Three Marios: Mario Mario and Luigi Mario

[00:00:30] Speaker A: What's up, everybody? This is Bryce Rankins. And this is my co host, Brian Romero. Hey, that's me. It's a me, Bryce. And my co host, Mario. Is this offensive? I don't know. And we are here with our very special guest, our video game historian in house and host of the Bronami code. He's got the world record for the Game Boy Mortal Kombat Speedrun. And his name is not. Not. [00:01:10] Speaker B: I don't know. I'm italian. I could hang on to it, but yes. Hi, everybody. [00:01:16] Speaker A: I got my 23 in me, and it basically just came back as a blank piece of white paper. [00:01:21] Speaker B: My last name is Frotto, so that's got to give something, right? Yeah, right. I mean, it may not be Mario like Mario Mario, but still fairly. [00:01:29] Speaker C: No one ever as good as Mario. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Mario Mario Mario Bob or Luigi Mario. [00:01:33] Speaker B: I just really want to know what their parents. What was going on in their heads when they were going through the naming. [00:01:39] Speaker A: You mean Ted Mario and Tanya Mario? [00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Theodore Mario. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Ted Theodore Mario. [00:01:47] Speaker B: What's up, everybody? Yeah. Thank you for that plug on multitudes. Not only the podcast, but my speed running accolades. [00:01:56] Speaker A: Sweep the leg, man. You got to sweep the leg. [00:01:58] Speaker B: You know what? That's not the strat anymore. So quick plug in. Just regards to speed running. So, Mortal Kombat, my world record got beaten. [00:02:07] Speaker A: No way. [00:02:08] Speaker B: Yes. The original time, my first world record was 1413. Got beaten by somebody who played as Kano. Kano ended up being the strat. He hit a 1346, took to the grind, and I regained my crown. Nice. I almost obliterated his record by a full minute. [00:02:28] Speaker A: Holy crap. [00:02:29] Speaker B: But I have to thank that guy who's now number two because he brought open Kano strat. So Kano is the new fighter, and all you do is high kick. You high kick. And then to sweep. [00:02:43] Speaker A: Just like in karate kid, you can try to sweep the leg, but the high kick is where it's at. [00:02:48] Speaker B: Legal or not? 100% legal. In Mortal Kombat rules and guidelines, Kano wins. [00:02:54] Speaker A: Flawless. Part of that movie, right? Do you still switch? Because I know you had to switch at one point because you couldn't do sweep the leg for one particular fight. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Switching as in characters? [00:03:06] Speaker A: Yeah, you had to switch characters for one particular fight and not fight a scorpion. [00:03:10] Speaker B: No, you can't. So on the game Boy port, you cannot switch. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Oh, is it that you switch strats that you couldn't sweep the leg on that particular fight? [00:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah. So it was Goro. You can't sweep with Goro for any character, not just Liu Kang. So you have to do it. [00:03:24] Speaker A: Or does he just have too great of a reach? [00:03:25] Speaker B: You legitimately can't do it, so it doesn't register his hit box. He kind of just swipes it out of the way because a giant dragon, half prince or half blood prince or however you want to describe Goro, if you walk up to him and try to sweep the leg, you're going to break your own. [00:03:44] Speaker A: See? I see. [00:03:44] Speaker B: So you got to get a running start and jump kick to not come back and do any damage. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Is it the same situation for Kano? [00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but no. It's a yes and no. I say no because instead of jump kick, it's jump. You. You jump low punch for Kano to knock Goro all the way back to the corner. Then you just high kick him to finish. The video is up on my Twitch channel if you want to watch it. It's pretty fun. [00:04:10] Speaker A: What's your twitch again? Your twitch. [00:04:12] Speaker B: It's Twitch tv noise. On top of that, I also got the world record on default category for mighty Morphin Power Rangers. [00:04:25] Speaker C: No way. [00:04:26] Speaker B: Yes for the Sega genesis the fighter. And then I got second place in any. [00:04:33] Speaker A: Cool. That's awesome. This has been our Mario podcast, everybody. [00:04:38] Speaker C: All the time. [00:04:41] Speaker A: Okay, so Mario. We are here to talk about Mario because Mario is going to be an actual Super Mario Brothers movie coming out in, as of the time of recording this, a month or so, a couple of weeks, actually, because it's April and we're halfway through the month. It's the champ's birthday here. March 14. Happy birthday, the champ. Happy birthday, the champ. The champ is what we call my brother. [00:05:01] Speaker B: I was going to say happy birthday to the champ. I have no idea who the champ was. [00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah, the champ is the reason I love Blackhawks hockey, actually. [00:05:10] Speaker B: There you go. [00:05:10] Speaker A: He got there first. [00:05:12] Speaker B: How do you feel about the Hawks tanking to get the number one know? [00:05:17] Speaker A: I applaud their strategy. [00:05:20] Speaker B: I mean, we have to worst in the NHL, my friend. Go Chicago. [00:05:24] Speaker A: Yeah, go Chicago. [00:05:26] Speaker C: There's only one way from here, though, and that is sideways or up or sideways? Up diagonally. