traditional Luigi role and making her Mario's sidekick or vice versa even. But aside from that, as we were saying, there's very little winking or poking fun at the source material, you know, aside from say Mario not liking mushrooms or the singing Bowser, which we can get into, or the Luma, the blue star from Mario Galaxy with a death wish, which probably got the biggest laughs in the theater where I saw it. But other than that, it's Mario. It's the basics. It's like get in, get out,

lay out the character, do some light world building. Most people who are going to see this movie probably are already familiar with Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom. So we don't need to do that much like groundwork laying here and exploring the motivations

of the characters. They're fairly surface level. And I'm with you because I got my NES a little later. I'm slightly younger than you. And I got the NES with Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and also The Legend of Zelda for my seventh birthday, not long after the first Mario movie came out. So I was that seven-year-old you're talking about. I was very much a Nintendo kid. And unlike you, I've sort of, I guess, been stuck in arrested seven-year-olds since then. I have other ways I'm arrested in seven-year-olds. I'm not without blame here.

I just don't play video games anymore. Yeah, so I'll still play any mainline Mario game that comes out to this day. And Mario has continued to evolve, not so much as a character, but just as kind of a framework to hang different types of gameplay on. And just as it was pioneering as a 2D platformer, it was pioneering as a 3D game, it's been pioneering on every successive generation of hardware and better graphics and technology and more possibilities, but it's basically still Mario and they keep finding ways to create new games and just sort of hang it on this Mario shaped container that has served them so well for decades. So yeah, there's not a ton of depth to it, but there never really has been. It's been more about the gameplay

and the interactive experience, which I think is the only hurdle that this movie had to overcome. Once you strip that away, then what are you really left with in terms of character and plot and story? But again, I think they did as well as they could with what they were given. I was going to ask you guys, do you think that lack of depth is like a feature? Because I was reading about the movie

and, you know, Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Mario and Nintendo as a company were very involved in this i think that 97 movie the live action movie that gave me nightmares as a child uh i think that scared them so much and part of this watching the movie i was like oh no this is a movie that's meant to translate globally where part of maybe the lack of jokes and the lack of specificity felt like no this mario movie has to work in france it has to work in japan it has to work in australia it because mario is a global character and it you know this sean comedy is one of the genres that is hardest to translate across the globe. So part of me was wondering, does the

Nintendo of it all, does the 97 movie, live action movie, does that weirdly inform a lot of how they treated this as a business property? I think it's an interesting question. That didn't seem to affect the Sonic the Hedgehog films too much, though. You know, there is a particularly American sensibility, I would say, to the Sonic movies. Obviously, those films also did really well internationally. And so I think you're right that there was a kind of safeguarding going on around the project, in part because of that original film that was such a kind of legendary flop and disaster but i i think part of it is simply just what ben is describing which is that like there is not a massive intertextual meta world of mario ideas and in fact it's kind of his vagueness as a leading figure is limiting in the kind of story that you can tell because you need to start from a very base perspective even watching the stingers of

this movie and i don't want to spoil them necessarily, but I was like, this is one of the lamest, most nonspecific stingers I can ever imagine. It was about just about the introduction of another character that we already know. Like it had really nothing to do with that. This wasn't Harry style showing up the end of eternals. You know what I mean?

It was something significantly lower wattage. And again, that's just because it's just for kids. It's just, it's just for kids. But, but I did want to ask you charles because i think you have a fondness for the kind of expansive quality of

animated storytelling in the last 10 years was there any part of you that thought you know i wish this was more like vim vendors is super mario brothers or something you know that it was like some sort of meta commentary on the nature of the story? Or was this like the right choice for this project? Oh, I think this was absolutely the right choice. Where what I wanted from it, I think actually would have been too much of a risk. I think we're at the point where as much as we're like, oh, Puss in Boots, you know, I didn't see a movie about that.

How could that happen? How many Shrek movies have there been? Like 20 at this point where it does take that level of evolution where, spoiler alert, they will probably make a Super Smash Bros movie at some point. I don't know when that will happen,

but that's probably the movie when they're like, okay, we've done two or three or four of these. We know this will work. Or when Donkey Kong gets a spinoff where this to me was just, we need to prove that we can make a Mario movie that does not suck, which I think is way harder than anybody is willing to admit. I think watching this movie, you're like, is this too competent?

