The Ringer-Verse - 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' Instant Reactions | The Midnight Boys

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

It's-a us! The Midnight Boys are here to transport you to the Mushroom Kingdom and give their instant reactions to everything having to do with 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie'! Hosts: Van Lathan, Charles Holmes, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L. Every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. This is, of course, the ringer's nexus podcast for all things.

Van, we are. Jomi, the explainer on you. You've got questions. He's got answers. We are. The architect, Alden, Tinker, and Builder of Things. We are. Old man, van, he of the receding, resurgent, re-emerging hairline.

We're weeks away. And we are, Kobe Chuck, the 24-Kier. closer, the speaker of the truth. Together, we are known as of the midnight, boys. Late with the pew-p-p-poo, Steve. It's okay. You're not, oh, we forgot, forgot

about a little thing that's going on. You guys just let you guys know, technically Steve is on a bit of a delay. Yes. And that's, that's, so you came in right, you came in pretty good right there. Okay. For people that were wondering whether or not Steve was bummed out, which is the reason why he didn't speak for the entire last

portion of the podcast, the Mando podcast. It wasn't us. It was him trying to work out. He was trying to work out his delay. A lot of people thought, Steve, that you had pulled a Scotty Pippin refusing to enter the game at the end of the game because you were mad. That's not what happened. Tell the people.

Not at all. I pulled a Rodman. I went to Vegas for three days and I refused to come back until my time was ready. And now we're back. We're back and you can follow us on socials. Insta, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, save Jomey's job. Jomey is wearing an Oakland A's jersey. Is that the baseball fan?

You're a baseball team you're a fan of, Jomey? No, no. I was watching a video from the Lonely Island, and I really got the Oakland A's merch, so I bought as much Oakland A's merch. It's like $300 worth of merchandise, but it was worth it. Ricky Henderson, baby, go A's.

I'm a dog. your life, Joe. What the fuck, bro? Like, what? What the, you wait, you're watching a lonely island video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you decided you wanted to dress like them. A black man has never said those words.

I'm watching, I'm watching the, I was watching one of the clips from the, from there, they did like a Netflix thing. I was like, man, Oakland A's got some fire merch. Let me, let me hit up the good. Let me hit up the fanatics. Mobb shop. com. and I had to do some digging,

but I found some good stuff. So, you know, I was like, hey, man, might as well treat yourself. When was this? Oh, this was like a couple, like, maybe like six, eight weeks ago? Like, it was pretty recent. It was pretty recent.

I thought you were going to say six, eight years ago. Wait a minute, Jomey. We got to stay on this real quick. Well, why are you watching the only island videos in 2020? Holy Island, what are you talking about, bro? You said six, eight weeks ago? You were about to say six, I thought you were going to say six, I thought you were going to say six, oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense.

And six, eight weeks ago? What the fuck? They did the The BASH Brothers thing. They did a thing with like Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire. It's a Netflix. I don't want to like, you know, no free ads, but they did like a special on Netflix.

Just basically like it was all about those two plays, Oakland A's playing in the 80s. And I think I couldn't sleep one night. Like I was having insomnia as per usual. And I was just like put it on to try and fall asleep. But I watched all the thing. I was like, man, all the merch is fire. Well, $300 worth of Oakland A's merch, that's definitely a decision you make when you have no sleep.

Yeah, that's true. Your life makes me so sad, Jomey. This is a big summer for all of us. This is the summer of the boys. This is the midnight summer. I'm just letting you guys know. We're going to talk about we got a great show in store for you guys right now. But I'm letting you guys know right now it's April.

And the summer of the boys is coming up. It's a hot boy summer. We might not survive if they keep giving us this guy. I'll tell you what. But some of the boys, we're not going to be taking our fashion cues from the Lonely Island, though. I can tell you that much. That's not what we're going to do. All right, programming reminders.

Our Mandel coverage is in full effect this Friday and every Friday. Every Friday. Joe and Mal, Mal and Joe. House of Our working title. They're going to give you their deep dive into the latest episode of the Mandalorian Season 3. An episode that has torn the fabric of Star Wars. fandom apart. The discourse is high, Charles.

Did you see? Oh, it's bad. Actually, what I didn't, Van, what I didn't realize is, there are people who love this episode. Like, it's not, like, clear cut. It is like, motherfuckers is like, no, this was a great episode of TV,

and then people lighting their shit on fire. Yeah, it's rough. It's, when an episode is this polarizing, and people were like, some people were like, oh, it's fun. I love it. Other people were like, yo, fuck the entire show. That's always fun for me.

And on Wednesdays, of course, the Midnight Boys will be giving you our instant reactions on the latest episode of The Mandalorian. I have some inside information on the next episode of the Mandalorian. Apparently, it features a cameo

from carrot top. Yo. Fire. Man. Lock it in. Imagine if you're right. Imagine he was right. Bro, that would be hilarious, bro.

Because carrot top would be on the show. I wouldn't even show up to the pod. I wouldn't even show up. Jedi's dialed down the center. Yeah, exactly. All right, on today's show, do, do, do do do. We begin with our reactions to the Super Mario Brothers movie. And God damn it, am I excited.

It's a me. I'm out of you. Super Mario brothers. Super Mario. Mario. Now, spoiler warning, I play the game Super Mario Bros. for the first time in 1987, okay? So I'm letting all of you guys know every single Mario video game. That's Mario 1, Mario 2, the Waluigi series. We're talking about Mario with Captain Loua out there. But we're talking about Mario Galaxy, Mario 64, Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers,

Donkey Kong. Super Mario Maker. Anything involving Mario, Luigi, Toad, Bowser, Yoshi, anyone tangentially connected to Mario will be spoiled. So if you haven't finished Mario 3,

if you don't know how it ends, pause it, go finish it, grab a whistle, it's not that hard, okay? It's hard the first time. It's impossible the first time. Get the whistle, you're good. Anything else?

We're going to spoil it. Steve, give me my warning. We're getting ready to talk about Mario. You're listening to a reaction podcast. The spoilers are coming. All right. To begin our reactions, of course, we need to know what we're talking about. And the only way to do that is through the tool of the Midnight Manifest when we get in the know.

And that is the arena of Chuck Wack. Chuck, Chuck, take it away. And this is your Midnight Manifest for the Super Mario Brothers. movie directed by Aaron Urvath and Michael Jelanek, written by Matt Vogel, starring Chris Pratt, Anya Tiller Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, and Seth Rojman. Our story begins in Brooklyn, where Mario and Luigi have started their own plumbing business as Super Mario Brothers, which is struggling in its infancy. Mario's father disapproves of the career change, but when a manhole leak threatens Brooklyn,

the brothers go out to save the borough in hopes of changing their luck. Through a series of events, Mario and Luigi are sucked down a green pipe, with Mario landing in the Mushroom Kingdom rolled by Princess Peach, and Luigi ending up in the Dark man's with Bowser. Bowser has aspirations of world domination and marrying Princess Peach. And after learning how to use power-ups in this world, Mario decides to team up with Peach to save Luigi and help defend their kingdom. Mario, Peach, and Toad travel to the jungle kingdom to ask King cranky Kong for his aid,

but he says that they need to defeat his son, Donkey Kong first. Mario ends up doing that and the kingdoms join their forces and go-karts but are quickly dispatched. Barring and Donkey Kong must set aside their differences and unite to defeat Bowser. and once they get to his castle, soon all the heroes and villains are transported to Brooklyn where Mario and Luigi have to use the star to defeat Bowser, and that is your midnight manifest for the Super Mario Brothers movie. Charles, first thoughts.

