Hello, Internet So I stopped posting blogs for a while. Reason
being that I got tired of writing about movies as opposed to making
them. So my absence has been so that I may return to production... Yeah, I know. No one cares... The following video is a "making-of" for a cheese
commercial that a friend and I embarked upon and will probably never see
the light of day... but the outtakes are pretty funny. Check out the
newly transformed Shooting From The Hip, now in video.
I remember seeing Bad Taste at a friend's house. While watching it, we're overjoyed to see the role of Derek being played by the film's director Peter Jackson. Then we were even more overjoyed to see the role of the alien menace Robert also played by Peter Jackson. Laughing our asses off, we watched as Robert actually attacks Derek, knocking him off a cliff into a pile of jagged rocks. Having just recently finished The Lord of The Rings trilogy, my friend brought up a point, "This guy just won an Academy Award, folks."
For those of you who have followed the career of Peter Jackson Pre-Lord of The Rings, you know that there are two Peter Jackson's. There is the Peter Jackson who brought us the B-movie gems Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles, and Dead Alive, later to elevate to The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures. Then came the "New Peter Jackson" who made epic sagas like Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, King Kong, Lovely Bones, etc. And as much as I like to say that I am proud of the New Peter Jackson for rising through the ranks and showing guys like Lucas, Spielberg, and Cameron how it's done, I miss the Old Peter Jackson... but also realize that he can never go back to his old ways. That's why seeing movies like Bad Taste shows how far this director has come.
In Bad Taste, a small New Zealand Town gets taken over by aliens, who have disguised themselves in human form, leaving the audience only able to tell they are aliens because they all wear blue shirts. But as the character Derek describes, "It's like we got a visit from a planet of Charlie Mansons." However, we never witness the town being taken over by aliens or the carnage that ensued, so the film's beginning is kinda boring. We really could have used one really big massacre to get us going. But once the violence does get started, the movie becomes much more entertaining.
The human characters are from The Astro Investigation & Defense Services (or AIDS), which makes a habit of employing gun-toting metal heads and creepy psychos. At the time of the town's disappearance, AID's own Barry and Derek are on the scene and managed to capture one of the aliens (Robert, also played by Peter Jackson). When Barry is attacked by a group of aliens and forced to hide in an abandoned shed, Derek begins torturing Robert for information... Now, to the untrained eye, most probably wouldn't even realize that they are essentially watching Peter Jackson torturing Peter Jackson.
When hearing the strange cries of Robert, the blue-shirt aliens go after Derek with mallets and sledgehammers (the best weapons earth has to offer) while Derek breaks out the uzi. "I'm a Derek and Derek's don't run." Then all hell breaks loose in one of the goriest gun battles (pre-Hobo With a Shotgun), but results in Derek falling off the cliff and splattering all over jagged rocks. (This sequence does have a hilarious dummy prat-fall.)
Meanwhile, a Bible Salesman stumbles into the abandoned town, only to find himself being hunted by Robert. The Salesman takes refuge in a nearby house, finding himself smack in the home-base of the alien invasion. Led by raspy Lord Crumb, he divulges to the salesmen that humans have become the new fast food sensation of the galaxy and that they are planning to harvest all of earth for their new chain.
As this is happens, back at the bluffs, Derek suddenly sits up, somehow alive. He notices several splattered (and incredibly fake-looking) dead seagulls where he landed, but also finds pieces of his brain on the ground. Soon enough, he comes to realize that his brain is falling out of the gaping wound in his head. Derek manages to use his belt and a top-hat to keep anymore brains from falling out. But now, literally losing his mind, Derek breaks out the chainsaw he's had waiting in the back of his van and begins his deranged quest for vengeance.
What does this movie have to offer? A lot of bad Hair Metal Soundtrack. Lots of falling, fumbling, or character's losing their guns. Elongated action sequences with predictable, unsurprising consequences. Characters constantly referring to each other by their names, even though they have apparently worked together for years. This movie definitely looks like something Peter Jackson made in his backyard with his friends. The only thing that really separates it from a student film is the Tom Savini-inspired gore and the spacecraft shaped like a house that takes off in the third act.
