Brothers 1993

[Yoshi Heffernan]

SuperMario Bros. (also known as Super Mario Bros.: The Movie) is a 1993 fantasy adventure film[7] based on Nintendo's Super Mario video game series. The first feature-length live-action film based on a video game,[8] it was directed by the husband-and-wife team of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runt, and Ed Solomon, and distributed by Buena Vista Pictures through Hollywood Pictures. It follows brothers Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi Mario (John Leguizamo) in their quest to rescue Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis) from a dystopic parallel universe ruled by the ruthless President Koopa (Dennis Hopper).

Development began after producer Roland Joff obtained the Mario film rights from Nintendo. 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). The setting was inspired by the game Super Mario World (1990) with elements drawn from fairy tales and contemporary American culture. The production innovated and introduced many filmmaking techniques considered pivotal in the transition from practical to digital visual effects, including the use of Autodesk Flame. Filming took place from May to July 1992.

Following the impact of a meteorite into the Earth 65 million years ago, the universe is split into two parallel dimensions. Surviving dinosaurs escape into the new dimension, evolving into a humanoid race and founding the city of Dinohattan. In 1973, a mysterious woman leaves a large egg and a rock at a Catholic orphanage, and the egg hatches into a baby girl.

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; and her mother, the queen, took her to Brooklyn, only to be killed when the portal was sealed. Iggy and Spike realize that they lost Daisy's rock, a meteorite fragment Koopa needs to merge the worlds. They believe only Daisy can do so because of her royal heritage. Mario and Luigi escape 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 a protest against Koopa. Daisy's own escape attempt is aided by Yoshi, a pet of the royal family, and Iggy and Spike, who were mentally evolved to become intelligent and decided to turn on Koopa. While Luigi rescues Daisy, Mario saves Daniella and the other girls mistaken for the princess.

Koopa's jealous girlfriend Lena tries unsuccessfully to kill Daisy, then obtains the rock with plans to overthrow him, but is fossilized when she merges the worlds. In Brooklyn, Koopa attempts his takeover by rousing his army and turning Scapelli into a chimpanzee, but Mario shields himself from being devolved with a mushroom from the fungus. Luigi and Daisy remove the fragment from the meteorite, separating the worlds. Mario and Luigi obtain devolution guns and use them to defeat Koopa by devolving him into a Tyrannosaurus Rex, then primeval slime. Daisy's father evolves back to normal and is restored as king, and the citizens celebrate and immediately destroy anything with Koopa's likeness. Daisy decides to stay in Dinohattan and kisses Luigi goodbye as she opens the portal for him and Mario to return to Brooklyn.

Beginning in the 1980s, 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 then purchased the film rights and started developing an adaptation to be directed by Penny Marshall.[12] Producer Roland Joff 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. Joff met Nintendo of America 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, Joff went to Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto to meet Hiroshi Yamauchi. He pitched to Yamauchi the storyline which led to Nintendo receiving interest in the project. Joff left with a $2 million contract giving the temporary control of the character of Mario over to Joff. Nintendo retained merchandising rights for the film through a "creative partnership" with Lightmotive.[13]

When Yamauchi asked Joff why Nintendo should sell the rights to Lightmotive over a major company, Joff 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. Joff 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".[14] He wondered, "How do we catch this wonderful mixture of images and inputs and strangeness?" 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 that production titled the script "Drain Man".[13][15] 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.[16] Co-producer Fred Caruso later said that Morrow's story was "more of a serious drama piece as opposed to a fun comedy".[13]

Screenwriters 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 clichs, 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."[17][page needed] Greg Beeman of License to Drive 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 led to his dismissal by nervous producers.[13] Joff 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".[18]

Joff 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." Joff traveled to Rome to meet with creators Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel.[13] 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."[19] Joff, Morton, and Jankel agreed their approach to adapting the video games should follow the darker tone popularized by the 1989 Batman and 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Joff said, "This wasn't Snow White and the Seven Dinosaurs [...] The dino world was dark. We didn't want to hold back."[17] Morton described the film as a prequel to the video games[20] that tells the "true story" behind Nintendo's inspiration.[21] Joff viewed the games as a "mixture of Japanese fairy tales and bits of modern America",[13] and wanted to create a "slightly mythic vision of New York".[22] 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."[19] The film also took inspiration from Die Hard, Mad Max, and Blade Runner.[23]

The concept of a parallel universe inhabited by dinosaurs was inspired by Dinosaur Land from the recently released Super Mario World.[19] 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.[20] Joff noted, "It's a wonderful parody of New York and heavy industry [...] We call it the New Brutalism."[13] Screenwriters Parker Bennett and Terry Runt were tasked with balancing comedy with a darker tone: Bennett said, "Ghostbusters was the model [...] We were aiming towards funny, but kind of weird and dark."[17]

Though working well with the directors, Bennett and Runt were dismissed by the producers for being too comedic and the British writing team of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were brought on to deliver a more adult and feminist tone.[21] Princess Daisy and Lena's roles were expanded and Bertha was introduced as a black woman. With this script, the main cast signed, and Bob Hoskins was finally convinced to take the role of Mario.[24] The film officially moved into pre-production. However, producers Joff and Eberts feared the project had both skewed too far from the intended young adult and family audiences, and had become too effects-heavy to film within budget, so without informing directors Morton and Jankel or the signed cast they hired screenwriters Ed Solomon and Ryan Rowe to provide a more family-friendly script with more restrained effects requirements.[25] The script doctoring was partially motivated by a studio purchasing the film's distribution rights.[21] The cast only discovered the new screenplay upon arriving in Wilmington, North Carolina.[citation needed]

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