And I'm just like, hey, we've watched a lot of video game movies. Making a competent one is actually very, very difficult. I think you're right, because the original movie, which I rewatched this weekend and haven't fully recovered from, was just so bonkers and strayed so far from the source material that I think first and foremost, the goal here was to make an actually family-friendly, recognizable Mario movie that isn't like an early 90s fever dream of Blade Runner meets Batman meets Mad Max meets Max Headroom. This was just like, let's drive onto the fairway here.

Like this was just a smart, safe play. And it's in service of the larger goal of making Mario a multimedia star again, or really for the first time in a mainstream successful way, because that movie, Nintendo was so burned by it because they really took a hands-off approach to that one that I think it sort of salted the earth for the next few decades. I mean, when I wrote about Mario a few years ago, I got some data from the Qscores company that showed that Mario was the best known and most popular video game character, but that his name recognition lagged behind a lot of characters with bigger footprints in movies and on TV, you know, Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man and Charlie Brown, and even like the Geico Gecko

and the M&M's Spokes Candies. Like Mario hasn't had the breakout to the mainstream non-video game playing audience like that, partly because of that first movie and just how far afield it went. And this is a company that's famously or infamously insular and secretive and possessive and protective of its IP, which explains why it took 30 years for another Mario movie

and why that movie then sticks to tradition. Like, Nintendo is notorious for sending cease and desist and sicking its lawyers on any fans who try to do anything with their characters or games. You know, several years ago, there was supposedly a live-action Zelda series in the works at Netflix, and then reportedly Nintendo pulled the plug because just the news of its existence leaked. And it's almost refreshing, I think, in this era of endless IP proliferation and everything being a brand that Nintendo has been resistant to that. opening up theme parks around the world. They gave the green light to Nintendo-themed Lego sets. They've been pretty explicit about trying to make Mario a Mickey Mouse-tier character

and building a Disney-esque empire. So this is an origin story with a MCU-style franchise framework right down to the singer. And yeah, you have Charlie Day campaigning for a Luigi's Mansion movie. You have rumors of a Donkey Kong spinoff, it would not be hard to make a Super Smash Brothers movie. Because again, like the premise for Super Smash Brothers is just like a giant hand called the Master Hand just plucks all these toys off the shelf and then they fight each other. It's like Secret Wars meets Nintendo, I guess. And that's our new Infinity War endgame. So we're just entering the Nintendo first now. There's something so fascinating about the fact that Nintendo

literally only has one other major feature film in the last 30 years, which I guess is just Detective Pikachu, right? There have been animated films, but this is one of the signature entertainment brands of the last four decades.

And they have not expanded their IP beyond platforms for the most part. I'm sure there are books and coloring books and things like that. But to not get into the feature film business and really not that much into the television business is so interesting. It does seem like Illumination was a huge piece of the puzzle basically like finding the most competent and uh i don't i proven partner for a project like this it just feels like a huge part of the equation and weirdly i think a lot of this safety and kind of like kid gloves care pardon the pun that we're talking about here is to ensure exactly what charles was suggesting which is that

this movie has to be as big as possible it has to be as big as possible all over the place, and it is tracking basically to be as big as possible. I think this movie is going to be a massive mega hit and might dominate at least the American box office for the next three or four weeks, which is really interesting because it's just not that

good. It's not bad, but it's also not... It's fine. It's doing its job, and it does say a little something i think about where our mentality is about moviegoers and you know amanda and i also discussed this last week on the show with the dungeons and dragons film which i don't know if you guys have seen but recognizability seems to be the coin of the realm right now that seems to be the most significant thing it's like here's mario you know him you love him he's been a big part of your life all along. Here he is in a movie doing his Mario thing.

And I think the real accomplishment for Illumination is just earning Nintendo's trust and getting the green light here because Chris Maldonjari of Illumination was added to Nintendo's board of directors, which made him the first ever American citizen on the board. You know, it's sort of a closed system historically. And I think that speaks to just the level of trust in this process and also Nintendo's ambitions and expansion plans that they wanted to bring someone like that on board who could steer them through this process, which has been tricky and full of pitfalls, Mario style pitfalls in the past.

So I think that's what they're aiming for here. And I don't think they screwed up. You know, I think they basically did what they wanted to do here. I do want to just give a quick shout out to Jack Black, who I think gave an extra effort for this film. Jack Black plays Bowser as a kind of love, Lauren troubadour,

a kind of like Elton John with a spiked shell and yes there's like pure tenacious d energy in the performance i'm not sure is there anything canonically that says bowser sings is that part of the story at all i don't think so no i don't this was a choice yeah i mean he's banging away at the piano a couple times i I love the choice. Anytime Jack Black was on screen, I was like, not only is this the perfect voice for Bowser in a way that Chris Pratt was better than I thought he was, but unremarkable. But there is an alternate reality

where I'm like, the Jack Black version of this movie is just so much more interesting. He was running away with it. Every single time he sang, I was like, I want this version of the movie. I want this irreverence, this comedy. Yeah, I just, Jack Black killed it. Yeah. He said that he's going to take it to Broadway for a one-man show, which I would watch potentially because he was going for it in a way that almost no one else in the cast was going for it.