"Masters of the Universe" (1987), Dir: Gary Goddard
$22 Million in Budget vs. $17,336,370 in Gross
Another from the illustrious Cannon library, Masters of The Universe is a movie based on a toy franchise from Mattel. The movie pretty much rips off Stars Wars, but oddly has polarizing evolutionsfrom that franchise. Whereas as Star Wars was a series of movies that eventually became designed just to sell toys, Masters of the Universe started out as toys that eventually became a movie designed to sell fried chicken... I'm not kidding. Several scenes of this movie feature fried chicken.
We open with a smudgy, out-of-focus matte painting of Castle Gray Skull and a very monotone voice-over (from no character in the film) explaining the ongoing war happening in the planet of Eternia... Yeah, it's not a very good opening. Very drab, very dull-looking. Then the opening credits start rolling, which look and are scored just like the credits to Superman. Seeming like a deliberate rip-off, the better name for it would be "a deliberate recycling" since The Cannon Group became the heads of the Superman franchise and murdered it with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
Production values for this film are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the sets are decent as far as the interior of Castle Gray Skull goes. But as soon as Skeletor (Frank Langella) appears in his cheap-looking skeleton make-up, looking nothing like the Skeletor we knew as children and more like Red Skull's gay cousin just visiting from Nazi Germany, it's laughable at best. Also, the costuming of the characters (or in the lead's case, lack-there-of) resemble either the Goodwill Donations from the Star Wars franchise or the veritable slingshot-wear from the Hercules movies.
The mullet-toting He-Man is played by good old Dolph Lundgren in probably his most off-putting role. The general public knows Dolph mainly for his role in Rocky IV as the giant Russian boxer, or better yet as The Punisher in the most terrifying performance of his career. Seeing Dolph being noble or heroic or caring all seems a bit strange, however, there's no shortage of obligatory chest-shots during his battle scenes. At one point in the film, Courtney Cox has just escaped Skeletor's Mercenaries, a very incompetent bunch with make-up effects that look like they came out of Rick Baker's stool. Courtney manages to run into He-Man, who assures her that everything will be alright and he will protect her... But from there, I actually expected Dolph to suddenly snap Courtney's neck and masturbate to her dead corpse or something. Sorry. I know it's a horrible thing to visualize, but that's just what I have come to expect of Dolph.
With our introduction to He-Man, we also meet his friends Man-At-Arms (Jon Cypher) and Theela (Chelsea Field), also part of the battle against Skeletor. The group encounters Gwildor, a troll-like inventor who they saved from being captured by Skeletor's army... I don't know exactly why they call him "Gwildor." Might as well call him Yoda. Played by Razzie-Winner Billy Barty, Yod-- I mean, Gwildor is part of an alien race called Thenorians who look like a mix between The Leprechaun and the lady with ovaries on her face in Eraserhead. When Gwildor invites his new friends into his house, it oddly resembles Yoda's digs from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (with less snakes and more 80s futuristic technology).
Anyways, Skeletor is after Gwildor for something he invented called "The Cosmic Key", a device that can open portals to other dimensions. But just as Gwildor unveils this to He-Man, Skeletor's army (The Black Storm Troopers) find their hide-out and attempt to break down the door. Our heroes escape through a portal and somehow end up in 1980s Earth -- Whoa, dude! -- pretty much spending the rest of the movie there rather than some cool alien planet that kids from the 80s hadn't seen before and didn't resemble their usual route to the local arcade.
Following her Bruce Spingsteen music video "Dancer In The Dark" (skip to 2:30), Courtney Cox plays Julie, a small town waitress at a fried chicken and ribs joint. A much younger and hotter Courtney than the one from Friends, we discover that her parents died in a plane crash and that this is her last night in town, and subsequently her last night with her boyfriend Kevin, played by Robert Duncan McNeill. And if you watch the film, no, there was no plans of making this last night special. Their plans were to meet up, eat fried chicken, go to Kevin's sound check, and then go to the airport to part ways forever... Yep. No sex. None at all. Not even a hint.