I liked it. I mean, I had a good time in theater. It was a brisk 90 minutes. This is a meat and potato's Super Mario Brothers movie. I think I could very much tell that everybody involved after the 97 live action debacle was like we cannot crash this car. Like we need to be on our P's and Q's.

So I just think that like, hey, was it the most ambitious Mario Brothers movie? No. But I think that I enjoyed it and it did what it was supposed to do, which is be like, oh, nostalgia. I love these characters. So, yeah, it was a vibe. What about you, Venn?

So that movie was in 93. And how dare you? Bismerch, Bob Hoskins and John Lake Guzamo, it's unwatchable. I'm sorry. It's pretty good. It's unwatchable.

The only part that I like that I remember about that movie is they had Yoshi in it. They had a live action Yoshi, a little dinosaur Yoshi. No, the disgusting lizard person? That was ugly. First of all, bro. First of all, let me tell you all something real quick.

I have such a connection to Yoshi. Yoshi, I see myself in Yoshi. Both of us got the white man on. my back. It's like, it's like, I see, you know, I love Yoshi. Yoshi is my favorite Mario character at all. And by the way, we're going to get to Yoshi and what happens at the end, the credit to this movie.

I want to talk about Mario's treatment of Yoshi and what I think should happen in a sequel involving Yoshi. Let me tell you guys something real quick about my reaction to this. I loved this movie. I got there. I had just gotten a fight with my sister. I didn't even get a chance to get any of my beloved popcorn. I sit down.

I watched the movie. And the movie made me feel good, guys. Isn't that great? Is it going to reinvent modern cinema? No. But I laughed. I laughed. I had fun.

I connected to the characters. It didn't want to do a lot. but it did what it had to do. I loved it. Mint boys. I had a blast, man. I'm not going to hold you. I didn't really have any expectations coming in.

I saw the Ron Tomato score, which we'll get into later. I was like, oh, man, well, we'll see what it goes. This is the Mario movie. But I went to a 3 o'clock showing, and apparently it's a spring break out here. And so it was filled with all the children at my showing, and they had a freaking blast, man. They was in the theater going crazy. And honestly, the energy radiated. I was in that thing like, hey, man, I'm having fun too.

I really enjoyed this movie. The word on the streets was you was trying to holler at the moms. You know what I'm saying? Trying to be the stepdad. The dad has stepped up. Is this true? No, I shut up. I almost missed the beginning of the movie.

I didn't have time to be holler at no, no, no, no mess up there. So you would have if you did have time. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, there was, you know what I'm saying? Like, I literally walked in and the movie started, so I didn't have. you know, no time to Mac, you know what I'm saying? But I really, really enjoyed this movie. Like all the callbacks, all the, like, the music cues, it just had just a blast.

Like you guys said, it's not going to, it didn't change the way I see movies. It didn't do anything spectacular. But for, like, a basic Super Mario Brothers movie, awesome. I can't agree more. I can't agree more. There's, like, an undeniable magic for anybody that's ever picked up in a bar. Mario game, which I think given how culturally relevant Mario has always been, since he's kind of come out, like, it's kind of hard to not connect with this on a kind of amazing base level of nostalgia and

visceral enjoyment. Like, there's no way that you can't watch this movie and feel some type of great time. It's kind of perfect like that. No, of course, it's not like Martin Scorsese's ideal cinema masterpiece. But, you know, who cares? I fucking loved it. It was a great time. Could you imagine Martin Scorsese's the Super Mario Brothers movie? We'd still be watching it.

We'd still be in there. You think so? How dare you, Jomey? I'm just saying it'd be long as hell. It'd be at least three and a half hours. All right. Jomey, with all of the fucking Netflix shows that you'd be watching at 2 a.m. Lonely Island, I think, you know, it's fine.

Okay. So if Scorsese did this real quick, want to play this out. We come in, Rolling Stones, of course, lead us into it. We get all Mario's life. Layla's in there somewhere. The casting would be interesting. Probably

Joe Pesci is Mario. Stop. Joe Pesci is, Dad. He was like, no, Joe Pesci. Did y'all see the Irishman? Yes. Unfortunately, yes. He doesn't give a fuck about putting people in the right ages. Like, Robert De Niro played. Robert DeNiro's in his 80s.

He paid a 33-year-old guy in the movie. Yeah, like, it's like he's kicking somebody. He's stiff. Oh, bro, that scene is so fucking funny. Look, that scene is so sad. Do not let people Google that. Come on, man. Just wait a second.

Shout out to Sean Finacy and to everybody, all the serious movie critics here at the Ringer, who love the Irishman and all of that stuff. That scene, with him tuning up that guy, shout out to Chris Ryan, all of you. guys. That's hilarious. So fucking funny. That's so funny. Y'all, y'all talking about all the Irishmen. It's great. It's fantastic.

That's not funny to y'all? Whatever. All right. We'll move on. I can do a whole fucking podcast on that movie. To me, it's funny, but it's sad because, like, his little arm is doing the old man thing where you got to have to get all your strength up to get the kick. And I'm like, God damn, bro. He is a... You can't just have a stuff. man coming there. It wasn't a different way to shoot that.

It's the same thing in Captain Marvel where Sam Jackson, you know, supposed to be in the 90s, right? He's supposed to be, like, younger. But you see him run, and he runs like a 75-year-old man when he's supposed to be 40. It's okay.

You know what I'm saying? Okay. Mario, we all know Mario's origin story. He somehow got to a world where the princess needed him. I really don't remember it, if I'm being honest.

I don't really... Here's a thing. Okay. There's no, I was doing research. There's like not really a canon Mario story. Interesting. Like fans have tried to make one, but like, in the first few games, it was just like he's a carpenter. And then it's like, oh, no, he's a plumber because for XYZ reasons.

And then he was not from the Mushroom Kingdom. But then in some games, he was always there. He was born there. So I've been going down a rabbit hole and I'm just like, oh, no. there really is no, like, canonical version of Mario. But they have, like, this little, again, like, this movie probably has the most Easter eggs per minute of any movie I might have ever seen. They hint at what Mario used to do beforehand and Luigi, that they were working at a

construction company, an ode to the very first appearance of Mario where he fights Donkey Kong at Jumpman. You could see that arcade machine in the restaurant. Like, that's incredible. Like to just say that like, oh yeah, he used to work construction. Now he's doing plumbing with his brother. Like, that's adorable. So you're saying that they were able to combine all of the sort of disputed origins of Mario into one little thing and give us a streamlined Mario, which is what they did.

It's kind of a new origin story. You know, Mario and Luigi, they live with their entire family. That's when the movie when I saw it to say. So when I saw that at first, I was a little bit like, how. Illumination, Pixar type of, kind of paint-by-number storytelling are we doing with Mario, with his family, and his family doesn't believe in him and all of that stuff. But that stuff ended up really working for me.

Did Mario's motivations and who he is as a character work for everybody else? I mean, I wanted, honestly, when I bumped up against the movie, I wanted more of that because they're like, they did this thing where they're pointing to the Pixar version of this movie, where they're like, Mario's dad doesn't think he's shit. he's still living at home. He wants me with a present's dad. And then for the entire movie,

they're like, yeah, yeah, yada, yada. Forget that shit. And I honestly thought the Brooklyn stuff was the most successful thing in this movie. When they start, when they're at the dinner, and then they start running through, like, Brooklyn

and the construction site, I'm just like, this is genius. This is exactly what I want. And I kind of wish there was just like five or ten more minutes of them, of Mario and Luigi, being plumbers, fucking around in Brooklyn.