Right. Like Seth Rogen is Donkey Kong said straight up, like, I'm not doing a voice for this. I am going to speak as Seth Rogen. And if that's what you want, Donkey Kong to sound like that, that's what he'll sound like. And it works. Okay. You know, like there's a, a Donkey Kong-ness to Seth Rogen. So I think it fits, but like, he's not, he's not making an extra effort over and above that.

And I think for all the controversy about the Chris Pratt voice, you stop noticing it almost immediately. We were talking about the new rules in baseball before we started. It's like the pitch clock. Everyone is fussing about the pitch clock and then you watch some baseball with the pitch clock and everyone's like, yeah, this is fine. This is maybe okay. This is even better. I think everyone was sort of up in arms about just the traditional voice of Mario not being Mario here, right? Charles Martinet, who's played the character in many, many places for 30 plus years now. I think though that the Martinet Mario voice for 90 minutes, it would be a lot. Yeah. And he's an experienced voice actor. I'm not saying he couldn't have moderated it some way and found some happy medium that was not like nails on a chalkboard after 70 or 80 minutes. But Chris Pratt, you know what? Like

he sounds somewhere between the traditional Mario and Chris Pratt and it's fine and you just don't notice it after a while I feel like if the film was more adventurous in its story we might have had more to say honestly about some of the voice performances but because there was a kind of straight down the middle quality to it like I what would be a meaningful commentary on Anya Taylor Joy's decision to voice Princess Peach and basically her own voice I there's not, you know, likewise, the Seth Rogen point that you're making. I guess Keegan-Michael Key is affecting a tiny creature as Toad. But, you know, did I know it was Keegan-Michael Key when I was watching it? I did not.

And I was not impressed, but nor was I impressed. So there is a kind of like stasis point for the movie at large. And I think that's probably going to be a lucrative decision for Nintendo and Illumination. Yeah. And Bowser's always been a problematic character from a gender relations perspective, the sexual politics of Bowser. It's complicated now. It always has been in a way, but I think Jack Black sort of exposing the vulnerable side here of Bowser. It does add an element of comedy, which, you know, it'd be nice if this were more of a comedy potentially. Not all Bowsers is what you're saying.

Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, and I think also like there is a moment where you hear a cameo from Charles Martinette, right? You hear the traditional Mario voice. And I thought that actually worked well. Like, yeah, okay, you could be offended on his behalf that he was relegated to that status. But also, I think hearing the exaggerated Mario voice and then the less exaggerated Pratt Mario voice, that actually made me chuckle. So that was one of the few times that I did. So maybe it was worth it. In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no, turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really? Yeah. There's the sausage, bacon and egg, a crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy and egg worth the detour. They sound amazing. Bet they taste amazing, too. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium your morning into a delicious new direction with mcdonald's new

breakfast wraps add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax at participating mcdonald's restaurants should we talk about our our video game movie future and where all this is headed because you know this movie's success i think will um you know it, it not only predicts, it demands more and more and more like this. And we've seen a couple of things just in the last 12 months. Ben, last time you and I talked about this, we discussed the somewhat woeful but not terrible Mortal Kombat adaptation that Warner Brothers released. That seems forgotten to time now. Although the conversation that we had, I do think was, it had some impressions

about like where things were going in part because of just the enormous number of people who play video games and have this level of recognizability you need in order to make a film. The big thing that has happened really in the last six months is that The Last of Us

is one of the TV hits of the past few years. And it's not only a TV hit, but it comes in a kind of format and storytelling style that I'm not sure video games have ever had through Hollywood, which is to say a kind of elevated, prestigious TV form from an Emmy-winning creator, and also the significant contributions of the creator of the game

in telling the story in television format so you know i think that these are really the two sides of the coin right now the super the faithful kind of you know harmless super mario brothers movie and then the slightly more audacious the last of us adaptation so like ben i'll start with you like what do you what do you like is this it Did it finally happen? Is this thing that you have been thinking about and writing about and talking about for years now, is it upon us? Is the video game moment upon us? Pretty much, yeah. In a way, I almost look at the original Super Mario Brothers movie as the original sin of video game adaptations. And so this just being a competent Mario movie is almost cleansing.

