The Super Mario Bros Movie just had the best opening weekend for an animated film ever, which means it should have something worth talking about, but as many have said already and Touissant Egan at Polygon most memorably puts it, it’s fine? There’s nothing especially standout, imaginative, groundbreaking, and that means we all have to bear some of the collective burden of whatever consequences arise from catapulting this shambling hulk of nostalgia into the stratosphere. And who benefits? Who really succeeds when Seth Rogan gets paid for voicing a cartoon character? (I am very attracted to the thesis of Egan’s article, that Wreck It Ralph paved a path for video game movies to follow, and that this particular movie is stuck in reruns in its first installment.)
“Connecting the dots” was the way that one Friend described the lack of plot to this movie, the slavish attention to including as many video game references as possible without really thinking too hard about how those scenes might flow one to the next. This movie was not extraordinarily interested in carving a new path for itself. It deployed a small, almost entirely white cast of dad comedians to lure children into theaters. The interview the dude bros of the cast did where they played Mario Kart while talking about their relationship with the Mario games solidified for me the fact that Anya Taylor-Joy probably didn’t spend a lot of time hanging out with her coworkers for this one, and also John Leguizamo is probably right that its one step forward two steps back for this franchise in terms of representation. Two movies come to mind that offer some alternate choices that could’ve been made.
The first is Detective Pikachu, the first live action movie in the Pokemon world, an almost perfect and absolutely bonkers concept in all of the rules we were lovingly brainwashed into believing about the way that Pokemon talk and the types of people who can become Pokemon masters look like are erased in a glorious kaleidoscope of murder and world building. DP departed from a lot of the nostalgia that it could’ve hewn close to without any objection and instead tried to tell a new story for an audience that was very, very familiar with the decades of lore associated with the game.
The second movie is, wait for it, Shang-Chi, and I know what you’re thinking and yes, you’re absolutely right, I’m going to talk about how the siblings should’ve shared the rings and taken down the dragon together again, because every movie that has an item of extreme power and two sibling protagonists is going to serve as a vehicle for my rewrite to that Marvel movie script. But the total number of rings was even, which would make for an asymmetrical configuration if placed on the arms, you shout! To which Friend responds, they could just put on their neck like a necklace. Super Mario Bros is able to give us that moment of sharing an indivisible power source! Despite the fact that you cannot actually in any example I can think of share that thing! And that seems fine!
Look, I’m mostly blah on the whole movie and the idea that it is about to make one billion dollars in the next few weeks globally really does seem like a sign that all of us, collectively, have some part in whatever evil we’ve unleashed on the world. That being said, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to watch Marvel super heroes voice characters from your favorite childhood video games while waiting approximately a month to watch those same Marvel super heroes in other Marvel super hero movies. I just think you should be prepared to offset this movie with some other good you’re going to do in the world after you’re done watching it. Like, you should have to plant a tree or stop eating meat for a year or something like that.
By far the most rewarding part of this entire movie is actually a bit character, Lumalee, a blue star from Mario Galaxy, whose depressive and borderline suicidal quips makes him the most nihilistic and entrancing of characters. “I’ve never wanted a tattoo, but I think if I were going to get one, it would be of that little guy,” Friend said to me as we walked out of the theater. Challenge accepted.
