Mario. Of course I am familiar with this name. I saw the cheerful plumber in a red cap and blue dungarees in various magazines as a child before I switched to Mario Kart with him adventurous slopes boarded am. But that’s where my knowledge of mushrooms and shells ends.
My only point of reference is the extremely bizarre 1993 live-action adaptation, and that’s… anything but helpful, to find your way in the Nintendo cosmos. How are the individual characters related to each other? Please don’t ask me – even if I sometimes hum the theme tune of the games to myself.
When The Super Mario Bros. Movie was announced, I was indifferent to the project. That only changed when I went to the cinema: I haven’t been like that for a long time unconditionally received from a film, which is actually part of a massive franchise with decades of history. Instead of a great deal of previous knowledge, Mario only expected two things from me: openness and a desire to be entertained.
Can blockbuster cinema please be like this more often?
Contrasting program to Marvel: You don’t have to do any homework for the Super Mario Bros. film
Anyone who goes to the cinema these days to watch a big blockbuster has hopefully done their homework. No franchise shows that more impressively than Marvel. An example? Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is not only the third part of the Ant-Man series, but also the Continuation of the Multiverse saga. And only those who have seen the Loki series and the second Doctor Strange film from phase 5 of the MCU understand them.
You can watch the trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie here:
The Super Mario Bros. Movie – Final Trailer (German) HD
Having followed Marvel for years, I rarely worry about what I’d be missing out on if I had them all previous films and series not seen. It was different with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. When the first reviews spoke of fan service and lots of Easter Eggs, I assumed that I would only understand the train station in the cinema and that I would make a mental note of what I would have to google later.
What games do I need to play to understand the villain’s motivations? Is there a Donkey Kong Origin story I should know about? No! The film provides everything I need to understand. Of course, it helps that the plot extremely conventional pattern follows: The evil Bowser wants to conquer the peaceful kingdom of Princess Peach with his flying lightship.
Just then, Mario stumbles into the story and emerges as an unlikely hero. No twists, no surprises and certainly none endless, tiresome explanations of Mario mythology. The Super Mario Bros. movie is more like a classic fairy tale, which happens to be told with extremely peculiar but no less intriguing video game characters.
Universal
The Super Mario Bros Movie
If you’re a fan of the franchise, you’ll understand game-level references and are likely to get heart palpitations as you intricate sequences of jumps from level to level, reminiscent of pre-Game Boy childhoods. Those who are inexperienced like me, on the other hand, can simply in fall into the fluffy fantasy world and is caught by a larger than life mushroom – like Mario on his first visit to the Mushroom Kingdom.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a giant Hidden Object game about everything and nothing
While it’s all very strange what’s going on, the Super Mario Bros. movie is an invitation to explore to be carried away by the peculiarities. A new character is constantly tumbling through the area, disappearing into a pipe or climbing to the next higher level. If you step back and look at the film from a distance, it’s like an engaging pop culture hidden object come to life.
Here everyone jumps, climbs and hops as if their lives depended on it, but there is no fall that can really be fatal to the characters. The villain sings a bizarre love song, the hero belches a cute one “Wahoo!” from: None of this makes sense on paper, though the film embraces everythingwhich Nintendo characters seem to do all day, with admirable dedication.
Universal
The Super Mario Bros Movie
You could lose yourself in this hidden object for hours, even if you don’t remember a single scene in the end. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is about everything, but much more about nothing. Although the survival of an entire universe is at stake, the film celebrates one cozy emptiness, which never gets boring. She exists carefree in a motley world of countless small movements.
The biggest failing of the new Super Mario Bros. movie is that it doesn’t fully follow its Dadaist approaches. From my point of view, the characters could have slipped through winding pipes much more often and been distracted by the sophisticated background noise. But in the end, the Mushroom Kingdom is all about a clear mission: to save the world. At least that’s what unites this magically low-brow blockbuster with other franchise films.
The Super Mario Bros. movie has been running since May 5, 2023 in German cinemas.
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