Super Mario Bros. (also known as Super Mario Bros.: The Movie) is a 1993 science fantasy adventure film based on the Mario video game series by Nintendo. It was directed by the husband-and-wife team Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runté and Ed Solomon and distributed by Buena Vista Pictures through Hollywood Pictures. The first American feature-length live-action film based on a video game, it follows the brothers Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) in their quest to rescue Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis) from a dystopian parallel universe ruled by the ruthless President Koopa (Dennis Hopper).
Development began after the producer, Roland Joffé, obtained the Mario rights. Given free creative license by Nintendo, which believed the Mario brand was strong enough for experimentation, the screenwriters envisioned Super Mario Bros. as a subversive comedy influenced by Ghostbusters (1984) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). Its dinosaur theme was inspired by the most recent Mario game, Super Mario World (1990), with other elements drawn from fairy tales and contemporary American culture. Filming took place from May to July 1992. The production used several techniques considered innovative in the transition from practical to digital visual effects, including the use of Autodesk Flame.
Released on May 28, 1993, Super Mario Bros. was a financial failure, grossing worldwide on a budget of . It received generally negative reviews from critics and is considered one of the worst films ever made. Despite this, it has developed a cult following. Nintendo did not license another Mario film until The Super Mario Bros. Movie, an animated film released by Universal Pictures in 2023, which received mixed reviews and was a commercial success, breaking multiple box-office records.
Plot
Following the impact of a meteorite into Earth 65million years ago, the universe is split into a pair of parallel dimensions. Surviving dinosaurs escape into the new dimension, evolving into a humanoid race and founding a city known as Dinohattan. In 1973, a mysterious woman leaves a large egg and a fragment of the meteorite at a Catholic orphanage in Brooklyn, New York City. The egg hatches into a baby girl.
Twenty years later, Italian-American brothers Mario and Luigi working as plumbers in Brooklyn are close to being driven out of business by mafioso Anthony Scapelli's construction company. Luigi meets Daisy, a New York University archaeology student who shows him she has been excavating for dinosaur bones under the Brooklyn Bridge. There, they witness Scapelli's cronies sabotaging it by leaving the water pipes open. Mario and Luigi fix it, but Iggy and Spike—henchmen and cousins of President "King" Koopa, the illegitimate leader of the other dimension—kidnap Daisy after mistakenly kidnapping other girls, including Mario's girlfriend, Daniella. The duo pursues them through an interdimensional portal to Dinohattan, where they lose track of Daisy and her necklace, which is stolen by Big Bertha, the bouncer of a local nightclub.
Daisy learns she is descended from dinosaurs and the long-lost princess of the other dimension. Her father, the king, was devolved by Koopa, then a general in the king's army, into a fungus that has since spread across Dinohattan; her mother, the queen, took her to Brooklyn, only to be crushed to death when the portal was sealed. Iggy and Spike realize that they lost Daisy's necklace, which contains a fragment of the meteorite that will allow it to merge the dimensions. They believe only Daisy can do so because of her royal heritage. Mario and Luigi break out of the city's local prison and go to rescue Daisy, aided by the fungus as well as Toad, a good-natured guitarist who was devolved into a Goomba, a semi-humanoid dinosaur, as punishment for his protests against Koopa. Daisy's escape attempt is aided by Yoshi, a pet of the royal family, and Iggy and Spike, who decide to turn on Koopa following their cousin's use of the (d)evolution gun to enhance their intelligence. While Luigi rescues Daisy, Mario saves Daniella and the other girls who were mistaken for the princess.
Koopa's jealous girlfriend, Lena, tries unsuccessfully to kill Daisy, then obtains the fragment with plans to overthrow him, but is fossilized when she merges the dimensions. In Brooklyn, Koopa attempts his takeover, but Luigi and Daisy remove the fragment from the meteorite, and the dimensions separate. Toad gives Mario and Luigi handheld devolution devices, and they defeat Koopa by devolving him into a Tyrannosaurus rex, then primeval slime. Daisy's father is evolved back to normal and regains his position. The citizens celebrate and immediately destroy anything involving Koopa. Daisy decides to stay in Dinohattan and kisses Luigi goodbye as she opens the portal for him and Mario to return home.
Three weeks later, the Mario brothers are heralded as heroes. Daisy arrives at Mario and Luigi's apartment in Brooklyn and asks them to help her on a new mission. In a post-credits scene, two Japanese businessmen approach Iggy and Spike for permission to develop a video game based on their experiences; they christen the game Super Koopa Cousins.