It's like we had to go back to the beginning and undo that mistake that set the tone that set us down the wrong track for the next few decades in order to bring this form to fruition. Because almost two years ago, it was that we were talking about Mortal Kombat and a lot has changed since then. The Last of Us being the most notable thing, but as I've written and talked about elsewhere, I think you have to be careful about extrapolating from The Last of Us just because it was almost uniquely suited to adaptation. The game itself was very consciously cinematic from the start. It was sort of told in that same vein and storytelling tradition. It had a totally linear narrative.

So it just told a complete story. There wasn't a lot of player choice that would make an adaptation difficult. So it was really pre-packaged to be a prestige TV show. Originally, they tried to make it a movie and they found that that didn't work. And we can talk about that and whether TV is the more natural fit and home for video game adaptations.

But I think the real lesson aside from that, that maybe TV makes more sense than movies in many cases, keep the creators integrally involved and put some artistic and creative muscle behind these things. You know, not every adaptation is going to be Craig Mason and HBO Sunday night show and big budget and Pedro Pascal. But the idea that if you want a quality

result, you have to have some quality ingredients. I think that's pretty important. Charles, you recapped The Last of Us on the Prestige TV feed with Van. When you got to the end of the series, or at least the end of the first season of the series, did you feel like this was a better format for telling a story that the game is telling? Absolutely. I don't think the last of us movie would have been nearly as successful narratively and honestly just culturally just because i think what the last of us did to ben's point is just like not only was that game almost made as if it was a movie already or a tv show but the way it moves and I played the game very, very much. You're just like,

okay, I can see how even when you're playing the game, you're like, this is episode one, this is episode two. I guess the thing that worries me a little bit is that I think video games are weirdly at this place where superhero movies were maybe after Iron Man where we're like, oh no, this worked, but the MCU is not a thing yet. And now that the MCU is threatening to not be a thing, what is the video game franchise that you can make sure that like, hey, every other year or every year we're having an installment. Like I can't think of a video game that can survive under that weight just because when a video game movie is bad, it's almost worse than when a comic book game is bad because I think there is so much inherent toxicity

in the video game fan base that like when you screw up in a video game, it's like, oh no, we're derailing not just the movies. We're derailing what is honestly more lucrative, which is the video game. The brand of this is way more important than anything we're doing in Hollywood, which is why I think even if we're in this moment, I think it's going to be far trickier than making the MCU successful was. Yeah, the backlash can be intense and toxic sometimes, as we saw with the backlash to Chris Pratt's casting. And that was not one of the worst

examples, I would say. So I think it comes down to whether you want these adaptations to be faithful or whether you want to strike off from that source material and tell a different story set within the same world in some way. So I think it's kind of two sides of the same coin or it's pluses and minuses, it's upsides and downsides. Like in The Last of Us, yeah, TV makes sense because there's more time for world building. It mirrors the episodic structure of video games. They tried to make a Last of Us movie and they just couldn't cram everything in and they were just making cuts that really hampered the story. So if you bring in a creator who's going to play a prominent role in bringing that story to the screen, it's good in

the sense that they're going to treat the story with respect. They're not going to decide to go completely off the rails and throw out everything that people initially liked about this, but they may also be somewhat less willing to deviate from the original story that they told. The Last of Us, I think, didn't need to deviate that much. And when willing to deviate from the original story that they told. The Last of Us, I think, didn't need to deviate that much. And when it did deviate, it was to great effect. And similarly, I think the Mario movie didn't need to deviate all that much and it works well enough. But if you're going to have Miyamoto involved and you're going to have Koji Kondo involves, the mastermind of the music, which by the way, we probably should have spent more time on just how good the music is in this. The movie just viscerally brought me back to every generation of

Mario game. And that's the great thing about Nintendo soundtracks in general is that you have sort of the like MIDI chiptune style original version, and then you have the full orchestral and it summons the same feelings. But the downside potentially is that there are going to be some guardrails, right? They're not going to want you to throw out everything and take real risks and experiment, which can be for the better or for the worse, depending on the project. So I'm curious about what's coming next, but there's a couple of other things that are in the mix. You know, I mentioned the Sonic film uncharted from earlier last year,

which was a hit though. I would say vaguely maligned for a film that was in the works for many, many years and went through many iterations and many filmmakers and many stars. Pandemic chip. We don't, you know, it was,

it was the bubble. It got the bump. So do you think in, in, in these new times and these these John Wick 4 times, that Uncharted would not have thrived? If Uncharted had to go against Creed and John Wick, I don't know if it would

have done what it did, in my opinion. It's interesting. Yeah, and like I said, the Mortal Kombat movie is something I feel is lost to time. Resident Evil is something I wanted to mention very quickly because there was a live action adaptation, I want to say either late 21 or early 22. And then there was a Netflix series,

which I think was just canceled. Is that right, Ben? But, you know, and again, I'm kind of a, I'm uninformed on these matters, but as I understand it, like the game is sort of like been fully revived. Like the new Resident Evil games are quite popular.