As they visit Julie's parents' grave for the last time, Kevin comes upon The Cosmic Key that somehow got lost on Hercules' -- I mean, He-Man's journey between Earth and Eternia. Kevin, being a musician, assumes it's a synthesizer. When fiddling around with it, he accidentally opens the gateway to Eternia for Skeletor's army to invade Earth. Suddenly, Julie's last night in, well, Small Town Wherever turns into a intergalactic war between good and evil... which encapsulates He-Man and Skeletor destroying a couple of barren, unpopulated urban streets and goes completely unnoticed by anyone living in that town, except the movie's principal characters.
The plot of this movie is not terrible. It probably has more thought put into it than many Adam Sandler films or even the recent Star Wars movies. But it probably would have been a much better film if it all stayed in Eternia, a much more fantastical place than 1980s middle-America. I'm assuming budgetary problems were why they had to go the Star Trek IV: A Voyage Home route, making the characters look kinda stupid running around in
their Star Wars garb, stealing fried chicken and busting up music
stores. But then again, being budgeted at $22 million, that was double the budget of the first Stars Wars and that movie took us all around the galaxy, not just back and forth between some small town neighborhood and the interior of Castle Gray Skull.
There are definitely things that make this movie worth seeing. The action is very reminiscent of Star Wars and fun. Dolph kicks a lot of ass, and I mean a lot of ass. His scene where he is riding around on the flying discs is pretty cool, even if the effects don't look quite so good. But for all Dolph's ass-kicking, it inevitably leads to He-Man proclaiming "I-have-the-power," which is He-Man's famous tagline, but after he says it accomplishes nothing. Seems like they just threw that one in there for the kids. One thing I couldn't help but notice was that there was an extensive amount of damage done to music equipment in the film. When Skeletor's Muppet Show Mercenaries go after Julie, they shoot up a stage and tons of amplifiers that Kevin's band would have performed on later that evening. And one of the biggest, most memorable set pieces of the film takes place in a music store where tons of musical equipment gets blown up for the sake of action... I mean, did the folks at Cannon have something against 80s music? Who didn't like Lover Boy?
Overall, there has been a lot of Star Wars knock-offs over the years, but this one is definitely not the worst I've ever seen (I refer you to Ice Pirates). It's never not entertaining, didn't leave me quite resenting it like Super Mario Bros did, but I also never quite felt it was the Masters of The Universe film I expected having grown up with the toys and TV shows. Seemed like Cannon just took the framework and made an action film out of it... but it's still a decent action film.
And for your viewing displeasure, Skeletor becomes an utterly fabulous God!
Footloose is the quintessential bad movie, from plot, to story, to acting, and even to the culture status it somehow achieved. Who would have thought a little movie about the town that wouldn't allow dancing would become a joke that seemingly never gets old?
From its very literal opening, Footloose is simply laughable. The classic "Footloose" tune by Kenny Loggins starts playing to a montage of different feet dancing around while the credits roll... But really, with the title is Footloose, how literal does one have to be? Did the creative team sit around the boardroom table and agree "This movie needs to open with a bunch of feet dancing." The assumption must have been that we would see the images of the feet, hear the lyrics to the song, and magically put two and two together: "Hey! This movie's about dancing!" It's reassuring to know the good people at Paramount have that much faith in the audience's ability to interpret cinematic language... But opening with feet? If there's anything that looks worse than feet on camera, it's noses, so at least they didn't start the movie with 2 minutes and 20 seconds of noses... Ugh.
