With the success of Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog films in 2019 and 2020 plus the announcement of several video game series, such as The Last of Us, going to series production, the question to Nintendo has never been more prescient. Where is another Mario movie? Hopefully, right around the corner in 2022 as Super Mario Bros.: The Movie enters production with Universal Pictures and animation house Illumination also known for Despicable Me, The Secret Life of Pets, and Sing.
While Mario has appeared in media since the character’s introduction in 1981’s cabinet arcade game Donkey Kong, a proper (and proper may be subjective here) Super Mario film hasn’t been made. Of course, there was the Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo Super Mario Bros movie in 1993 but the legacy of that entry is less about Mario and more the tales of its troubled production coupled with its astoundingly bad box office reception.
The 1993 Super Mario Bros film was a trailblazer, the first film based on a video game. There was no template to success to base production on and the filmmakers were given creative license by Nintendo. The result was a dark, surreal "comedy" box office and critical flop that developed a cult following partly due to its strangeness and partly because it's still the only Mario feature film to exist after almost thirty years.
The reception to the 1993 Mario movie was one of the reasons another attempt at a feature-length Super Mario movie has been avoided, but it wasn’t the only offender. The 1989 live-action and animated TV series The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, featuring the “Plumber Rap” theme, received mixed reviews and has been referred to as “embarrassing” from critics on current rewatches. This series was followed by The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 series in 1990 and Super Mario World series in 1991, both ditching the live-action, both lasting about a season, and both almost entirely forgotten.
It’s been a minute since Mario and the gang appeared in media outside the games and to date, no Mario property outside the games has received better than "mixed" reviews. Under Universal Pictures and Illumination, fans can expect the animation style of 2022's Super Mario Bros.: The Movie to favor the designs of later entries of the Super Mario series in the franchise. The 3D graphics beginning with Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo now smoothed out with current titles on Nintendo Switch. And why not? The round and primary-colored appearances of Mario, his brother Luigi, Princess Peach, the diminutive Toad as well as the worlds themselves in the Super Mario series, are the most familiar and ubiquitous designs in the franchise. Nintendo trailblazed video game media and have remained a genre leader, why would the company go off the brand they built for a risk?
Because a Paper Mario feature film has the potential to go that extra one step no other video game film has taken: to be art. Not everyone is interested in referring to video games as art but all enthusiasts will have a series they love for the artistry. Paper Mario is not a Super Mario title. Since Mario the character was introduced in 1981, there have been several games that divided into separate series within the Mario franchise. Super Mario is the series most people are familiar with whether it’s the 1985 NES game, the 1990’s Super Mario World on SNES, or the open-world titles including Super Mario Sunshine on GameCube and Super Mario Galaxy on Wii among others. Being a Super Mario title doesn’t mean necessarily that all games connect, but all games do maintain the look and general gameplay of the predecessors.
Paper Mario, released in 2001 to N64, began as a sequel to 1996’s Super Mario RPG, the first Mario game to feature 3D graphics, but developed into a standalone game. Combining RPG with Mario game concepts in gameplay, the paper cut-out design of Paper Mario was unique and engaging. The sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door released to the GameCube in 2004, continued the gameplay and design of Paper Mario to critical acclaim interestingly in its story development. The Thousand-Year Door was followed by Super Paper Mario, the first in the series to move away from the turn-based RPG elements of the first two and reintroduce an old favorite: side-scrolling.
Super Paper Mario, released 2007 to Wii, was the first hybrid of the OG 2D system with the 3D graphics familiar to newer and current players. The gradients of color and angular shapes, where Super Mario titles favor bold color and rounder shapes, in the characters and environment coupled with an engaging story of love, loss and identity made Super Paper Mario stand out. Aside from the nostalgia factor, the hybrid system and thoughtful design allow Super Paper Mario to play out like an animated feature. A 2D animated feature at that. It is, in a word, cinematic.
The blocky designs of Super Paper Marioare controversial being such a departure, but Paper Mario has proven it can work from any angle. The 2022 Super Mario Bros.: The Movie in development has been hush on the details, and maybe a Paper Mario reference will be had, but with the Super Mario World attractions clearly showcasing the Super Mario design, it’s hard to imagine Nintendo would split focus with a heavier investment in Paper Mario. Still, if fan response can fix Sonic’s teeth in 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog, there’s hope to flip the axis for a fun and beautiful Mario movie in the weird and wild future of video games to film.