Flashback Friday: Super Mario Bros (the movie)

This one may be a little hard for me to write, not just because I am writing and having to think about a bad movie, but mainly because of the reason I am choosing to talk about a bad movie. On April 29th, 2014, we lost a great person and a great actor in Bob Hoskins. While he may be best remembered for his role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, he will be best remembered by me for his role in today's topic for Flashback Friday.

Nintendo was owning everything in the late 80's/early 90's, every kid had an NES, a Game Boy, a SNES, whatever, if it was Nintendo branded, we ate it up. Hell, we even had a live action Mario TV show, a couple Mario cartoons, and let's not forget this gem.

When we as gamers heard of the possibility of taking our favorite characters and putting them on the big screen, we got pretty excited. We had not had the notion that movies based on video games may actually suck yet. Plus it hired 3 very successful actors in Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper, what could go wrong? Well this happened....that's what went wrong.

I won't spent too much time bashing this movie (I still will a bit) as this is more of a chance to remember Bob Hoskins. Truth be told, I watched the hell outta this as a kid, and while it may never be on my list of "Favorite movies of all time", I will still watch this with fond nostalgia.

The history and development of Super Mario Bros. is quite interesting. There were 4 versions of the script, including a first draft which was a comedic take on fairy-tale stories with Mario and Luigi rescuing a princess named Hildy from Koopa (Bowser). Once the script was decided on, Harold Ramis (also R.I.P.) was asked to be the director, which of course he declined. The job was eventually given to Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel due to their work on the British sci-fi show Max Headroom.

Once the directors were finalized, the cast needed to be assembled. Danny DeVito was approached to play Mario and to direct the film and, after reading the script, said no. The part of King Koopa was originally offered to both Michael Keaton and Arnold Schwarzenegger (could you imagine all the great Arnold soundbytes from this move? Get the PLUMBERS you Goomba!). Before Hoskins took over the role of Mario, it was already given to Tom Hanks. That would have made for a much different movie, I imagine (LUIGI!!!....WILSON!!!!).

The same expression after the premier.

The final draft hit theaters on May 28, 1993 (so we will very soon be able to legally buy it a drink, Lord knows they need one) and the ideas were there for a great Mario movie; 3 great actors in Hoskins, Leguizamo (who is legitimately one of my favorite actors), and Hopper, references to the game and Nintendo with Toad, Yoshi, Goombas, Koopas, Iggy, Spike, even the Super Scope makes an appearance.. It was all there, and it all ended up bad. I wonder what that first draft consisted of and how we ended up with 2 Italian Plumbers from Brooklyn who cross an inter-dimensional portal which was created by a falling meteorite that was reopened by a construction company to save Princess Daisy who has a shard of the meteorite from descendants of dinosaurs and their leader who wants to be dictator of both worlds.

Or I could just play the games. That might be more fun.

I agreed to be in this, huh?

Look, Super Mario Bros has always been an easy target, we all know it's a bad movie. Hoskins, Leguizamo, and Hopper have all spoke critically of it, with Hoskins even saying it was "the worst thing I ever did". It's worth watching just to see the absurdity of it and it still can be a fun nostalgia trip. Nintendo has not made any more live-action movies, though a Metroid movie was being talked about before being canned.

This is how I best remember Bob Hoskins. Sure, Roger Rabbit was a fun movie and way better than Mario Bros, but the mere fact that this movie was made shows how much of an impact Mario has in pop culture. Hoskins had a long, successful career which began with stage acting in 1968 and ended with his last movie role in Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012. It's always sad when someone is taken from us, but in this case, we lost a great actor, and someone who had an impact on not only my childhood, but my video gamer life as a whole, and for that I am eternally grateful. Yes, Super Mario Bros is a bad movie, and Hoskins hated every second of it, but I consider it a guilty pleasure and you better believe I will be picking up a copy on Blu-ray when it comes out August 11th.

So thank you Bob for the memories and the effort you put into your craft, you will be missed.

R.I.P.
Robert William "Bob" Hoskins
1942 - 2014