Kevin Bacon plays Ren McCormack, a teenager raised in Chicago. He's moved to a small conservative town to live with his aunt and uncle, only to realize that the one thing he loves most in the world - dancing to rock music - has been outlawed. Now, I'm not sure how the legal system in the fictional town of Beaumont works, but this always seemed a little strange to me. Yes, it's just a movie and set in a very oppressed town, but what appointed judge is really going to agree to outlaw dancing? "Your honor, the accused is charged with... dancing alone in his apartment." And, for that matter, would he actually send someone to jail for dancing? "What're you in for?" Dancing. "Hmm... See you in the shower, boy."
A fish out of water, Kevin Bacon befriends a local boy named Willard, portrayed by the late Chris Penn, who shows him around. The Baconator then meets a local religious girl named Ariel, who happens to be daughter to Reverend Shaw Moore (played by the brilliant John Lithgow) who put the ban on dancing in the first place. Now, let's get something straight: John Lithgow is fantastic in almost everything he does. In Footloose, he plays the crotchety old reverend as he should be played (and for a paycheck). However, Lithgow as an individual also has a great sense of humor. Ten years later, his character Dick Solomon unwittingly mocked The Reverend's speech from Footloose condemning rock music in 3rd Rock From The Sun. Anyone who can take their own career and parody it (that isn't Kevin Smith) deserves my respect.
That said, the biggest question that Footloose poses: Why Kevin Bacon? It's probably the role he is most recognized for, but seems completely out of place. When I was in high school, our English Media Teacher (an idiot) made us do a comparison between Footloose and Rebel Without a Cause, suggesting Kevin Bacon's character to be the modern James Dean... Now, even if this was even close to being true, does Kevin Bacon strike you as the handsome lead? I've never heard a female ever admit to be attracted to Kevin Bacon in my life and the first who does is very brave for doing so. Secondly, does Kevin Bacon strike you as a rebel? Prior to this film, the only basis of comparison would be 1982's Diner, where his character was a sh@#-disturber but not really a rebel. Thirdly, does Kevin Bacon strike you as a dancing machine? I had no idea punch-dancing was so big in Chicago. Even in the movie's most famous sequence where Bacon dances his anger away, Bacon admitted (in reality) to having two dance-doubles, a stunt-double, and a gymnastics-double, so Bacon didn't actually do any of the movie's dancing... he's just the face of it... and not exactly the prettiest either.
Finally, the silliest sequence and a direct reference to Rebel Without a Cause comes in the form of a chicken run with tractors. Comparing this (as I was forced to) with the chicken run scene in Rebel Without a Cause, the two are very similar, yes, except that a tractor is not a car. And since this race isn't toward the end of a cliff like in Rebel and instead towards each other, there isn't as much stakes. I suspect that's why they have the track "I Need a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler playing in the backgroundthe whole time, to add a little excitement to an utterly plodding chase sequence... and even then, it just looks more ridiculous than anything.
Not to be misinterpreted, these are all reasons you should see Footloose. The Baconator has gone on to be a respectable actor in my opinion, but his humble beginnings with Footloose shall remain his humble beginnings. He can laugh at it, so we should as well.
And for your viewing displeasure, Footloose's cringe-worthy climax.
The title alone gives you a pretty good idea what Gymkata is about. I rented it having seen it reviewed by Red Letter Media and was wondering how a ninja/gymnast movie would hold up. I was pleasantly surprised with most of it, and absolutely terrified with some. That's right. I said terrified. All in all, most of what Gymkata offered were a lot of surprises I did not expect, making it a very worthwhile bad movie.
The plot is surprisingly complicated. While watching Gymkata, I almost found it almost impossible to know what was happening. I knew there was a deadly game involved, but wasn't sure why the main character Jonathan Cabot (Kurt Thomas) had any interested. Turns out Johnathon Cabot is a gymnastics champ whose father at one time took part in this deadly game and lost, losing his life as well. The game itself is an endurance test held in a fictional country called Parmistan (which will come up again later), where the contestants avoid obstacles and run from Parmistanian warriors bent on killing them. If a contestant wins, he is granted one wish of his choosing.
