Original SUPER MARIO BROS. Filmmakers vindicated with Quentin Tarantino’s help after being ‘abandoned by Hollywood’

The original 1993 live-action adaptation of Super Mario Bros. it was panned by critics and bombed at the box office. It’s been listed as one of the worst movies ever made, but you know what? She has a huge fan base and a cult following now! Many children who saw this film when it was first released like myself are now adults and many of them look back on the film fondly.

The film starred Bob Hoskins like Mario, Giovanni Leguizzamo like Luigi, e Dennis Hopper as King Koopa. It was directed by the husband and wife filmmaking duo Rocky Morton AND Annabel Jankel, but the film was so reviled that their directing careers were flushed down the toilet. Hollywood has abandoned them. It really is all a messed up story and until recently they didn’t seem to realize that there was a fan base for the movie.

Then on March 11th Quentin Tarantino held a midnight showing of Super Mario Bros. at his New Beverly Cinema theater, and it was as if that screening “washed the stain away.” During a recent interview with Variety, Morton opened up about the experience, saying, “I thought there would be 10 or 20 people there. But it was packed. There were people queuing around the block for extra tickets.

This was the first time they’ve seen their own movie since it was originally released!

Morton continued that the audience was “laughing and cheering in all the right places. They weren’t doing it ironically; he was genuine. Of course they were! A few years ago I attended a home screening with a group of friends to see the film, and it was the same reaction! We loved it!

Jankel said she was amazed by the dozens of fans who asked for her autographs and selfies: “It was vindictive. It took 30 years of bad feeling to be wiped out in one evening. It must have been a great experience for them! For the past 30 years they have lived with this stain on their career, something they felt they had failed at, and now it’s gone! What a good feeling that must have been!

Commenting on Tarantino’s screening of the film, Morton said, “I think Quentin Tarantino understands where we’re coming from, creatively. It’s a certain oddity that he didn’t fit well into the Hollywood scene at the time.

Their film was supposed to be a 1985 prequel Super Mario Bros. video game, and Jankel shared that “We have never, ever tried to recreate the original game. Otherwise, we would have made the animated film”. The movie was criticized for being too dark, but this new one is much more in line with the game, it’s the movie that Nintendo wanted and they were heavily involved in the creative process. Nintendo wasn’t even involved with the first film, but they didn’t like it so much that it took them 30 years to try again.

Morton went on to talk about how the sense of the film got lost in translation. He explains that after Mario and Luigi complete their adventure, “Two Nintendo executives show up at the Mario Bros. apartment in Brooklyn. And they want to hear their story because it’s on the news and they’re making a video game. He explains why the movie doesn’t literally follow the story of the game. It got lost in translation. The Mario Bros. told the story to Nintendo executives and it was misinterpreted. The film wants to represent the true story.

Morton says he regrets Nintendo didn’t get involved the first time around, and adds, “If I had a relationship with Miyamoto and brought him on board, if he’d been a producer and understood what we were doing, he wouldn’t have let for certain things to happen. We would have been a team and it would have been a different movie.”

But, in the end, a lot of people liked the way the movie turned out! These days there are all kinds of fan-made films of classic properties that are made to look dark and gritty. Morton and Jankel were just ahead of their time. But after its failure, Morton says, “We’ve been abandoned by Hollywood…”

Morton shared that before shooting the film, he had a “polite” meeting. Shigeru Miyamoto, where he explained the story to the Nintendo executive. They never spoke again, but apparently Miyamoto “really liked our film.”

Miyamoto explained that it was the backlash from fans that forced them to stall any other film projects. He said: “We were afraid of all the failures of previous IP adaptations, where there is a license and a distance between the original creators and the creators of the films. Fans are pissed and pissed that the studios haven’t done the original work justice. We really didn’t want a backlash.

Morton admits the film is “a disaster, structurally,” but continued to defend it, saying, “Our accomplishment was to create something truly original, even if it was based on a video game. It was fun, it was sci-fi, it was fantasy, it was a love story. And I think it succeeded in all of those elements. And the performances of many of the actors were fantastic. I am proud of the film and support it.

Then there’s the whole story of the film’s absolutely insane production! Stay tuned as stories of this one are coming soon. For now, it’s nice to know that the directors of the original film are happy that people are really enjoying the film they made.

Source: variety