The original Super Mario Bros. movie is something that Nintendo seems to be actively trying to bury. Googling the name of this movie will usually result in the upcoming animated film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, instead. That seems to be the best way studios can think to reboot a film franchise.
They like to add “The” at the beginning of titles, hoping fans will get it. The Batman and The Suicide Squad are two recent examples. While the original Super Mario Bros. movie was nothing like the games, it was still entertaining. Nintendo shouldn’t be so ashamed of it. They should embrace these wild changes made to the lore. There will, of course, be spoilers in this breakdown of this thirty-year-old movie.
6 Mario And Luigi Changes
The video games never spend much time on the plumbing aspects of the Mario Bros., but that was always the background of these two infamous brothers. This movie definitely leans in hard to their plumbing and New York City backgrounds though. There aren’t many power-ups in the movie. Instead, Mario loves using his tools as weapons from plungers to wrenches.
Mario also has an established girlfriend, Daniella, and Peach is nowhere to be found. The story instead focuses on Luigi’s budding romance with Daisy. This was an interesting development at the time because Luigi has no part in Super Mario Land which is the game where Daisy was introduced. Before the Internet shipped Luigi and Daisy together, Super Mario Bros. did it first.
5 The Mushroom Kingdom Is In Another Dimension
The Mushroom Kingdom is supposed to be in another world from Mario’s. This seems to change throughout the history of the series, but by and large, it’s safe to say the Mushroom Kingdom is at least in a faraway land. So, the movie version creating an alternate dimension under New York City where the Mushroom Kingdom lies is not that weird.
The strange part about it is that the Mushroom Kingdom lives on a version of Earth with one established city surrounded by an endless desert. It is also a dystopian, futuristic society ruled by a dictator aka “President” Koopa. Finally, humans did not evolve from mammals and instead evolved from dinosaurs. It’s a lot to take in and this concept is probably the oddest change to the lore in Super Mario Bros.
4 Princess Daisy Over Peach
This movie came out in 1993 and by this point, a lot of the classic games were released. There are the first three on NES, Super Mario World on SNES, and the two Super Mario Land games on the Game Boy. So, the creators had a lot of games to pull from and the movie, overall, is like a hodgepodge of ideas from the Mario franchise.
Out of all the characters they could pull from, it’s odd that they would go with Princess Daisy over Princess Peach. This could have been done to give Luigi the romantic option, as was said already. Putting that aside, it’s even stranger that Daisy is part dinosaur, hatches from an egg in front of nuns, and also has some weird crystal powers.
3 Koopa And Bowser
Mario, Luigi, and the various princesses are predominantly the only “humans” in the Mario franchise. Everything and everyone that they interact with in the games is a creature of some sort. In Super Mario Bros., everyone is a human even though they evolved from dinosaurs in the Mushroom Kingdom. This includes the aforementioned President Koopa who seemingly got elected into office.
He’s still a big villain like in the games but he has a lot of weird quirks too. He is a germaphobe that hates mammals and loves mud. He also has a girlfriend via Lena who is completely made up for the movie. Also, even though he is called Koopa, there is a Bowser in the movie too. King Bowser is the true king of the Mushroom Kingdom who is strewn throughout the city as fungus throughout the movie.
2 Other Character Changes
There are a number of other creatures that get human forms as well. Toad, at first, is a huge human before he gets zapped into his Goomba form. That’s a big change overall as Goombas are supposed to be small little mushroom-like soldiers under Koopa’s command in the games. They are a classic enemy in the Mario series for a reason Then there is Big Bertha who is a bouncer at a club instead of being a fish. At least they gave her big red spikes to sort of match the character’s typical coloration features.
Iggy, one of Koopa’s children in the games, is instead Koopa’s adult cousin in Super Mario Bros. He is joined by Spike who is probably supposed to be named after Forman Spike from the games but apparently, he’s a dinosaur human too. Lastly, Yoshi is in the movie. No one rides on top of it but it does at least have a long tongue. So, at least the movie got something right.
1 The Power-Ups
As established earlier, Mario loves using his tools in the movie to take out bad guys. There are some nods to various items and power-ups from the Mario series though. For example, at some point, Mario gets a mushroom. He doesn’t eat it to become big. It is instead used as a shield and gets big after Koopa uses the evolution gun on it.
There are no Fire Flowers in the movie, but there are guns that shoot fireballs. Mario also uses a Bob-omb to blow up Koopa and Bullet Bills are small cartridges used to power up boots that allow characters to both jump and hover. This could be a reference to the Kuribo's Shoe item from Super Mario Bros. 3. Then there are items that are completely missing from the movie including Super Stars and any sort of flying power-up.