So early in the movie, our hero Johnathon is approached by the SIA (Special Intelligence Agency) about entering the tournament so that if he wins, they can use his one wish to set up a satellite monitoring station for the Star Wars Program... Yep. That is what they want to do with his only wish. What assholes. Also, this is also the only non-animated movie I've ever seen where wishes are actually part of the plot-line. But Johnathon also has his own reasons for entering the tournament. If Johnathon wins the game, he will be honoring his father and accomplishing what he could not... Wow. So yes, a lot going on, but is anyone really watching it for the plot? No. So let's see some more Gymkata.
The star Kurt Thomas was an actual Olympic Gymnastics winner. So for an unassuming, nimble little white-boy, he's got some sweet moves and manages to execute them with noticably more grace than JCVD (which takes a bit of the grit out of it). The action sequences in the movie, though low-budget, are competently made. You watch them, ooh'ing and ah'ing as Kurt Thomas gracefully kicks some ass. Is Kurt convincing in that sense? Very much so. Is he an action star? No. No, not at all. It's hard to take an action hero series who oddly looks a lot like Wayne Gretzky and dresses like... well, like a dork. I mean seriously, would you be able to take JCVD seriously if he wore a Christmas sweater? So agility is no question. Kurt does a good job kicking ass, especially in the scene where he fights an entire village using only a pummel horse... But as far as be imtidating, well...
Kurt's presence aside, the location of the movie was the most off-putting thing about it. Fictional countries seem to only work in Perfect Strangers or children's cartoons. I refer you to Genosha in X-Men. But when you create one for a movie, you're fall subject to some problems, such as race, ethnicity, culture, etc. Little things. And yet, when you create a country that doesn't have any of those (minus barbaric gaming), you get the great Parmistan, a country named after a cheese-topping, populated by lazy-eyed extras, and decorated with a mix of Russian, Amish, Islamic, Scottish, and Asian stereotypes. It's pretty much a case of "The East" for those of you not familiar with Orientalism. Simply put: in North America's eyes, whatever isn't the west is the east. (Better examples of this can be found in the Italian Sword & Sandal Films, more specifically involving the dance sequences.)
Another strange aspect of the setting is that the characters need to make it through "The Village of the Crazies," a village populated with deadly lunatics. It's a fifteen minute sequence near the end of the film and is as strange and terrifying as anything David Lynch has ever made. John is forced to do battle with maniac after maniac, each with their own brand of psychotic.
I guess mental health is a bit of a grey area in the Parmistanian government. The Village of the Crazies might not be a sequence many will enjoy, but I thought it gave the movie a bit of edge from being just another generically bad action film.
Gymkata is a lot of fun and worth seeing for some decent action and a good string of laughs.
For your viewing displeasure, the "Village of The Crazies" sequence in full.
"Hercules And The Captive Women" (1961), Dir: Vittorio Cottafavi
$$$ Unknown Budget vs. Unknown Gross $$$
I once wrote a whole 25 page essay on this movie... and no, I'm not kidding, and no, this one will not be twenty-five pages. To understand this film, one must be familiar with the Italian Peplum (or "Sword & Sandal Films" or "T & A Films") films that were popular genre through the late-1960s, even giving Arnold Schwarzenegger his first role in Hercules In New York. In terms of cinematic history, the Italians made hundreds of these cheap, Neo-Mythogical films, capitalizing on the popularity of biblical films like Ben-Hur and The Robe, but appealing to the drive-in movie crowd through through skimpy costuming and absurdist humor. One could go on for months breaking down what possible importance these films could have or you could simply watch Hercules And The Captive Women and pretty much sum up the main points... and maybe The Colossus of Rhodes, starring Rory Calhoun for kicks.