But I want to ask y'all of this. Was it a little weird that they gave Mario a dad because, like, I know Mario was supposed to be young, but he looks like he's fucking 40 and he's like sleeping in his bed with, and I'm just like, wait, how old is Mario? I mean, too much, we don't really know

how old Mario is. Like, he could be... That nigga looked mad old back in the day. That was Bob Hoskins back in the day. Yeah, he looked... No, back in the day, I don't, I'm not so sure of Mario. Because they de-age Mario a lot for this. This is the beginning of Mario's journey, right?

But in a day, in a day, I feel like Mario was a strong 40-year-old person. You know, 35, 40, maybe. I think technically he's 24 now. That's what, that's what Ben Lingberg said on the big picture. And I'm just like, you don't look 24 in this movie. Like, why does he got a whole, like, I thought he was going to turn to be like, shut the fuck up, dad. I'm a crone ass me.

He almost looks a little older than his dad in some place. That's what I'm saying. It's the mustache. Yeah. Because when you look at it is, he looks young. He looks young, especially. at the end, it's the mustache and also what they wear. You know what I mean? Like, it's at the end when they're, when they're waking up,

they look mad young when they get out of the bed and all of that stuff like that. They look young. But the mustache and the decorum, they look how they address the entire, should I say, the overalls and stuff. They make you look old. It's wild to see that contrasted at a dinner table with normal dressed people and then Mario and Luigi. Why are they the only ones that are matching and stuff? Oh, I guess that's part of the gimmicks. That's part of the gimmick. Yeah.

Mario Brothers. See, Charles, I got to disagree, man. The Brooklyn stuff, I was like, hmm, ah, we can keep that. Really? Let's get to the mushroom. You don't want the Beastie Boys in there?

You don't want, nah, when the Beastie Boys dropped, that shit was fire. I don't know. It was great. I mean, it was fun. And they had a little Mario level and they're jumping around.

It's great. Yeah, and he's helping out Luigi, like, get through the construction site? You hated that? I did not hate it. I'm just saying that part for me was the weakest part of the film. I'm like, all right, we got 90s.

What about the scene with the dog? The scene with the dog is hilarious. That scene with the dog was great. He's just like, he's looking at his mom and he's like, uh, the dog, I don't mind the dogs. I don't mind them, like, the actual, like, doing the, like, doing the, like, the 2D level. I thought that was, that was really fun, right?

Eh, he could have cut, like, five minutes off that thing. Let's get to the Mushroom Kingdom, man. That's what we all came to see. Uh, Chris Pratt as Mario for you guys. Chris Pratt, a guy who, you know, is beloved by all. How did you guys feel about him as Mario? I was ready to hate. I'm not going to lie.

I came in. I was like, I'm coming in with my Charles hat on. Like, we fin to get this way out of here. It was good, man. It was good. I don't know what else to say. Like, it was, I can't be out here hating. It was pretty solid.

Can't complain. Yeah. See, the thing about Chris Pratt is that, he's a great performer. He's really great. And so, I mean, you guys are going to, there's going to be a video tomorrow, and he's going to be in a helicopter

shooting the AR-15 at a wolf. And then, like, we'll all be mad. Right. You know what I mean? But we'll all be mad, right? And then Star Lord will be on screen and we'd be like, oh, man, he's kind of charming that Star Lord.

And as Mario, I feel like he struck the right chords. Mario, to me, was a cool, relatable, root forable character. You know what I mean? He reminded me and Steve a lot. I thought this Mario story was kind of story of Steve in a lot of ways. Yeah. Just trying to make a buck. Steve, your answer to this?

No, I mean, yeah, Chris Pratt did a great job, weirdly enough. I can't stress enough. A great job? I think so. Like, yeah, I think he did a really good job. Yeah. Like him and Luigi, like, I think you cannot stress enough what, like, hilarious outrage, like, the gaming and kind of movie community reacted to the cast list of this movie when it first came out. There are millions of reaction videos of, like, there's an Nintendo direct where they announced the voice cast of this movie.

and you cut to Chris Pratt's mugshot, like headshot of Chris Pratt becoming Mario and I'm like, this is insane. Nobody could sell this. Seth Rogan as Donkey Kong. What? Geegan Michael Key is towed.

What? Like, that makes no sense. Everybody, not even just Chris Pratt, everybody did a fantastic job in the voice work for this. I can't, I had no complaints. Honestly, I don't, I didn't think like Chris Pat was great.

I just think that he did what he needed to do. Like, he didn't get in the way where, like, there was a point where I just, like, forgot. It was Chris Pratt, which I think is, like, the genius of the performance where I was just like, all right, cool. It's just the talking Mario. I think, honestly, when I still did start to notice, like, there are levels to this voice acting shit is Jack Black as Bowser, where I was just like, this man is in, like,

this man is cooking. Like, he is, this is almost so entertaining. That was when I was like, damn, like, you really can make a character jump off the screen as a voice actor. Let me tell you something. Bowser, look, I'm not, so let me tell you something.

I'm not going to be mad if in 2026 there's like a Bowser movie. If they rehabilitate Bowser and there's a, like, when Bowser's playing the piano and he starts peaches, peaches, peaches, I'm in there and I'm watching it and it starts to get, and he gets just progressively

funnier. I'm like, I literally the theater laugh because I was like, what the fuck? And everybody, and everybody, everybody's like, it's so, it was so hilarious. And you notice when he's when he's saying Peaches and they keep flashing her picture up on the screen,

it is, it is so funny, bro. He is so good as Bowser. We meet Bowser, Bowser's a jerk. And every time someone mentions the name Peaches, he's so insecure. they really did a good job.

I would watch a Bowser rom-com. If it was just Bowser trying to find love, I would watch the shit out of it. Perfect adaptation to have. There's a game called Bowser's Inside Story, and it's basically a little side adventure with Mario and Luigi, and you get to learn about Bowser as a kid

and why he turned out to be such a jerk that he is. It's the funniest Mario game that's ever been. That would be a perfect adaptation, because it's about him, like, resenting the Mushroom Kingdom, wanting to find love, why he's attracted to peach so much. It's so funny.

Now, I will say that there are some Me Too implications with Bowser in this situation. You can't do that, Bowser. Can't do that, Bowser. You can't do that, Bowser. You can't force a woman to marry you by threatening to destroy her entire kingdom. So that's not, as the Midnight Boys,

I think we should say, we're not in favor of that. No, we're not saying that Bowser's actions were great. We do not condone Boucher's action series. Yeah, the Midnight Boys condoned Bowser's behavior as a staff

record label and crew. Condemned. Oh, we condemn as a staff record label and crew. However, Bowser kind of stole the movie a little bit.

I'm not going to put a little bit. I'm not going to hold you. Bowser kind of sold a movie. Bowser was a G on piano. When he started playing the, the little, one of the little songs. The underwater level.

Boop, boon, boon, we started playing. I'm like, oh, my. This movie is just making me feel so amazing. It does such a good job. Wait, so, whoa, before we go, here's a thing. I will say if there's one knit, I have to pick.