Yeah, it's never completely died off they just released a remake of one of the classic games that's been very well received so yeah it's it's been a going concern and i that's a series that is interesting to me because it has always been considered somewhat low rent directed by the the other paul anderson paul ws anderson and starring mila jovovich over the years. And that feels like a franchise that is weirdly, has some potential for a kind of more high-minded, I'm not going to use the phrase elevated horror,

but you know what I'm insinuating here, that there could be a slightly more on-brand version of that adaptation. In August, we're going to see a Gran Turismo movie. And then there's a Borderlands adaptation starring Cate Blanchett, which was formally directed by eli roth who then got moved off of the movie or left the movie i'm not totally sure and then was

replaced by tim miller uh of deadpool 2 fame and that's written also by craig mason of the last of us in chernobyl so there is this effort i, to make the live action storytelling work for video game adaptation. But watching the Super Mario Brothers movie, I thought to myself, this might be how this should go. You know, Sonic is more or less a live action animated film. And it does feel like for stories like, say, Death Stranding or of ghost of tsushima like these feel like they should maybe be tv adaptations i like have you thought about that ben yeah so there have been some successful tv animated adaptations castlevania and arcane and cyberpunk edge runners these have been big for netflix which is really deeply invested in video game adaptations. But there's more and more of a

trend toward bigger swings and sort of prestige properties, right? So you mentioned Borderlands, which I don't know if I would put the source material in that category exactly, but the creators and the cast at least. And then you have Amazon, which is also big into this with God of War and Mass Effect and Bioshock and Fallout, which is from Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan of Westworld fame or infamy. You have Gears of War. You mentioned John Wick. I mean, the creator of John Wick is working on an adaptation of Sifu, the martial arts video game. So there's a lot of cross-pollination here because we've gotten to the point where not only some of the studio heads, the people who are greenlighting projects, but also the people writing these stories, directing these stories, are gamers themselves and grew up as gamers like Craig Mason, right?

So they have some familiarity and fondness for this source material. So I don't think it has to be just Sonic 3 and Detective Pikachu 2, although those are obviously successful franchises, you can aim higher. But it's almost like they're reaching now for kind of this class of prestige projects like The Last of Us and like Fallout and like Bioshock that kind of aspired to, we're going to be a new type of storytelling and video games, and it's going to be more mature, and it's going to be cinematic. And so it will translate easily to TV or the movies. But then you might get an Uncharted style project, which was fairly successful financially, although hasn't exactly seeded a franchise thus far. But I didn't really like the Uncharted movie. That was a case where they kind of went in a different direction than The Last of Us, where they had this very movie-inspired property. And instead of just sort of

adapting this game that was like a movie back into a movie again, they told a different story and kind of a prequel. And in theory, I'm all for that because if I've played the game, I don't necessarily want to see just like a paint-by-numbers retelling of that story. I'd like to see a different story. But the safe thing and the thing that maybe is going to get you the greatest mass audience is to stick with what worked and the proven story and the proven property, which is what we saw with the Mario movie. Charles, what do you want to see?

Is there something that should be developed, needs to be developed? I mean, I already pitched it earlier, but if it was me, you know, I love my anime. I love my manga. I would love, like, they have, like, tournament arcs, like in, like, Dragon Ball Z, most famously. I would love, like, a Mario type of Rocky. He's, like, out of shape, whatever. But Super Smash Bros. tournament is coming.

