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Friday, October 7, 2022

I Winced, but Didn't Cringe, at the Super Mario Bros. Movie Direct

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Mario being awful is spot-on!

You've probably watched this Direct/trailer already, since it has over five million views from the Nintendo of America upload (embedded below), plus four milion more from Illumination's upload. I'm pretty sure that means I don't need a real introduction to this article, and you just want me to get right into my thoughts:



Just to clarify, every part of what Illumination has done is something Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto signed off and approved on. This is despite viral FAKE NEWS that Nintendo acquired Dynamo Pictures in order to redo everything Illumination did. To clarify, Nintendo did acquire Dynamo Pictures to create visual content, but there's no evidence or indication they have anything to do with the Super Mario Bros. Movie. (Or should I italicise that whole thing because the title is literally “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”?)

Chris Pratt Super Mario Bros. movie spent hours of my life stomping Koopas angry face
You don't need your voice actor to have anything in common with the character they're voicing,
but Chris Pratt and Mario are both Koopa-killing jerks who enjoy genocide. It's fitting.


As for the trailer itself, the Koopa Troopas and Kamek look... off. Mario also looks off, probably from his facial shape and his collared shirt. Master Bowser is... amazing and fantastic and pwned those penguins. It's fitting that he brought a whole army to those penguins only to stand at the very front and do almost everything himself, with his Koopa Troop just watching. He didn't bring them to fight, but to watch in awe of his mighty awesomeness. Though I wouldn't say King Bowser staring at a Star and saying he's finally found it and asking to himself who will stop him is... all that accurate.

After that, a clueless Mario pops out of a warp pipe into some fungus and also sounds (his voice) quite off, giving me obnoxious Sonic the Hedgehog movie vibes. Mario then is stopped by a useless Toad, and then...escorted to what's presumably Princess Peach's Castle for some reason. And at some point Luigi is in the movie and chased by Dry Bones. And that's the whole trailer, with Shigeru Miyamoto and Chris Meledandri thanking everyone and repeating the April 7, 2023 North American release date we knew about already. Shigeru Miyamoto also said, “Currently, like with any Nintendo game, we're working on the finishing touches.” I'd like to think that the last thing you do in any creative project are finishing touches. You certainly don't end a project with starting pushes.

I still have no desire to see this in a theatre or in any other setting. I suppose we didn't see enough for me to fully judge this. Like, the writing seems weak, but it's a very small sample size. The animation was legitimately quite good, even if I find the character models to be uncanny.



What did you think of the movie trailer? How about the Direct as a whole? Do you have confidence in Illumination and Shigeru Miyamoto? Ludwig doesn't have any confidence in either of those two, so his answer remains no.


Ludwig's opinion of the movie gets quite a bit more negative in KoopaTV's live reaction log of the second trailer.

4 comments :

  1. I think the movie will be alright, but I'm going to see it because of what it could do for the other Nintendo IPs. If this movie is successful then they'll definitely make a Zelda movie and maybe a Metroid one. Even if all these movies turn out to be average, that's still publicity. Pokémon has always done really well, but i suppose Nintendo considers that tp be something separate from their other games. Most people like Mario and Zelda but Pokémon took the world by storm much quicker than the others.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm very conflicted, because while I have little motivation for wanting them to make more movies (and of other franchises), I do like the idea of Miyamoto having his time spent working on non-game projects.

      Delete
  2. The movie teaser trailer is doing a great job of getting everyone to hate the Plumber and love Bowser. Maybe this is secretly a Koopa Propaganda film?

    ReplyDelete

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