I have lots. I have, I think Charlie Day did an amazing job as Luigi. I was actually like, oh, this is like the perfect Luigi. Do we think Luigi got a little sideline? I was just like, I would have liked a little bit more, like, of the brotherhood in this. Like, Luigi basically went out like a bitch until the end of the movie. So let's talk about this.

We talk about the bond between Mario and Luigi. Charles, get your shit off because I agree. Totally. I'm just like, here's the thing. I do see what they're trying to do. I think that them not making Pete's the damsel in distress works. In 2023, she does not need to be the damsel in distress. But I got to be real.

We got it. Like, we all know Luigi's resume. Luigi gets fucking busy. Why the fuck is Luigi just like not doing anything for this movie? He's just like, I know that, you know, Luigi is a little scared. It takes him a little bit of while to warm up. But dog, like, let's not, let's not act like Luigi don't got that dog in him. And I have, I'm a little mad.

I had a Fox News moment in the movie. I'm not even going to lie. Jesus Christ. I had a Fox News moment in the movie. So look, I, y'all know how to happen to be some talk. Don't go Tucker Carlson on us, man. It outwoke bullshit. Okay.

So, so. Peach, you guys don't, hey, hey, can't have a damseless distress anymore? It's fine. It's fine. You don't want it. You don't want no damseless distress. And plus, let's be honest, Pete was a damsel in Mario 1. But then Peach has become a character that in her own right has had her own autonomy, her own story.

She gets busy. She gets busy. You can play as Peach and Mario 2, a game they poured it from another game with somebody was basically on an acid trip. We used to play Mario 2 late at night. The game was so trippy, it would feel like we were high. The game is so trippy. You go behind the level. And y'all played Mario 2 before?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. No. Oh, you've never played it? Who here's played Mario 2? Yes. Yeah. Okay, the game is like super, especially, it's so different than Mario 1.

It's trippy. It's weird. It looks, the levels are all kinds of crazy, and we just couldn't even understand it. It was some new shit. and you could play as Peaches on there. So Peaches, not saying the Peaches, but to take Luigi and make Luigi into this spineless, feckless type of character was directly offensive to me. Because I always had to play as Luigi.

Somebody else was Mario, and I had a way for them to die. And then I could always be, I am Luigi in life. I'm the one Mario has failed. and then I go and save the princess as Luigi. All right. You play a player two? You play or two? Bro, absolutely.

The great Mario fight of 1988. All right, here we go. My cousin Brian is about to finish Mario. Okay? He's about to finish Mario. I distract him. Knock it out of his hand. He dies.

All right? There's a little tussle. It's Luigi's turn to play. Van goes through the whole level. Beats the game. He's mad. Boom, boom, boom, got to get busy. Ah, ah, get some of this. Ooh, ooh, ooh, it's Luigi's time.

It's not Mario's time. It's Luigi's time. And in this goddamn movie, it wasn't Luigi's time. To the very end, they play Luigi, not just like he wasn't capable, but he was a coward. And that's not, it's the brothers. They're brothers. And they both get, they both get busy. And it's Luigi Eurasia.

to me it's unacceptable. Me and Kalika, last thing I'll say, me and Kalika are walking through the movie theater. We're going to see a different movie. Okay? We're going to see a different movie. I look at the poster. And the poster, it had Luigi,

and his hands were bound. And I was like, I know you're not about to get a whole movie with Mario trying to save Luigi. And she was like, would you rather Mario have to save a woman? And I was like, yes. Oh, my God. I thought in that,

I thought when he got to the to the island or the like the little castle thing, I thought we're going to get a little Luigi's Mansion bit. That would have been amazing. I totally thought they were going there. No, that's the spin-off. That's the spin-off.

You know, just a little hint. Do you think to Van's point, do you think Luigi's Mansion, do you think that that has pushed Luigi too far in the cowardly role and has robbed him of what has made him such a courageous figure in the past.

No, I think him being so scared and then overcoming that is what Luigi's all about. You know what I mean? Like maybe in this movie he's supposed to be a little feckless, a little like,

oh, somebody's going to save me. But in the spin-off and in the sequel, we see Luigi, like, we ain't see Princess Daisy in this movie, right? What if Princess Daisy shows up in Super Mario Brothers movie two?

He's like, hey, man, I got to step up, man. I can't be like this no more. I got to, I got a, I got to change. I got to be the man my woman needs, you know, and we see a different side of Luigi. You know what I'm saying?

There's always possibilities. Oh, so you say Daisy is going to come into the picture and he's going to have to boss up. That's a boss up, exactly. He's going to have to like, you know, wake up. And you're like, hey, man, I can't be scared no more. I got to show something. You know, but I think that's what makes him such a special character, right?

Like, he's the little brother, the like, hey, man, I got you. but for him like one day like step up and maybe do Louis Mention or like become something a little greater is like it's pretty cool and I think we could see that in the future. So we get some side characters that didn't really get a lot of shine in this movie. The actual only side character that we saw was Diddy Kong.

Diddy was there, which I expected Diddy to have maybe like a more significant role. All right, let me go off really quick. I love me some Diddy Kong. I love me some Disney Kong. That's my man. When I saw him on screen, I was like, oh, fuck we get, Diddy Kong.

And all we did was like the king being like, hey, Diddy, shut the fuck up. And I was just like, hey, don't talk about man like that. Like, I was really upset. I was just like, yo, Diddy is that sometimes, if we're going to be honest, Diddy is just as formidable, if not more formidable, than Donkey Kong. I love him. And I just feel like we needed a little bit more Diddy Kong than this. Diddy has a different skill set.

All right, this is true. And so I'll, but what I'm saying to your point is that that skill set is as useful as Donkey Kong, to me, when you're playing Donkey Kong Country, another game that was trippy and crazy and out there. I love Donkey Kong country. I love to play Donkey Kong country. Those bees were medicine. The bees were menacing.

I love Donkey Kong country. And Diddy Kong? Wasn't there the Donkey Kong rap? Like, don't they like break out? They had a rap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Donkey Kong. Uh-huh.

So my whole thing is, you could do it. I wanted them to do like a Diddy Kong, but it's like Diddy Kong. and it meets the real world. I wanted to see Diddy Kong with some Sirrock. You know what I'm saying? What? I want to see. See Diddy Kong?

You know what I'm saying? I wanted to see Diddy Kong get his little. If Donkey Kong gets captured, he's like, I'm missing you. So you see what I mean? See what happens? There's that level where something goes and it's like bit. And then there's that over bit. Speaking of that, speaking of that, speaking of that,

I don't know. It's okay. It's okay. It happens. I've done it before. Sometimes you just go overbid. Overbid. That's an overbid for Steve.

Steve, did you watch the breakfast club interview or Sting admitted that he gets like $5,000 a day from Diddy where you just like, yeah, the white man deserves it. Was that? Sorry. Score one for us. Steve. We got one on. You sting. So Steve, Steve sees that he's like, fucking right, man.

Hey, he's a man, brother. He's like, he's like, yeah. Steve's got another, he's got another group. Score one for the white man. Like, look at this. Fuck these guys. I love you, Steve. I love you.

Guys, it's a joke. It's a joke. Leave it. It's a joke. He's our friends. Legal. All right. Okay.

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Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. Diddy Kong? We see. We don't see Yoshi until the spoiler. post-credit scene of the movie and Wario's nowhere in it. No, we saw, but we saw Yoshi's people in it.