Pikachu is about to whoop that ass. Kirby's about to whoop that ass. Luigi has to get him out of retirement, you know? Train him in the martial arts so he can go kick some pixel booty. I would like that. I would also love a Miyazaki type Zelda, just animated. You could pick Breath of the Wild, Ocarina of Time, anything. Just a beautifully rendered action like the type of animated movie they just don't make anymore unless you are in japan or like france i think zelda is actually weirdly even maybe more so than god of war something that can very much be like all right we're just going to

do this in the most beautiful way possible and get the best animators on the planet to recreate these very emotionally devastating games. Yeah, there's a part of me that wants to, you know, fantasy cast Peter Jackson's The Legend of Zelda. You know, there is like, but on the other hand, the simplicity of those games, at least the games that I played

and not the games that have continued on in the last 10 years, suggests that a Super Mario Bros. movie style adaptation just makes more sense. Absolutely. I'm not saying mine would be successful. I'm just saying that's what I would like to see. Is there anything in the Nintendo canon, Ben,

that you feel like is just so obviously ripe for adaptation? I think maybe Samus Metroid could be a good sort of dark sci-fi gritty type property. That franchise has kind of been reanimated recently in the gaming space. So I think that would probably be poured over pretty well. It's interesting because when people ask me what I want out of video game adaptations, in a way, I'm more interested in the games continuing to be good as someone who's plugged into that world. Would I like to see a new Zelda show or movie? Yeah, I'm more excited for the Zelda game that's coming out two months from now, you know? So I guess what I want is when they do decide to adapt something for me personally, it'd be great if it wasn't just cookie cutter retracing

exactly what the game was just because there'd be a bit more novelty and suspense in it for me. And obviously like I want it to be treated with respect and done well. Like I guess there's still with anyone who grew up at a certain time, there's probably still some slight inner inferiority complex that kind of wants video games to be recognized as real art, right? And so if that means that The Last of Us has to come out on TV and people go, oh, wow, there are good stories in video games, then I guess that's good. In a way, video games have won. The medium is immensely popular and profitable and doesn't need the validation of adaptations being good to prove anything. But there is still part of me that likes to see that, likes to see it done well, right? video games, but telling stories about video games and video game culture and making video games, right? So the recently released Tetris movie, which I also watched this weekend, didn't disturb me as much as the original Mario Brothers movie. And with the Tetris movie,

I'm not a big biopic guy in general. And the Hollywood's license of car chases in a movie about the licensing of Tetris was a bit much even by movie standards. And I thought the animations were a little intrusive, like the constant signaling that this is about video games and look game culture, as opposed to just directly adapting the stories of video games. Elsewhere on Apple, you have Mythic Quest, which is a great comedic sitcom. You have the show Players on Paramount+. You have a British sitcom called Dead Pixels. Even going back to the Guild, the whole culture surrounding video games and the creation of video games can be really compelling. So I'd like to see more stories told about that. Last year, the novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was one of the best selling novels and books of the year. It's about video game

development and traces video game developers over a course of a couple of decades. I think that would be a good movie. I believe it's been optioned already. So that sort of story, I think, intrigues me almost more than just, I like this game. I hope they can make a movie out of it. Look at you, the del Toro of video games. I love you. Well, the respectability around these stories is really interesting to me. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, the rare trifecta Amanda, Sean, Bobby novel that we've all read. And I thought the same.

I mean, I'm almost certain that will be adapted. And it does feel like an entree into raising the level of appreciation for the and TV shows, is that acknowledgement that there is a, not just an artistry, but like a emotional value to games. And I think that that's, The Last of Us feels like a huge stepping stone there. I was with my dad over this past weekend. He turned 70.

And we were just sitting on his couch talking about things that we had seen. And I would not describe my dad as a cinephile or a prestige TV podcast completist by any stretch of the imagination. But he was just remarking that he thought The Last of Us was really well done. And I think his closing thought was,

so that's based on a game, huh? Right, exactly. And so he had like a consciousness about that that I think, I don't want to perform in small sample size theater. But that was notable to me that he was thinking about it and was recognizing it. And he's the person who put NES in my hands. He's the person who allowed for me to become interested in video games in the first place.

And so I wonder if five, 10 years from now, we'll see Kojima at the Academy Awards. You know what I mean? That feels plausible now in a way that maybe it didn't 10 years ago. But I wonder, what do you think, Charles? So I was going to ask you this because you would know better than me, Sean. Do you think from the business angle,

the investors are seeing, oh my God, so many people are playing, tens of millions of people are playing these games. And they are doing that thing that a lot of business people do where like, of course,

if tens of millions of people play this game, they will want this movie. And I'm just like, I think video games are a little bit different than comic books where I think the genius

of the MCU was that there are a bunch of people who have never read a comic book in their life who are just like, oh yeah, cool, this is the thing to do do where it's like with video games there is this weird thing of almost every single time i'm watching one of these i'm just like i would rather play the game and i shut it off and i either play the game or i'm like i think there

is this like there's this idea that video game fans want this and just from listening to you bet it's like do they do they want most of these things it seems like they would rather just more games yeah i think in a way it's it's more for the people who haven't played the games like yeah there was definitely something of a thrill to seeing live action the last of us but there was also like i experienced this story 10 years ago you know not to know, not to be like the hipster thing I liked is cool now and everyone follows the band I used to like when it was merely a mega multi-million dollar selling video game.

