ON PREVIOUS DAYS:
- YESTERDAY:
America's Longest Line - DAY BEFORE:
Greyhound Hits The Road - DAY BEFORE THAT:
Make Me Some Levi's - DAY BEFORE BEFORE THAT:
How Shrek Changed Hollywood
ON THIS DAY
Super Mario Bros - The First Videogame Movie
Before ‘Tomb Raider’, before ‘Mortal Kombat’, before ‘Street Fighter’, there was something even WORSE. ‘Super Mario Bros’ – which opened in the United States on 28th May, 1993 – was such a critical and commercial failure that for years afterwards Nintendo kept their franchises out of Hollywood hands.
Relocating the action to ‘Dinohattan’, the film inexplicably disregarded most of what had made the videogame such a smash-hit and replaced these elements with allusions to Blade Runner and Tim Burton’s Batman.
In this episode, Arion, Olly and Rebecca reveal Bob Hoskins’ drinking and accident-prone habits on-set, consider the relative strength of today’s spinoffs such as The Lego Movie, and analyse the secret sauce that keeps the Mario brand strong in the face of such adversity…
Further Reading:
• CinemaSins presents: ‘Everything Wrong with Super Mario Bros in 21 Minutes or Less’:
• ‘The Stench of it Stays With Everybody’, The Guardian (2018):
• ‘Plumbing a Videogame To Its Depths’ – the New York Times reviews the film in 1993:
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/29/movies/review-film-plumbing-a-video-game-to-its-depths.html
ON THIS DAY
Super Mario Bros - The First Videogame Movie
Before ‘Tomb Raider’, before ‘Mortal Kombat’, before ‘Street Fighter’, there was something even WORSE. ‘Super Mario Bros’ – which opened in the United States on 28th May, 1993 – was such a critical and commercial failure that for years afterwards Nintendo kept their franchises out of Hollywood hands.
Relocating the action to ‘Dinohattan’, the film inexplicably disregarded most of what had made the videogame such a smash-hit and replaced these elements with allusions to Blade Runner and Tim Burton’s Batman.
In this episode, Arion, Olly and Rebecca reveal Bob Hoskins’ drinking and accident-prone habits on-set, consider the relative strength of today’s spinoffs such as The Lego Movie, and analyse the secret sauce that keeps the Mario brand strong in the face of such adversity…
Further Reading:
• CinemaSins presents: ‘Everything Wrong with Super Mario Bros in 21 Minutes or Less’:
• ‘The Stench of it Stays With Everybody’, The Guardian (2018):
• ‘Plumbing a Videogame To Its Depths’ – the New York Times reviews the film in 1993:
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/29/movies/review-film-plumbing-a-video-game-to-its-depths.html
ON PREVIOUS DAYS:
- YESTERDAY:
America's Longest Line - DAY BEFORE:
Greyhound Hits The Road - DAY BEFORE THAT:
Make Me Some Levi's - DAY BEFORE BEFORE THAT:
How Shrek Changed Hollywood
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OLLY MANN
Olly Mann made his name with another trivia-wielding podcast, Answer Me This! with Helen Zaltzman – and now presents The Modern Mann, The Week Unwrapped, and Four Thought for BBC Radio Four. He also has an A-Level in History, so Dan Snow beware.
REBECCA MESSINA
Rebecca got a passion for podcasting working at The Week magazine and a passion for trivia appearing on University Challenge in 2011, making The Retrospectors her natural home.
ARION MCNICOLL
Arion started out in satirical news in Australia, then moved to the UK to work for ostensibly serious publications including The Times, CNN, and The Week… before realising that since around 2016 the news has all been satire really.
Do you have a day of note that we should cover? Or would you or your business like to support the podcast? Get in touch!