We saw Yoshi's people. We saw Yoshi's people, which, by the way, this is going to sound so crazy, guys. I almost got emotional. I don't know why. Like, I don't know why. I just want a simpler time. I used to have so much fun in life. This was so much fun, guys.

And I wake up now, it's fucking Trump, Ukraine, and the Lakers getting blast on the second night of a back-to-back. It's like, you know what I'm saying? It's like all of this, bro, I used to have so much fun, man. It used to be so much fun. My parents would come in, somebody else had to work, and I'd be playing the game. It would be me and Yoshi and Mario,

and Yoshi's people ran by, and they wanted an apple, because you got to feed Yoshi apples, and I got like a little bit, it got to me. I don't know why, man. I used to have so much fun in life. Did you, Dan, did you ever play the Yoshi game where you get to play as like baby Mario on his back? But your Yoshi, you get to like fucking throw eggs and shit.

That was my favorite Yoshi game. It's so great. And so, like, that was a cool little cameo from Yoshi's people. And I knew that they would come back around. All right. If so, if they could have put one person in this movie and gave them more screen time, who would have been for you guys? It's Diddy Kong for me.

What about you, Steve? It might be Diddy as well. Honestly, we could have gone on a whole tangent with the Kong Kingdom. like con kingdom looked awesome i think that the idea they need to give me 10 minutes on in con king yeah to know that like the idea of mario cart and their transportation of all cart culture is resting in the con kingdom i'm like this is this is so there's so much potential for so many like fun little movies here like to know that we can have a donkey con spin off and it's just basically like a maro cart movie to get like the sort of like mad max homage that we got into this i would have

loved to probably see if we couldn't get Wario, I would have wanted to see Yoshi more. But obviously, that's a whole other adventure and a whole other thing that we'll be getting to. But yeah, Yoshi is was like, we could have gotten Yoshi in this. Yeah. Sure. Sure.

For me, it was the homie yos. Yeah. It was the home of yos. I think we could have got more to homie yos in this movie. They're saving them for round two, just like they did knuckles for Sonic. But I think, I think we could have got Yos in this. movie. Question, for you guys, which Mario game was this movie? It was a bunch of them. I know it was a bunch of them, but if you had to choose one,

which Mario game was this movie? I could start, and I could probably say this was Mario 2 because Mario 2 is kind of like the one that gets a little like meta and it's going behind the scenes of like a different game and stuff. Like this is obviously like a treasure trove a bunch of stuff. Like, obviously it's not Mario 3 because Mario 3 is like canonically a play and didn't happen. So I would have to say

that it's probably Mario 2. Really? I thought it was original. I think it's definitely Mario 3, but whatever, what do you mean Mario's 3 is a play and it didn't happen? What do you mean?

So if you look at the way that 3 is presented, it is on a stage and presented as the form of a play. The map is on a stage. You select it. everything via a stage. These are like stories and interpretations you could say of Mario's adventures through one and two. You see what the fuck are you talking about?

This is that deep lore. This is what I'm talking about. I never knew this until right now. So Mario 3 didn't happen. Technically no. It is it is an interpretation of like the story telling like that episode of Avatar, The Last Airbender, where they're just like retelling. Mario's adventure. Yeah. Where did you get this? Steve, are you making this up? Or did you get this from?

I've seen like two videos about this about like how it's like kind of kinotically a play and not real. Hold on. I'm gonna Google this real play. Mario 3. This is kind of mess with my childhood a little bit.

According to Shigeru Miyamoto, Super Mario Brothers 3 was conceived as a stage play. It confirms. Super Mario, it was a play. Oh my God. Oh, Lordy. What the? The fuck. This is, this is, this is, this changes.

This, in some way, makes it better. Yeah. Because so it was Mario 2, Mario 3, and then, well, first of all, it's obvious that, you know, it's a state, it's all of that. But I just thought that was just the window dressing. Yeah, no. That is the Blue Kingdom telling of Mario's adventures. So wait, guys, did you, I was on the deep web looking up Mario shit. There was one website, like one Mario Wiki where they were like going chronologically, like, yeah, so in the Donkey Kong game, he's a carpenter.

and it's not Daisy. And he beats Donkey Kong, but then in the sequel, he puts Donkey Kong in jail and Donkey Kong's kid has to save Donkey Kong and Mario was torturing him in the cage. And I'm like,

what the fuck is happening? I didn't know that there's this dark history for Mario that he's like an animal abuser. Oh yeah, no, Mario and Donkey Kong got beef for real. Well, first of all, Mario is an animal abuser like throughout the entire. You know what Mario does to get Yoshi to

like get something, right? I mean, you got to think about all the coupons. Punches Josie in the back of his shit. Like, Yoshi's there. Look, when Mario wants Yoshi to use his tongue to grab something, he punches Yoshi in the back of the head. And I'm, Yoshi activist like myself,

they better change that. If I see Mario punch Yoshi in the back of the head. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do we not know that, like, we don't know Yoshi's makeup? Maybe this is something that's, just normal for his people. Have we ever thought of that?

Like maybe this is just like, like your friends just punch you in the back the head and like your tongue comes out. Are we saying that Yoshi's people have a kink? They might. Are they into, are they into? We should have kink shamed them. To be fair, to be fair,

that motherfuckers are like popping out eggs like nobody's business. So you're saying it's a whole race of BDSM dinosaurs. It might be. Really quick though. Think about it. What does Yoshi do to defeat an enemy?

He sticks his tongue out, swallows it, and then pops out an egg. Like, we don't know. Sometimes it could be for pain. Sometimes it could be for pleasure. Oh, so okay. Okay. Well, you just, okay, so now you just, it's a completely different relationship between Mario and Yogi. I'm sorry to that.

So if what you're saying is true, if what you're saying is true, you know, Yoshi's on an abuse me. com. Real sight, by the way. Oh, gosh. Jeez. Oh, okay. Hey, yo. Got in this shit, bro.

Hey, yo! Can I say that ban over bit? Oh, that's an overbib. That's an overbid. That's an overbid. I took it too far. For sure. I'm the worst overbitt person of all of us.

I'm definitely overbid. Okay. All right. Okay. So, did the movie match the feeling for you guys of actually playing Mario? We've all played a lot of Mario. Did the movie match that for you? Oh, absolutely.

I think the genius of this movie for like, I think all of us can agree like even if it wasn't the most ambitious thing, it captured the childhood wonderment of playing Mario for the first time, the fifth time, the 100th time. When he goes and like he's practicing with a peach, I was just like,

this is what I want from a fucking Mario movie. I do like that they accurately sold the idea of power-ups and the concept of power-ups. They didn't even try to do that. They're like, no, these power-ups you can, be on fire. You can be big. You can be a cat. They're even like, try to explain those things. But that's fine. Like, because, hey, this is a power up. And I agree with that. No, I love that. I love that. It's a very simple concept. Okay, hey, Mario, the way to get through these things is they're

different power ups and they give you abilities. When you get hit, you lose the power up, right? I thought it was cool. I also thought one particular thing was really cool is Mario almost got a fireflower, right? But Donkey Kong blew it out before he could get to it. Like, little stuff like that was like really super dope to me. So can I also ask you this? The one thing I did think that made like Peach such a tragic figure, but I was just like, this is a great change. It's like, I was so sad for baby Peach when like she's just in this world and she doesn't

have any parents and the toads have to raise her. And she's just like, oh, human. I was like, this is the saddest thing I've ever watched. Like she's just like the leader of these people who are also her parents. like what was going on? Is this in game? I mean, you could see that the older sage toad

that was like, Princess, it's time for you to save the kingdom. Like, I think I saw his like colors and all of that when baby peach came in. So I'm assuming that like the old to raise her.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the same blue toad. It is very sad to know that like she's technically the only human in this world. It reminded me of adventure time. and Princess Bubblegum raising the candy people, you know, and how, like, she's, you know, very different from them. But at the same time, like, she's got to put her, she's got to strap on the thing and be like, hey, man,

I got her guy to take care of it. She's strapping on. Jome. Jome. Jesus Christ. Guys, come on. Disgusting. Bro.

