The Super Mario Bros. Movieis a hit. It’s alreadysmashed the box office record for the best opening weekend of an animated film(sorry, Frozen 2), and it’s already well on its way to becoming the best-grossing video game movie of all time, currently having made $420 million at the box office. It may even go on to become the best-grossing animated film of all time, unseating the Lion King remake from a few years back.
Meanwhile, back in 1993, the original Super Mario Bros. film is looking on with envy. The notoriously bad movie was a box office flop, making just $39 million (even for the 1990s, that’s bad). And yet, despite being universally seen as an awful film that had so little to do with the source material it alienated both Mario fans and regular moviegoers alike, some look back on the 1993 film with a weird sense of fondness.
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Over on Reddit, a thread from userYalkimis discussing whether the 1993 movie was really as bad as everyone says. A lot of people agree thatyes,it was bad,but it was bad in a fun way. The movie’s surreal take on an alternate Manhattan and an interpretation of the source material that was honestly paper-thin produced a wild and “unique” film that would probably never be reproduced today–not the least because Nintendo would never just hand over their mascot to the creators of Max Headroom and say “go nuts.”
One user suggestedthe best way to enjoy this psychedelic depiction of a classic Nintendo character was to be as altered as the stars. The set of the Mario Movie was apparently a wild place, with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo regularly taking shots in between takes.
The lovecontinuesover on Twitter, wherefans are wonderingwhere all the hate for this “avant-garde cyberpunk film” comes from. Other Twitter users are reminding everyone else thatit was a criticalandcommercial failure, and even Seth Rogen called it “one of the worst films ever made.”
But we might not be able to accuse the 1993 film of being a commercial failure for much longer. Ever since the recent animated film was released, sales of the Blu-ray version of Super Mario Bros. have skyrocketed.It’s now the best-selling movie on Amazon, which is certainly going to be a nice surprise for Leguizamo when he starts getting those residuals.
Ultimately, Super Mario Bros. is a deeply weird film that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you look at it from the lens of modern Mario lore, but it’s still a goofy action film with a happy ending. What more do you need?
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