It has been 39 years since the very first Super Mario Bros. game was released on the Nintendo Game & Watch. Now, these classic Italian brothers come to the big screen in their first feature film, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which was released on April 5.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is Nintendo’s first attempt to bring these characters to the movie scene. Over the past few decades, there have been classic games such as “Super Mario Galaxy,” “Donkey Kong Country,” and “Yoshi’s Island,” and the movie presents all their different characters in a film. Some of these characters include Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, and Bowser.
“As a person who played those games a lot as a child, it gave me such nostalgia,” said junior Sam Eaton. “It was a spectacular movie that made me laugh, tear up, and leave me feeling much happier than I was walking in.”
The movie starts off with a different approach, placing the brothers in New York City as failing plumbers that their parents have little faith in. After seeing a massive pipe burst on the local news station, the brothers venture down into the depths of New York’s plumbing system, where they stumble upon a large green tube and are sucked inside.
After being transported into the Mushroom World and being separated from his brother, Mario must team up with Princess Peach, gain the friendship of Donkey Kong, and save his brother from the grip of his arch nemesis, Bowser.
An official poster promoting the new “Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
Source: Instagram, @supermariomovie
The voice actors that were gathered for this film include a list of well-known names. Chris Pratt voices Mario, while Charlie Day voices his brother Luigi. Other actors who worked on the project include Jack Black as Bowser, Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong, and Keegan-Michael Key as Toad.
The movie is about to join the “$1 Billion Box Office Club,” which consists of movies that grossed over $1 billion dollars. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie has achieved the seventh largest weekend opening of all-time, surpassing famous movies such as “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” and “Jurassic World.”
The critics and overall audience domestically seem to have differing opinions. The critics scored this movie at 58%, while the audience score sits at a whopping 96%, with over 10,000 verified ratings on the Rotten Tomatoes website.
Freshman Danielle Toppa is another student who saw the movie on opening weekend. “It was really great and I enjoyed the entire thing. Between this and ‘Puss and Boots,’ there have been some really great animated movies recently,” she said.
Another conversation this movie has brewed is the possibility that Nintendo is trying to create their own cinematic universe, similar to Marvel’s. Now with characters from their massive franchises such as Sonic and Pokemon having their own movies, speculations are beginning to spark up that Nintendo will try to combine all these characters in an “Infinity War” type of crossover.