That's not, y'all, y'all know what I went. You know what we should be doing. You know what we should be doing. You know exactly what I mean. We should be counting transgressions for this episode. Like, we, we. because this episode has been. we should be counting transgressions for this episode

because there's a lot of stuff going on. We should just say, I think the Mario movie is really excited us too much. And because of that, we're all over the place. We're like little kids. We're like little kids. Actually, the Mario movie made us into little kids. We've lost all self-control.

You know what I mean? We should be counting transgressions for this episode. You know what it made me think? I felt sorry for the Toad Mushroom people. I felt sorry for them because an outsider, they hate themselves. An outsider comes to their kingdom and they raise up the outsider and then make that outsider their princess. You know what I mean?

Like what? So she can't. So she's better than y'all? It's all of y'all and her? To be fair, though, to be fair, I think the toads, we learn very, very quickly, we don't know what the mushrooms are. The mushrooms, like, it might be like cannibalism. Maybe they can't really use all the power of their kingdom and they see like this Superman figure. Like Peach is almost like, if we're being honest, he's like Cal L to them.

She's just like, oh, like I was like, the yellow sun is our mushroom. Like, you're the protector. I took her as more of a Superman figure. And they're just like, okay, of course you will lead us into a better world. Make sense. What was the single best scene of the movie? I'll go first. The cart chase ambush on the rainbow track was beautiful.

I'm sorry, I got to say something else about this movie. this movie was beautiful. This movie looked really, really, really good. The Kong Kingdom looked especially good. The scene on the rainbow, they looked especially good at the end when they grabbed the star was fantastic. The movie looked great.

Illumination was in their bag here. That's mine. What about you guys? Weirdly, I got emotional when they got the star and were like giving like the coup de grace to Bowser and everybody else. Like to know when they did like the little like Mario 64 run where their hands were out and stuff like that, I was like, oh my God. They like they really knew. And there's just like this amazing like culmination of like all of the great things that we love seeing Mario do and play as.

It was the best to see that finale and give them like that final like uppercut, huzzah, like smash brothers like all of the great. games as before. The finale fight was, was for me the best. I was a big fan. You all know what it is. I gotta go with the Brooklyn one. Probably because I live here,

but when the BC Boys song came in, that's how I know I'm fucking old. That's how I know I'm just like wash. I was just like, yeah, this is some classic fucking cinema. Let's fucking go. And my heart like swelled up when Mario's helping Luigi

through it because I'm like, that's a big bro for you. Like that is like a big bro. Even when they were babies and Luigi is remembering like all that Mario. did for him. Oh, that was really good. Flashback to like the baby Luigi and Luigi. Also, by the way, Mario and Luigi

as babies look like a little mutants by comparison to all other babies. Yes. Because they had a normal looking kid. And then it was just their baby Mario and Yoshi bird. I'd count that as a very borderline transgression calling children mutants.

It's what it is. But whatever. Well, my I've ever seen was the fight with Donkey Kong. That was awesome. That was great. That's great. The bell is probably like one of my favorite power-ups in the game. So to see him use that to beat Doggy Kong.

And he's making a little mitten. He's making little biscuits on Donkey Kong when he beats him. That was the best. And just to be real with you, I'm not counting Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, the song. Yeah, me neither. Because that's the best thing that ever happened. That would easily be the best thing out of the movie. And I think it should be probably nominated.

It's an early Dark Horse for Best Song. I was just best original song at the Academy Awards. I'd love to see it. Um, okay, the future now. The future. This is not the last, I feel like this movie's going to make a ton of money. Oh, is it better? Oh, yeah.

I mean, it only costs $100 million to make. So it'll definitely only, you say that. So I feel like this movie is going to make some money. My theater was packed. It was a Wednesday. Of course, the kids are in school, whatever. What do you think is top? Do you think, what is like the top this movie will make?

Domestic? Between domestic worldwide. What do you think? You think this movie can get to a billion or that's, too much. That's probably too much. I think it could get to 350 domestic. No, I think it was already on track for like 250, wasn't it? Oh, was it? Okay. Well, 350, 250 domestic? I think I think 700 worldwide would be a big success. I mean, think about how big Super Mario is everywhere else, like Japan and places like that. Worldwide, yeah. Yeah. So, so I think 700 worldwide is pretty, is, it would be a

big deal. All right. Wait, whoa, I got it. Does anybody want to give a guess for domestic, how much the opening will be for U.S. $100 million? $800 million? $85 million. Okay. $1.15. All right.

I'm on the Hollywood reporter. So on the low end, it's looking like $141 million in its five-day domestic debut. God damn. Bullish pundits suggest the movie could even approach $150 million. Oh, wow.

It's a five-day debut. It's a Wednesday opening. But still, 150 is still, that's a lot of fucking brain. That's thick. Would you guys be open to the NCU, the Nintendo Cinematic Universe? I'm talking about Mario.

I'm talking about goddamn Zelda. You know, I'm talking about crossovers all over the place. The NCU, and maybe it ends. Smash Bros. It's got to be Smash Bros. It's got to be. That's end game, baby. Oh, I would love that shit.

Yes, and a thousand percent what I need to happen. Two words. Star Fox. That is going to be the greatest. Star Fox. All right, then let's go. Spinoff movie, not the next Mario movie. Dan, starting with you.

If you could green light one spinoff movie, immediately what would it be? Not a Mario movie? can't be a Mario movie. So this would be like, like Mario was like Iron Man. Who is the next character you're like, all right, this who we're going with next? It doesn't necessarily have to be in the Mario world, right? Because obviously

there's a Donkey Kong, just in the Nintendo world. My favorite Nintendo game, besides all of the Mario's stuff, I really like to Contra. That's not going to work as an animated game. Contra. No, I don't think that's a, I I don't think that's a Nintendo specific property.

It's not. So we're talking about a Nintendo specific property. Like any character, like the characters that's created by the original Super Smash Bros. Like Nintendo character. Oh, shit. I'd have to think, man. I really would have to think.

Who's you guys is? Oh, me? Oh, come on, man. We've got to see Metroid, man. We got to see Samas. Metro is great. Metro is a great one. Metro is a great, great, great game.

