In the early 90's, Nintendo and its Super Mario Bros. franchise were on a huge roll. The faces of Mario, his brother Luigi, and all their friends and foes could be found plastered on all manner of merchandise, from t-shirts and lunchboxes to comic books and cartoons. It seemed nothing could bring down the Bros., so why not make a movie?
And in 1993, Nintendo, Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper, and Disney subsidiary Hollywood Pictures found out precisely "why not."
Years before computer-generated cartoon characters standing alongside real, living people would be the norm, such as in the recent Alvin and the Chipmunks movies or the upcoming Yogi Bear, or Dreamworks and Pixar would tickle our funny bones and capture our hearts with the likes of Shrek and Toy Story (but right around the time Jurassic Park was released), the decision was made to seemingly follow the example set by another franchise which was a hit with kids at the time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and translate cartoon characters (so to speak) into a film with live actors and animatronic puppets.
As one might expect, the project pretty much bombed when it hit theaters. The film failed to deliver what was expected of a Mario experience to movie audiences around the world, and is frequently hailed as one of the foremost examples of why making movies out of video games is a bad idea.
Despite this, the film has gained something of a cult status over the years. Some people enjoy it as a sort of alternate-universe take on the Mario mythos, while others just enjoy it for how ludicrous it is.
As such, the combination of the movie's notoriety and "so bad it's good" following make it difficult to discern whether or not a re-release of the movie on DVD would be surprising. Nonetheless, as discovered by Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive owner Ryan "Phlibbit" Hoss, the movie has once more seen a new release.
As with pretty much all movies of the day, Super Mario Bros. saw a home video release on VHS. A little more surprising than that is the release of a DVD version in 2003, as the medium began to take off. However, that release was extremely bare-bones, devoid of any special features or extras. That there was even a menu is almost surprising in itself.
Unfortunately for fans such as Hoss, the new DVD release doesn't really bring anything new to the table over the old release, short of a new box:
Furthermore, it appears that the original release suffered from a faulty implementation of widescreen (wherein it's only viewable in fullscreen mode), and that was not rectified for the new release, either.
On his site's forum, Hoss has attempted to organize an effort to get fans of the movie to contact Buena Vista/Disney by e-mail in order to hopefully get them to address the situation. But while Hoss was able to get a real written response from Buena Vista Home Entertainment Technical Support, others who followed in his example began to get canned responses. He remains hopeful that with enough support, an anamorphic version of the film might be released.
However, hope may seem slim for the company to actually address the issue, as they are apparently notorious for going the quick-n-easy route on these releases. But on the bright side, if you've had the desire to see the movie for yourself on your own home television screen, there is a new batch of these available to make the quest a little easier.
In the meantime, Nintendo's thoughts on any more movies based on their properties?
According to Nintendo of America President and Chief Operating Officer Reggie Fils-Aime, they receive offers from producers to purchase film rights to their franchises "all the time." But despite the demand, he says Nintendo sees their characters as "their children," and due to the high regard they hold for them, they are waiting on an offer they find of suitable quality.
Of course, with that said, there is also little doubt that with their last such endeavor ranking among Time's Top 10 Worst Video Game Movies, holding out is just that much easier.
Comments
Will it be anamorphic this time? I'd actually prefer a Blu-Ray, but as long as it's anamorphic instead of letterboxed like the last one.
From what I can tell, it's exactly like the last release, only with a different cover.
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