The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been a super duper success for Nintendo and Illumination as it broke box office records, beating Frozen 2 to take the crown for largest animated global opening ever, and becoming thehighest-grossing video game adaptation ever.
The plumber brothers are among the upper tier of video game icons so perhaps it’s no surprise that the movie is now the biggest video game adaptation of all time, with it earning more than $500 million at the global box office so far. It’s also perhaps not a surprise thatNintendofans, after seeing its success, weren’t slow to imagine a future slate of Nintendo movies. This led to some confusion as fan-made images appeared of a Marvel-like “extended cinematic universe” with beloved characters from Nintendo’s stable connecting up over a series of movies. But this imagined Nintendo connected universe has divided fans.
Related:Chris Pratt And Charlie Day Plan Out The Nintendo Cinematic Universe
Over on the CasualNintendo subreddit, one fan had posted their prediction of such a “Nintendo Cinematic Universe” with an image showing “Phase 1” and some made-up movie titles featuring the likes of Star Fox, Zelda, and Metroid. This inevitably led to alternative imaginings of such an MCU-like future, with other fan-made images showing Kirby and Donkey Kong movies. Some of this was a big hit with fans and some even believed it was official. However, there has come a (perhaps inevitable) backlash, too.
To understand the backlash we can perhaps summarise it by one comment, which received a significant number of upvotes. Drawn from the above linked thread, it begins: “I hate the idea of cinematic universes”,wrotethe redditor. “I just want to watch a movie without having to watch the previous ones”.
Marvel perhaps pioneered the concept of a cinematic universe, and you can see its lasting influence in how rivals such as DC have tried to follow in its footsteps, to lesser success, and in how its parent company, Disney, has copied the formula in expanding other franchises such as Star Wars by creating TV shows and spin-off movies that tie the universe together. But this way of doing things isn’t to everybody’s liking.
There are those, for example, who see the merits in having standalone movies that don’t require having seen a bunch of others in order to fully understand it. But then again, there are a significant number of others who are still speculating over a possible Nintendo cinematic universe and how the different characters could weave together. One game series in particular was mentioned as a likely culmination even if many of the movies were just standalone.
“Yeah but they could easily make 5-6 of their properties separate films with nothing to do with each other. And then a Smash Bros. film in the style of Mortal Kombat where Master Hand has brought them all together from different universes for a fighting tournament”,suggestedone redditor.
That’s a thought. While fans can speculate as much as they want, movie studios taking their direction from the fandom hasn’t always worked out for the best. But it’s healthy to see a measured debate over the merits of a connected universe anyway.