Because I'm trying to think about original Nintendo properties. It's Castlevania. They already did that. I'm sure what are the original I mean the easiest one to me is I'm like you could take any one of those Zelda games and just give you the most beautiful animation that I've ever seen

be amazing. It's going to be more weird but it's amazing. Also, Donkey Kong is easy. I just need a Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong but weirdly I'm a big Kirby guy. Kirby's going to be fun. Kirby's going to be fun. Kirby's going to be fun. Okay, okay. So I think there are a lot of things.

things didn't go there. I'm wondering how they would be able to do it. Steve, you got something? One more. Punch out. What? Little Mac. That's great. It's a little boxing story. Mike Tyson shows up at the end. Mario's the referee. Yeah, Mario's the referee. That was one of his many

jobs before he was a plumber. You know what I would do? This would be as a TV show. I would do like a house MD type show for Dr. Mario. Like all the little Nintendo characters coming in and Mario. Pills. Yeah, he's popping Vicodin. He's just like, all right, Donkey Kong, let's see what's going on with you. I'm looking at all of these characters, and there's a lot of stuff there. I don't want Nintendo to get ahead of themselves and screw it up like some other places are doing. But I had a lot of fun with this, and I wouldn't mind seeing more.

Okay, so we know that Wario and Wa Luigi are coming. We know that they're going to come. Have you guys given any thought to who you would cast as Warrior? I know who I would have is Wario. You guys are going to. going to look at me like I'm crazy. But we need to get somebody else from New York. Can you imagine if you got like an action bronzes, Wario? Oh, my God. What? There's no reason for this.

Shout out to Bronson, man. Yeah, I mean, it kind of weirdly works, man. Action Bronson, weather on the sofa. Mario, Mario, what's good with you? Wario trying to kick it to Princess Beach? Yeah, come on. He cooks her a whole meal? Because, you know, Bronx could cook his ass off.

Okay. Steve, who was your warrior? Well, Charlie Day recommended Danny DeVito, and I feel like that's just like, that's too easy of a layup, but I would probably want Brian Cox. I think he could really have fun with that. Brian Cox is Warrior, okay.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a little serious, but, like, but Brian Cox can have fun, though. Like he, like, we, we, the, Logan Roy is, like, flooding the zone with his range right now, but Brian Cox could have fun. He can have fun. Okay. Jomi.

Yeah, but I first thought I was dating Vito, too, but I can't have DeVito. I'll take Joe Pesci as Wario, just a little, like, smug, a little... That's Waluigi for me. That's Waluigi for me. So, Joe Pesci as Wai Luigi, could you do Al Pacino as Wario? Ha ha!

That should be, Terrible. Who are Mario? That's terrible. I'm trying to think. No, I need for Waluigi. I need a freak. Like, I need like, who's the actor?

Oh, Waluigi. I need Bill Hader as Waluigi. Ooh. Oh, shit. I need Bill Hader as Waluigi. What about Steve Bouchimi as Wallyji? Fuck, that's it. That's it.

That's good. That's good. That's good. That's good. Steve Bushimi is Walaigi. I'm trying to think who goes as, maybe you could do Peter Stormere as War as Warian.

Oh, yeah. Just bring them back from far. You know, you do Peter, Storbearers, Walt. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. Now, we have to talk about something here, the critics. I thought this movie was surely going to be in the 80s.

I just thought, how could you, so much of rotten tomatoes is whether or not you liked it or not. It's not, you know, it's like up or now, right? So I thought if you had to vote up or down in this movie, you truly vote up. So I was expecting it to be a little bit better reviewed. but the movie has a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. I need a quick clear-out. Guys, please, please consider what it is that you're watching. Okay?

It's a Super Mario Brothers movie. When you play Mario, you want to be into the story. You want to see some cool characters. You want to have some laughs. and you want to feel like it was worth it. I struggle to find the critic who doesn't get all of that from this movie. I understand that we grade everything

and we do this. This is kind of what we do. And we compare everything to endgame, the Godfather, Pope Fiction, funny games. I understand that all these movies, we want these films to be good. Charles has very eloquently spoke

on this podcast about how things can still be good despite the medium and despite the fact that they might have superheroes or animation or whatever. Yeah, but get it. But sometimes can we just have a little fun? If you feel good at the end of this movie for Mario,

the movie worked. And I don't understand why we have to take everything so seriously every single time. I was disappointed in the critics from this review. Well, I mean to be fair, this is, I think two things are happening. think Rotten Tomatoes as a tool

might be over-correcting where I think a lot of critics were probably like, oh, no, this is a kid's movie and not in a bad way, just being like, no, this is a movie for kids. It's almost an impossible movie for me

sometimes to like critique because I'm just like, it does what it's set out to do. It's almost like, I know Scorsese calls a lot of these movies like amusement parks, like a music park rides, but I'm like, no,

Summarer Bros is like a roller coaster. It is like trying to be like, hey, let's critique a roller coaster. I'm just like, no, it was really, really fun. I don't know what to tell you. I think the other part is, we're going to be honest, do you think some of this might have been the industry's fault?

And what I mean by that is, like, we've gotten Spiderverse or Pussing Boots' Last Wish. We've gotten a lot of animated movies that are pushing the medium forward in terms of, like, what you can do aesthetically, what you can do story-wise. And this is like a meat and potatoes, like crowd pleaser

that's not trying to do too much. And I think if you are a critic who's used to seeing like Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, you might be like, why did this do more? Instead of being like, no, this is this is just kind of what the business, this is a business decision.

Watching this movie is like, Nintendo needed this movie to work in the worst way possible. All right, let me give you a little a response to that. I think that's fair. Kouik and I were talking about something. like we met before and we were we didn't have very much right

and so you go to Johnny Rockets and you eat a hamburger turkey burger Johnny Rockets you go to Burger King you get a hamburger you go to McDonald's you get a hamburger and then all of a sudden you know there's this place that's at the Roosevelt Hotel I'm sure everybody's been to it's called 25 degrees you guys been to 25 degrees before Roosevelt Hotel

not as a burger place it's open it's open in 24 hours a day, it's at the bottom of the Roosevelt Hotel, right? And the burgers that they make there is a little bit, it's a restaurant burger, right? But it's the starter restaurant burger. Then you eat that restaurant burger, right? And it's good. And then you think, damn, the brioche bun is good. They make their own sauce.

That's good. The burger is a higher quality. And so then you try burgers from all over the place. You know, I go to Maestro's enough to where I go, hey, one day I want to try the burger that they make. I want to try, you know what I mean? Whatever. And so you understand that there is a chef somewhere

that's figuring out how to make the world's greatest hamburger. You try to hamburger at the hungry cat. One day we went on the search for LA's best burger. You go to Petit Troyes and you eat their hamburger, right? And then you go back to Burger King and you don't think you're going to like the Whopper anymore because you've had hamburgers made by the finest Michelin Star chefs in the world.

So you go, how in the world could a whopper with cheese and bacon couldn't have? be good. And then you order it and guess what? It is. It tastes good. It's good. It's a different experience, but it's still good, right? There's two types of people. One type of person goes, this whopper is good for what it is, something that gets made and sold to people a hundred times an hour, okay? Or there's some people that go, I've had better burgers so I can no longer allow myself to enjoy this one. And sometimes to me, that is what we are talking about, right? There are always going to be more ambitious films. They're going to be so films that are so

ambitious, they're not good. And these same people are going to pretend that they are just because they're ambitious. What I'm saying is this movie is a whopper. Cheese and bacon, cut in half. It's not going to fail you. You're going to go there. You're going to get it and it's good. And I get that there are brioche buns out there. But that doesn't mean that you have to shit on the because it serves a very specific purpose. That's my spiel about this. And that's why I don't want to get caught into the hypercriticism

over discussion about what a movie means if you liked it and it made you feel good. You know what I'm saying? Also, if we're being real, this movie, you can tell. I said this on the big picture. Nintendo needed this movie to work. If this was like the first Super Mario Brothers movie ever,

I think that you would have gotten a different film. But not only do video game movies generally suck, but the first Mario movie sucked. So I think that like the bar to clear of like, hey, we are like a multi-billion dollar company who are trying this for the second time. That's the movie we got. We got a movie where we're just like,

we want to prove to you that we can remind you why you fell in love with Mario. And that's fine. I guarantee you the second movie, the third movie, will be more ambitious, there will be more things going on. But for this one, they had to play the fundamentals. They had to show us that, like, we could play good basketball.

