In one of the biggest shockers in the movie world last year, it was announced that a new Mario feature was being made with Chris Pratt playing the main character himself. Thankfully, this version of Mario is an animated feature, as one of the big mistakes the 1993 live-action film made (other than being greenlit) was making a live-action version of Mario. Can you make a Mario film with the brothers living in the real world? No. The character of Mario lives in a colorful and fantastical world where there’s a princess, a donkey, and a weird hybrid of a dragon/bear/turtle called Bowser. To actually bring out Mario’s world to life would likely cost huge money for the studio, so unless executives are willing to go big on a film that’s not guaranteed with sales returns, then keeping it animated is great.
Here’s the thing, Mario has never been a serious video game franchise. It isn’t like Resident Evil or Max Payne, where there’s a simple plot with rich characters and a compelling story. In truth, that may actually be a blessing in disguise for the upcoming animated feature. Video game movies don’t particularly have a strong history in the world of cinema. Video games typically have a playtime of ten hours or more; Sure, sometimes a video game has fewer story hours but rarely does it fit a traditional 90-minute movie length. Heck, it doesn’t even fit a three-hour feature. Since video game material has to make the transition over to the movies, some of the most crucial parts of a storyline are forced to be cut out because there’s no way that a movie is going to run ten hours to accurately tell the story. Since there’s not much story to go on with the Mario franchise, then this gives creatives an opportunity to go wild with their imagination. Of course, this can’t be just any type of film. Mario can’t be some Mafia boss who gets into a gang war with Donkey Kong and his hardcore crew. The important thing is to keep the same world and characters that made them popular in the first place and incorporate them into story form. This worked perfectly for The Lego Movie. There was no pressure to base the adaptation off of a story because there’s pretty much none. Mario has a bit more complexity than Legos, but the film isn’t tied down to a specific story.
However, that doesn’t mean it will be easy. There’s not much to the world of Mario because it’s usually an action-platform game that focuses on rescuing Princess Peach. We simply can’t watch Mario bouncing around from platform to platform for two hours. Mario isn’t much of a man with dialogue, so how do you pen his character that stays true to the video game spirit? In fact, how do pen all the characters dialogue that stays true to who they are? The filmmakers may have it easy on not necessarily having to rely on a certain story from the Nintendo games, but it’s not going to be a smooth task on bringing these characters to life that truly captures the spirit of the Mario games. Then again, the Sonic franchise has managed to make it in live-action form, so clearly, it’s not impossible to do so. Now yes, I understand that Mario does have a few animated cartoons and a Japanese film under its belt, but they’re not the best representation of what the Mario games are. They have the characters and world on full display, but it simply doesn’t have the majesty of its video game counterparts. At least in my opinion. Some games aren’t necessary for medium, and Mario seems to be in that camp. This upcoming animated feature could actually turn out to be one of the best animated movies of all-time.
There are strong pieces to this puzzle. However, the fear is that the filmmakers are going to strongly gear this film towards kids, meaning juvenile jokes and basic storytelling that insult the intelligence of its young audience. It doesn’t help that the writer and director mainly have credits in animated television, which is a different format than a feature. No disrespect to the hired talents behind the scenes. Mario doesn’t need to have some type of social commentary as that’s not the brand overall. However, there just doesn’t seem to be a purpose to make a Mario feature other than purely money based. Granted, every movie made is for the soul purpose of making money, but movies often have some type of special purpose other than that simple fact. Hopefully, Mario turns out to be a great film, but honestly, there was never a need to make a feature adaptation of the classic character.
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