Cast
Production Development Following the release of Super Mario Bros. (1985), a video game developed and published by Nintendo, numerous producers attempted to purchase the rights to make a Super Mario Bros. film. In 1989, Nintendo gave DIC Entertainment the right to make a film out of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, but it was never produced. In 1990, Dustin Hoffman attempted to purchase the rights to produce a film with himself as Mario, Danny DeVito as Luigi, and Barry Levinson directing. However, this was not made because of scheduling conflicts for DeVito. Jake Eberts purchased the film rights and started developing an adaptation to be directed by Penny Marshall.
Producer Roland Joffé first came up with the idea of making a live-action adaptation of the video games himself during a script meeting at Eberts' production company Lightmotive. Joffé met Nintendo of America then-president and Hiroshi Yamauchi's son-in law, Minoru Arakawa. He presented Arakawa with an initial draft of the script. One month after their meeting, Joffé traveled to Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto to pitch the storyline to Yamauchi, which led to Nintendo receiving interest in the project. Joffé left with a $2 million contract giving the temporary control of the Mario character to Joffé. Nintendo retained merchandising rights through a "creative partnership" with Lightmotive.
When Yamauchi asked Joffé why Nintendo should sell the rights to Lightmotive over a major company, Joffé assured them that Nintendo would have more control over the film. However, Nintendo had no interest in creative control and believed the Mario brand was strong enough to allow an experiment with an outside industry. Joffé said, "I think they looked at the movie as some sort of strange creature that was kind of rather intriguing to see if we could walk or not."
Writing The first screenplay was written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Barry Morrow. His story followed brothers Mario and Luigi on an existential road trip so similar to Morrow's prior Rain Man (1988) that production titled the script "Drain Man". Morrow described his screenplay as "a study in contrast, like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello", that would have "an odyssey and a quest" like the game itself. Co-producer Fred Caruso later said that Morrow's story was "more of a serious drama piece as opposed to a fun comedy". One of the earliest scripts involved being closer to the video game and Arnold Schwarzenegger as King Koopa.
The writing team of Jim Jennewein and Tom S. Parker were brought on next to write a more traditional adaptation. Jennewein said, "So right away we knew that the best way to do this is to essentially have a journey into this world, not unlike The Wizard of Oz." His and Parker's take on the story was to subvert and satirize fairy tale clichés, and to focus on the relationship between Mario and Luigi. Jennewein said, "Essentially what we did was what Shrek did [...] And we knew the story had to be about the brothers and that the emotional through-line would be about the brothers." Greg Beeman of License to Drive (1988) was attached to direct and development had already moved into pre-production, but the failure of Beeman's recent Mom and Dad Save the World (1992) led to his dismissal by nervous producers. Joffé then offered Harold Ramis the director position, but though he was a fan of the video game, Ramis declined the opportunity, which he later said he was "glad" about and which the Associated Press would observe was his "smartest career decision".
Joffé said, "We tried some various avenues that didn't work, that came up too medieval or somehow wasn't the right thing. I felt the project was taking a wrong turn [...] And that's when I began thinking of Max Headroom." Joffé traveled to Rome to meet with creators Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. Morton said, "We come from the Tim Burton school of filmmaking, because our background is in animation and comic books [...] So we started off basing everything in reality, and then tried to have fun and exaggerate it as much as possible." Joffé, Morton, and Jankel agreed their approach to adapting the video games should follow the darker tone popularized by Batman (1989) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). Joffé said, "This wasn't Snow White and the Seven Dinosaurs [...] The dino world was dark. We didn't want to hold back." Morton described the film as a prequel to the video gamesYakir, Dan (July 1993). Super Mario Bros., Starlog Telecommunications, Inc. that tells the "true story" behind Nintendo's inspiration. Joffé viewed the games as a "mixture of Japanese fairy tales and bits of modern America", and wanted to create a "slightly mythic vision of New York". Screenwriter Parker Bennett elaborated: "Our take on it was that Nintendo interpreted the events from our story and came up with the video game. We basically worked backwards." The film also took inspiration from Die Hard (1988), Mad Max (1979), and Blade Runner (1982).
The concept of a parallel universe inhabited by dinosaurs was inspired by Dinosaur Land from the recently released Super Mario World (1990).Ferrante, Anthony C. (August 1993). Plumbing the Depths of Super Mario Bros., Starlog Telecommunications, Inc. Jankel envisioned the parallel dimension as "a whole world with a reptile point-of-view, dominated by aggressive, primordial behavior and basic instincts", while Morton considered the ecological and technological consequences of a dinosaur society that holds fossil fuels sacred. Joffé noted, "It's a wonderful parody of New York and heavy industry [...] We call it the New Brutalism." Parker Bennett and Terry Runté were tasked with re-writing the script to balance comedy with a darker tone: Bennett said, "Ghostbusters was the model [...] We were aiming towards funny, but kind of weird and dark."