Quentin Tarantino has long been a champion for underseen and undervalued films (just listen to his Video Archives podcast for weekly examples), but who knew he would be given credit for “vindicating” the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie?
The 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie screened at Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema (in Los Angeles, naturally) last month, an event which proved far more popular than the directors expected. As recalled by Super Mario Bros. co-director Rocky Morton, “My thought was that there would be 10 or 20 people there…But it was jam-packed. There were people queueing up around the block for extra tickets.” He also noted that the crowd was “laughing and clapping at all the right places. They weren’t doing it ironically; it was genuine.” Morton–who, interestingly, shares a name with a Koopaling–also gave direct credit to QT. “I think Quentin Tarantino understands where we’re coming from, creatively. It’s a certain quirkiness that didn’t fit in nicely with the Hollywood scene at the time.”
Fellow co-director Annabel Jankel remembered the event with fondness. “It was like being at a film festival…It was vindicating. It took 30 years of a bad feeling to be wiped out in one evening.” But not everyone has been so easy on the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie in retrospect, as Mario’s own creator says it failed because of the lack of communication between himself and the filmmakers. Concerning the newer adaptation, John Leguizamo has put Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie on blast, criticizing its casting as “backwards” for not using people of color, as was the case three decades ago when the Latino actor was cast as Luigi.
As The New Beverly puts it, 1993’s Super Mario Bros. is a “brain-stomping, jaw-dropping, dimension-hopping adventure. And these brothers from Brooklyn are our only hope in rescuing the princess, defeating a dino dictator, and saving the entire universe.” Well with that description, how could it not sell out?
Now that the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie is back in the news due to the Illumination adaptation, how do you feel about the original? What is your memory of seeing it? Let us know!