But there was an element of, I know where this is going. I know how it's going to end. It's still fun to watch them play out that thread. But something new, something I don't know, that might be even more entertaining, right? And I think one mistake, or maybe it was inevitable, but because many of the most recognizable video game franchises and characters and properties date back to the beginning of the medium, right? Like Mario, when you couldn't really tell a story because you only had so many pixels to work with. And Mario was a plumber because the game took place underground. And Miyamoto was like, well, it's underground. I guess he'll be a plumber. Like that was the motivation for him being a plumber. So there's only a certain level of depth and richness to that story. Like Mario's

iconic because of the design and because we've all spent so many hours just like grafted to our TVs and controllers playing Mario games and Mario the character is you know like a fun hang you know like he's a fun hang damn Ben give my man Mario more credit than that

but I do I want to address what you're broadly suggesting Charles which is that i think it took a long long time for the world of entertainment and and fandom to get to the place where the mcu could become as successful as it did and i have talked at length on this show about my oregon trail of like seeing my childhood fantasies come to life in the form of adaptation and then becoming like completely disillusioned with those fantasies as they start to play out in full and so i do think like i think back at you know i've talked many times about like

reading wizard magazine in 1996 and the looking like eagerly anticipating as a movie mad teenager the cat like potential casting pages for an X-Men movie and seeing well before Patrick Stewart was cast in that movie them suggest Patrick Stewart and then

when Patrick Stewart was cast as as Charles Xavier feeling like a euphoria that actually no movie could ever actually meet and now as we've gotten all the way on the other side of that,

where we're all, we've now like fully concerned trolled the comic book movie industrial complex. I think it took a few generations of comic book readers slash kids who didn't care about comic books to create a kind of mass event of movie going. I do think that because, you know,

comic books have their roots in the thirties, forties and fifties, but that they really came of roots in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but that they really came of age in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I think the video games could potentially have a similar life cycle in terms of adaptation. It's going to take a 10-year, 20-year period for them to become in the fabric of fandom and Hollywood entertainment. What do you think? Right. And you're seeing the things that are getting adapted now are things from 10 years ago, let's say, instead of 30 years ago, right? When the medium, the technology had What do you think? trying to get you to pump more quarters into the arcade, right? So it's a different, more mature type of story that is now getting adapted just as time moves forward. And so I think that will lead

to a higher hit rate, definitely. But I think studios have realized there's just this goldmine sitting out there. I mean, there's this very recognizable, popular IP with built-in audiences and global brand recognition. and we're just sort of sitting on it because video game adaptations were done poorly for so long that there was just a stench and a stigma surrounding all of it well now if we actually target the right projects and we go about it in a better way all that's just out there sitting there for us to pluck from and license and bring to the screen for an audience that hasn't encountered it in an interactive form before. So it's really just like the insatiable hunger for content, right?

Which even if there are fewer shows and movies being made potentially now than there were a year or two ago, if we're having a slight pullback, it's still just an absolute avalanche and you need to feed the beast and video games are right there. When Fortnite the movie comes out and wins an Oscar, I blame you both. I mean, you don't even need Fortnite the movie because Fortnite has swallowed every other movie, right? Every movie, every property is part of Fortnite. So that's an example, I guess, of you don't necessarily need to adapt this because maybe video games are the ultimate form of the story of this world. Well, that's what I was going to ask you, Sean. Video games are bigger than movies. Like, they outsell movies. The video game companies are worth more than movies.

So, like, Matt Bellany had an episode about this on The Town. Sometimes the adaptations, like, it's not up to the studios like the video games carry the video game companies carry more juice about whether they license their material out to the studios right now it's not like comic books where like comic books were much bigger decades ago than they are now and they're doing like a billion dollars a year in sales compared to video games now are doing like 60 billion dollars a year in sales so's like, do you think that the people who are going to be driving this trend are interested in this trend? Meaning the video game companies themselves,

are they interested in like the franchise-ification beyond actual gamers? It's a very good question. I think yes, in some cases, but not in all, in part because there is a celebrity and prestige that is associated with Hollywood and also a historicity that is associated with Hollywood that is still very appealing to powerful people. And it's the same reason that you see billionaires starting streaming services when they really don't have to do that. Apple and Amazon do not need streaming services