Firstly, I love this film. Maybe it's because I had to watch months of this schlock for a film course and this installment was at least the best of the worst. I won't even go into the grim details of how bad some were (Hercules Against The Moon Men), whereas this one nails all that was good about them in one movie. Depending on what version you see (I prefer the American), the film opens with a bar fight. Hercules and his entourage of skimpily dressed young men and a midget are overwhelmed by angry drunks. Meanwhile, Hercules (Reg Park, the most awkward and hilarious of bodybuilders to play Hercules) continues to enjoy his meal. Once finished, he casually pushes aside a group of men coming at him with a battering ram and leaves the bar with his friends, completely unscathed.
Upon their leave, they encounter a bright red... something. It's honestly very unclear what they are looking at in the scene, but it's very red, makes the sun shrink, and forewarns them of a dangerous army coming, that could destroy their beloved Thebes. Androcles, King of Thebes, brings this problem to the counsel and neigboring cities, but none can agree to help the king. Worried for his kingdom while he is gone, Androcles asks Hercules who will take care of his throne. Hercules rips the thrown off the floor and smashes it, proclaiming that the people shall build Androcles a newer, better thrown upon his return.
Now, the counsel scene is probably the only real "intelligent" part in the movie. A lot of the humor and farce falls upon being a reflection of the constant incongruity of Italian politics. Historically, the Italians have never had a working government. An example can be found with the good old Red Brigade right here. The country is so fragmented between north and south, struggling with class conflicts, language barriers, extremist political parties that these problems are generally reflected in their movies. In this case, this scene does it very comically, alluding to a fragmented government that cannot work together to stop a looming threat that could destroy them all. For further insight, you can read about The Christian Democrats and it just might make this sequence even funnier.
So with no one else to join them on their journey into the unknown, Hercules and Androcles are forced to go alone. But then, after a talk with his formidable wife, Hercules decides not to go with Androcles either and stay at home and rest. Without any support or fleet to join him, Androcles is forced to drug and kidnap Hercules to take him on their journey. When Hercules awakes on a ship at sea, he completely forgets telling Androcles that he would not be going, assumes everything is going according to plan, and takes a nap... It should be noted that Hercules actually spends the majority of the film unconscious. If not because he is drugged, because he is simply lazy. If not because he is simply lazy, because the task at hand is beneath him. One could argue that Hercules is a very apathetic hero, if not actually hero at all...
In fact, one could argue that Hercules is simply a device of destruction that one transports place to place and is only to be used when absolutely necessary. There are even more direct references this notion later on, but we'll get to that. Back to political references for now and the is littered with them. Logically, it's doubtful that many would have thought these films to be particularly political-driven given their nature, but Italian films are generally very political in their nature. This film in particular has tons of political allegories, but they don't all necessarily add up. For example, Hercules finds himself in the Lost City of Atlantis (when it was above water), which has a population of slaves, female sacrifices to the Gods, and a lot of subecjts diseased from some strange energy source...
Hmm. They wouldn't be in Atomic Age America, would they? No, no. They couldn't be. Because the superhuman guards dressed in black armor (that are also all identical) are clearly a reference to Nazi Germany... So does that mean that the filmmakers are trying to say America is the new Nazi Germany. Maybe. But that wouldn't make sense because at the end of the movie, when Hercules ignites the volcano and blows up Atlantis, that destructive imagery suggests that that must be a reference Hiroshima, Japan (or Nagasaki), which the Americans bombed, meaning that... meaning that...? Ah, f&%$ it.
The only commonality here is pretty much everything Hercules touches gets destroy and any heroics he performs just end in mass destruction, but he is still the film's hero. Whether or not the Italians were trying to make a bold statement about the United States, or Nazi Germany, or the events that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nothing is more bold than wearing those costumes and managing to keep a straight-face.
You really have to enjoy your bad movies to like this one. One of the film's highlights is when Hercules fights the shape-changing monster Proteus. The clip below is the closest thing I could find for a trailer and goes under one of the film's many names, "Hercules Conquers Atlantis."
For your viewing displeasure, Hercules vs. Proteus!