You know what I mean? I feel you. I feel you. Now here comes the moment that everybody has been waiting for, which is the midnight meter. Okay, we all right to the movie, the midnight meter. In case you guys don't know, the midnight meter is with the midnight boys. Rank a movie from one to ten. However, with a film that is incredibly great,

you can go to 11. After film is an all-time game-changer, you can go to 12. 1 through 10, 11 is for incredibly uncommonly great. 12 is a genre changer. They're not very many 12s. Charles, would you like to run down

what you think the 12s are? 12s, we got Dark Knight is a 12. I would say that Captain America Winter Soldier also a 12. Depending upon who we're talking to, Infinity War or Endgame, are 12s. Those are good benchmarks for what we consider 12s.

Spiderverse? Spiderverse is 12. Okay. So, we're talking about really the big heavy hitters. Let you guys know, D.C. doesn't have a 12th. I don't know if D.C. has an 11. We just said Dark Night. Oh, well, I mean, like modern day

D.C. I was calling, I was counting the D.C.E.U. But yeah, Dark Knight is a 12. I would say that the original Superman movie to me is an 11, if not a 12. The original Batman to me is a 12. Okay? All right. Wait, before we go, can I present something new? We could try it if it doesn't work.

We don't have to. Can we take a beat without telling everybody? Can we guess what we think the other Midnight Boys will give? Like, put it down on paper. Like, put it down on paper what you think there's cool. This is so fun. Hold on. All right, all right.

All right. I'm a write this down right now. All right, I'm ready. I got mine. Okay. Charles, give me yours. All right. I'm going to go assume my brother's movie is an eight.

Okay. I'm, I say that it's a nine. I say it is an eight. I'm rocking with an eight. Okay. I did bad. I was off. I did all right.

I did all right. Awful. Okay. So I had Charles giving it a seven. Yeah, same with me I had Steve I had Steve giving it a nine I had Jomey giving it a nine

Um Yeah So I was I was pretty much off What did Charles What did you have? Van I had you giving it a 10 I had Steve giving it a 9 And I had Jomey giving it a 10

Whoa Wow Jome surprised me Jomey surprised me Jomey what did you have Jomi I'm surprised at the 8 I thought almost for sure Jomi was going to be a nine.

But Jomey, what did you have? Wow. I'm a real hater. I had Van giving it an eight. I had Steve giving it a seven. And I had Chuck giving it a six. Because we get on this podcast, you can go back.

Because the podcast, like, man, love the movie, man. I thought it was great. Could fix some things. Then midnight score comes. Midnight meter comes. It's a seven. It's a six.

I'm like, Hey, I thought we liked this movie. We really did like this movie. Look at us. All right, Steve, Steve, what did you add? I had fan giving it a nine. I had Charles giving me the seven and I gave Joe Me giving it a nine. So I mean, the Midnight Boys don't know each other as well as we thought we did.

No, we did. I think this movie, okay. So then the Midnight Meter was 9-888. And I'm doing a pre-midnight meter ranking right now of the Mario Brothers Super Maritime. Brother's movie sequel, it's a 10. I'm giving a pre-ranking because Yoshi, I'm giving it a pre-ranking of Yon. I'd be

fucking disgusted if they didn't do better. But I really enjoyed this film. It was like, it really, really spoke to me. It was fun. I dug Mario. It had a great villain. Toll,

we haven't talked much about Toad. Toad was funny as hell. Toad is my favorite Mario character. Like before this, I love some Toad. Yeah, never really understood them,

to be honest with you. I would have a good. I've never, I've never got to you know why you don't understand

Toad? Because you're not a man of the people anymore. You know, you got a little money. Is that a

success? Toad is the working man's character. You know? Is that facts? Yeah, he's under the that's facts.

He was Princess Beach. Yeah, I didn't realize that that was kind of a thing. But you've never played Mario 64. He's like

her butler in that, isn't? I've played Mario 64. And he's just kind of around. You know what I mean? I never knew kind of what his kind of thing was. But he was very cool in this movie. I feel like I understood Toad better.

I mean, him getting the one gag that I was like, this is good is when they all get their go-karts and he chooses the monster truck. I'm like so fucking fucking funny. So funny, bro. Like the movie, the bottom of the movie that like when I got like really sucked in was when Toch first shows up and they play the theme from Captain Toad, Treasure Tracker. I was like, oh man, I'm going to love this movie. The music from this movie was amazing. It was like amazing. Every single score, like taking like the Mario,

because I believe it is like the original Mario composer, like free doing the fucking scores of the songs, it transported me. I do want to talk, let's one second about this. Not only is the obvious video game score of the movie great. Like you know that it's going to change, that there's going to be a soundtrack change when they grabbed the star at the end.

We all know that song by heart. But they didn't just cop out and give you the video game song. They gave you this, like, a musical spin on it, which was fantastic. The music of the game is omnipresent in this movie throughout, and it really works, but also the needle drops. When they're first on the cards and take on me as playing, you know what I mean? It's like the needle drops of the movie are really, really, really dope, really dope. Because remember, that's like a whole 80s. thing that was going on and they really nailed it.

They really nailed it. Okay, we're out. We're out. Midnight media final rankings, 9888. Those are all the midnight boys. All right. That's a rat.

Follow us, socials, Insta, Twitter, Facebook, save Jomey's job this Friday and every Friday. House of R, Joe and Mao, Mal and Joe. It's going to give you their deep dive into the latest episode of the Mandalorian season three. I cannot wait. I'm waiting for House of Ar.

I'm waiting for House of Art. I cannot be more interested than this episode. I cannot wait for House of R. But I cannot wait for it to drop. I'm being all the way serious. I can't wait to hear what they have to say. On Wednesdays, we're going to be back. The Midnight Boys will be giving you their instant reactions

to the latest episode of The Mandalorian. I'm going to say something right now. The next episode of the Mandalorian next Wednesday, is one of the most important episodes in the history of Disney Plus television. Wow. I'm not even... I say that I'm prone to hyperbole,

but I've been thinking about that. I almost want to do a side podcast about... It's a really important episode of television next week. Down 3-1? This is like... Yeah. It's really important. You know?

If we... end up on the star planet with the star people helping them figure out their judicial system, it's going to get a little dicey. I'm just letting you guys know. It's going to get dark. If we end up on a quest to find people to help find the missing keys

to the ecological people's society, people, it's going to start getting a little antsy, it's going to get a little fucked up. Just letting you know. All right. Credits, our producer is Steve, the architect. Almond, the tinker and builder of foods. Jomi, the explainer of dinner,

is on socials. Hashtack, it's a Jomi. That's good. I like that. That's really good. Seems it's been cooking with those. Additional production from Arjuna, Ram Gapal. Charles, take us out. It's your Mario Bros. movie, pretty good, but the critics think it sucks.

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