to have solvent businesses, but they do it because they want to be in business with a certain class of citizen that is interesting to them or appealing to them or gives them an access or a kind of imprimatur of celebrity of, I don't know, quality, I guess, for lack of a better word, notoriety, certainly. The same, I think, is true for some video game companies. Not all, I don't know enough about all of the video game companies, but I don't think Nintendo needed to make a Super Mario Brothers game. In fact, they didn't for 30 years and they seem to be doing just fine yeah yeah certainly that's in part true but the fact that it took a long time is you know in part because

of what we talked about ben and i a couple of years ago on the show about a lot of the sort of graveyard of video game adaptations but some of it is just because they don't care i think that everybody loves a craze, though. And The Last of Us and the Super Mario Brothers movie being two of the 12 most significant things in Hollywood this year, I think portends a mass of adaptation around all this stuff. Yeah, I don't think there's a great downside to trying to have a transmedia giant. You know, like The Last of Us, what, 30 million people watched each episode of that show, 40 million watched the premiere of the finale.

That's more people than bought The Last of Us in 10 years, and that's a very high-selling game, right, with a sequel and a whole franchise to itself. And then the popularity of the show, you know, even if Sean's dad isn't necessarily going to

check out PS5. You never know. I hope he does. He just retired so he's got some time on his hands. If he needs any tips send it my way.

I mean also if I'm Nintendo I'm worried about Mario from the standpoint of just like there's a bunch of kids growing up who are like would probably rather

play Fortnite than rush to play like an older Mario game where it's like if you can get them young if you're like oh I was seven and watched this game

hey mom can I get a Switch and the new Mario game? Like, I think they're making that calculation of like, we need to get new generations of people on this train. Not enough kids these days playing Mario Golf, Charles.

Not enough kids. Hey, you said it, not me. No, I think that that's very wise, though. Like, this sort of brand management is critical. And if you have an expiring property that needs to be desperately revived but that has like an inbound nostalgia

factor that's ready to go like you know i you mentioned metroid i'm trying to think of what is my version of metroid from my nes days i i had i had longed frankly for like a harrison ford-esque castlevania film you know horror fan am. Like I, I always felt like there was, and I don't know who it is now. It can't be Chris Pine. Cause he's taken on D and D. So I need to find another Chris who can take up the mantle. What is the Castlevania lead character's name?

Uh, Alucard or, Oh man, you're the best. Adam driver. Couldn't, couldn't do one. It's a little tall franchise.

Uh, I believe he's joining heat too. So he's all set when it comes to franchise filmmaking. What, you think this is going to be Heat 3 after Heat 2? God, I hope so. Let's just... Can Heat overwhelm

the Super Mario Bros. film franchise is the question I have for you all. Bobby, will you be seeing the Super Mario Bros. movie? I think I will. Yeah. Even after this conversation about how it's for seven-year-olds?

I don't know if I'm... Well, sometimes I can act seven years old you know some people when it was my birthday last week and you mentioned it on the show and some people tweeted at me saying like happy 14th birthday

middle school must be going so well you know because of how often you guys joke about my age I'll probably see it I definitely won't see it this weekend because the Mets are coming to New York

for the first time this season so I'm going to be doing that and I'm also going to see how to blow up a pipeline because that's more my vibe and speed these days. That is a Bobby film, certainly. I'll get around to it, Sean. I'll get around to it.

Charles and Ben, as a capper on this, would you recommend the Super Mario Bros. movie to the general movie-going public that listens to this podcast? Yeah. Absolutely. It was a good vibe. I feel like we are down on it, but to your point,

I was like, hey, great way to spend 90 minutes. Actually, that was the great thing. When I looked at my clock, I'm like, it's only 7.30. I could do so many activities. It's a great way to blow 90 minutes. Yeah.

My voice rose into Charles Martinet Mario registers when I said, yeah. But yeah, I had a good time. I think as long as you like Mario and know Mario and kind of know what you're getting into it or not expecting some sort of like subversion of the Mario brand, if you just want to have a good hour and a half, you will be entertained. The time will fly by. You'll have a good time at the movies. Well, Ben, Charles, thanks so much for your insights and your passion for the Mario franchise. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner,

for his work on today's episode. Later this week on The Big Picture, very, very, very, very important conversation about a very, very important film. That film is air. Ben Affleck is back behind the director's chair. Matt Damon is in front of the camera. He is ready to sell you shoes. We'll see you then.