"Super Mario Bros." (1993), Dir: Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton
$48 million in Budget vs. $20,915,465 in Gross
I'm sure you all remember the evolution of Nintendo. Oh, yes. From the dusty, old, 8-bit original Nintendo to the game-changing Super Nintendo in all it's color and 16-bit glory. But the kids buying these technical marvels had no interest in the technology involved. Our understanding of Nintendo came through the ever-changing, ever-evolving spokes-character Super Mario and his brother Luigi. Then it was announced that a Super Mario Bros film was being made. Suddenly, every kid who saw The Wizard was ecstatic with anticipation. When it was finally released, millions of young video gamers went to the theaters, started watching, and quickly asked themselves, "What the f&$# is this?" The answer to that question is simple: the most expensive betrayal of our childhood prior to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace rearing its ugly head.
I watched this movie recently, trying to figure out what the thinking behind this big-budget disaster was. Now that I am much older and have more of an education than when I was ten, I have a couple theories. Picture yourself as the guy in charge of making The Super Mario Bros. movie. It's a tough gig. You're in charge of one of the biggest non-film franchises in history and are obligated to a planet of children to not disappoint them. That being said, what is your most rational course of thinking?
Well, firstly, when there is kids involved, so the safest bet is an animated movie (like we've seen with the recent Lego movie coming out.) Makes sense. Cartoons are cheaper. Cartoons are less risk. Cartoons need less explaining. Parents are likely to bring kids to a cartoon because they're generally harmless. (It should be noted that the most recent Super Smash Brothers game for the Nintendo Wii had an animated story involving the entire Nintendo universe and accomplished that without using any dialogue.) But no, the overlords at Nintendo just put down $2 million dollars to give the rights of the character (temporarily) to a film studio. Back then, $2 million clams would have been the entire budget for an animated film, so, needless to say, they expected something a little more substantial.
So the more logical cartoon idea is out. Okay. Next question: How do you bring Mario to the real world? How do you explain the warp whistle, the pipes, the mushrooms, the Goombas, the turtles with wings, any of that to an audience paying money to see this? What possible logical connection can one make for any of these elements to co-exist in the same world together?
Next, who does one cast to play these characters? Well, Bob Hoskins is a rounded, portly fella. Kids already know him from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (or if you were a kid like me, The Long Good Friday), so he would make a great Mario. And for Luigi, well, who other than Fox's soon-to-be House of Buggin's host, John Leguizamo? Hmm. Well, he kinda looks Italian (but is actually Colombian) and comes across pretty dopey. Definitely not the worst casting choice in the world. But then there's the challenge: who do you cast for King Koopa, a giant, fire-breathing monster that lives in a flying castle? Oh, that's easy! Dennis Hopper of course! That's right! Star of Blue Velvet, and also one of the most notorious coke-heads in all of Hollywood. What kid wouldn't recognize "The Hop" and love seeing him King Koopa, even though the filmmakers made no effort to make the two look alike at all?
Finally, what kind of mood should the picture be? What would the Mario world be like if it were in our world? I know! A Blade Runner-esque wasteland with mutants and jet packs and crazed dictators. Oh yeah. Kids will love that... Well, no. No, they didn't. Not in the slightest. Of all its flaws, this is where the Super Mario Bros. movie fell flat on its face. Playing any of the Mario games, you'll clearly see that the colors are bright, the music is always jovial, the characters are dancing, even if they are your sworn enemies with them, and everyone is very happy and very contented in their little universe (minus Princess Daisy perhaps). So why when making a Super Mario Bros. movie does one stray so far from the merry little world that the two universes cannot even be compared, even slightly? And also, what's with all the f%$@ing slime everywhere? Is this Alien Resurrection or something?!
I will never forgive Hollywood or Nintendo for The Super Marios Bros. movie. I can understand the frustration in trying to find the logistics in making this movie work, but if doing so was that hard to begin with, then why make it all? Next time (and I'm sure we're due) think like Lego did and stick to cartoons.
And for your viewing pleasure, the live-action Mario TV show from the 1980s that also did not reflect the game, but at least had the jovial tone right...