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see how that all goes. [00:05:35] Speaker B: Just like a pipe from Mushroom Kingdom. [00:05:38] Speaker A: Yeah, we can just go anywhere. Back to hockey. Back to Mario. Not back to hockey. [00:05:42] Speaker B: Mario. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Hockey, Mario. I don't think. We haven't won yet. [00:05:46] Speaker C: Oh, no. I don't think they did that game. Did a bunch of other sports games. [00:05:50] Speaker A: But they did soccer. And in soccer, if you get a goal as Waluigi, he does a very clear suck it sign. And Japan was just whatever. [00:06:00] Speaker C: Yeah, there you go. [00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Full on, hands slapping thighs. [00:06:05] Speaker B: When are we going to super Mario wrestling? Now, that would be pretty amazing. I know. We have super Mario backyard wrestling. Yeah. Backyard with unlockable characters. The insane clown posse. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Yes. And a couple of characters from dead or alive. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Nice. [00:06:22] Speaker C: Yeah, because why the hell not? [00:06:24] Speaker A: Okay, so Mario is coming out to a movie, and it does not involve backyard wrestling that we know of. [00:06:31] Speaker C: We haven't seen it yet. [00:06:32] Speaker A: We haven't seen it yet. But the trailers have dropped. The movie is on its way. It's got an all star cast that many people are very concerned about. But from the looks of the trailers, I am very excited. [00:06:44] Speaker C: I'm pretty excited about it. [00:06:45] Speaker A: I think it's going to be good. I think it's going to be a pretty fantastic take on it. I like that it's moving a lot of Mario outside, let's call it outside lore into one cohesive story. But how did we get here? [00:07:00] Speaker B: How did we get here? [00:07:01] Speaker A: Well, so let's take a time machine back to the 80s with Nick. The 1880s that is at the beginning of Nintendo. No, just kidding. [00:07:08] Speaker C: We did that. [00:07:09] Speaker A: We're going to skip. We did that podcast already. That is literally a whole nother podcast. [00:07:12] Speaker C: That we already did. [00:07:14] Speaker A: You can go listen to that one. So 100 years after that, Nintendo says, cards, card schmards, let's go into Vidya games and we get our favorite red and blue plumber, jump man. Tell us about jump man and Pauline and everything else. [00:07:33] Speaker B: Oh, all the fun characters. Before Mario became the mascot for Nintendo, Donkey Kong actually was. And we first were introduced to the italian plumber in Donkey Kong, the arcade game, which was the early 80s, Nintendo's first foray into gaming in general. So, yeah, we had him. He wasn't established as Mario at the time. He was rescuing not a princess, but just a damsel in distress named as Pauline, who is a fun character. We didn't really get to see her again until Super Mario Odyssey. I want to say way back or, like, way in the future for the switch. [00:08:18] Speaker C: Way back, like three years ago. [00:08:19] Speaker B: Yeah, way back three years ago. Fast forward. But yeah. So Mario was just your average construction worker. Jump man. I guess he wasn't defined as a plumber until him and his brother debuted in the next arcade game as the Mario Brothers. Not Super Mario Brothers, the Mario brothers with Luigi, which was a very fun, high scoring arcade game. And then, of course, we were introduced to the infamous Super Mario Bros. As one of the original launch games for the Nintendo Entertainment System back in 85 and 86. I don't know if you guys knew this, but no one can pinpoint the north american release right now. It's either October, November or early January of 1986, which is crazy. [00:09:04] Speaker A: What? [00:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:06] Speaker A: So just nobody remembers. Or they're like, oh yeah, it was Tuesday and it was an 884. [00:09:11] Speaker C: It's like, no, it was a Thursday. [00:09:13] Speaker A: Did it get released? Could it be that it's released on multiple days? Like some stores got it early? I know that's happened before where it's like Walmart releases a video game like a month early on accident. [00:09:24] Speaker B: I would say that because they also bundled it. So there probably was confusion in terms of the official release by itself because I forgot which the bundle was. The one that came with Duck hunt. It was the dual cart. And then you had the actual individual game which if you're familiar with a Nintendo entertainment system, the carts themselves. The black label games Super Mario Bros. Single, which was the black label was the individual release. But yeah, it was released in Japan in September 100% on the 13th. That has been obviously printed in history. But for some reason North America is just like where? Okay, I don't know right now spec around this October 18, 1985, average date. Yeah, but it took, it took North America by storm. Basically catapulted the Nintendo entertainment system. Nintendo basically saved video game industry overall. [00:10:18] Speaker A: Now did the original NES Famicom entertainment system, did it come out after ET? [00:10:25] Speaker B: Et was not on the NES, my friend. [00:10:27] Speaker A: I know, I know. That's what I'm saying. [00:10:28] Speaker B: Oh yeah. [00:10:31] Speaker A: Death knell of the video game. [00:10:32] Speaker C: Wasn't that in like 80 much after three? [00:10:35] Speaker A: I would say came out pretty quickly I think after, because they rushed, it's part of the. [00:10:39] Speaker C: They did rush. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah, they rushed it for holiday. So I could tell you that. But yeah, I mean if we're talking origins of Super Mario way back in the arcades to the first home console for then, you know, he became a phenomenon. The Mario fever was real franchise became super popular to the point where Hollywood wanted to get a slice of the pie. So we are getting a Mario movie now. But it wasn't the first Mario movie which I know we want to go. [00:11:08] Speaker A: Into that because it has ramifications that lasted decades. Yeah, it, we had, there was a bunch of like ip spreading. There was a gambling machine that Konami made. Go figure. Konami's been making dumb gambling machines for a long time. But that was based on the Super Mario world bonus game that you got after you got enough stars. [00:11:31] Speaker C: I was like, they definitely got my money on that when I go to Vegas because. Yes, please. [00:11:36] Speaker B: I was going to say go ahead. No. Did they? I'm surprised they didn't release a Mario Pachinko machine. [00:11:44] Speaker A: I mean, I don't know that they can at this point. I don't think Nintendo would give them the rights they might have at the mean. It was just in the documentary I watched, it was just a gambling machine, but it very well could have been a pachinko machine. But there was that. There was a manga, there were cartoons. [00:12:00] Speaker C: But there were like spinoff games, too. There was pinball machine games. And then even early on, like Dr. Mario. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. When the Nintendo starts really pushing know. And then the Super Nintendo has its fair share too. Mario is missing and a couple of educational games that did absolutely terribly. [00:12:19] Speaker C: We're playing those. [00:12:20] Speaker B: I mean, don't hate on Mario is missing. It's basically a Carmen San Diego knockoff. [00:12:24] Speaker C: It really. [00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, before all the spinoffs they were shelling, I mean, they were plugging Mario in a lot of NES games as just like a mascot or. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Ref and punch out. [00:12:35] Speaker B: Ref and punch out. He's a referee in tennis. [00:12:38] Speaker A: Is he really? [00:12:39] Speaker B: Yes, he is. I think he's a referee. I don't want to say ice hockey. He shows up in a bunch of just random sport titles. [00:12:48] Speaker C: Golf. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Golf. He's in that, which is very. It's like the basic NES golf game. [00:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:54] Speaker B: And then of course, his crossover to the Game boy, too. But just crazy. As soon as Donkey Kong took off, he owes a lot to the ape himself to jumpstart his career. [00:13:06] Speaker C: If you've seen the trailer for the new movie, like Donkey Kong and fam are in the trailer. [00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's really cool. Donkey Kong and Funky Kong's in the background of one of the race scenes. [00:13:15] Speaker B: I'm excited about what I really like about the direction that they're taking this new film is that in a way, it's an origin story, but it's not because I feel like everybody from Gen Z and younger and even Gen Alpha and even toddlers, like my six year old nephew knows Mario now and knows Super Mario and knows the characters and the franchise. So what Nintendo is doing and illumination is like, they're putting every single. I don't want to say every single, but so much of the franchise in this one film. And they can do it because people know. Well, they own them, but people know Super Mario, so no one's going to be in my. I would be shocked if people are confused about why this character. This character. What's that? What's this? [00:14:00] Speaker C: Well, especially after Super Smash Brothers has been blowing up for the last 20 years, all those characters that they always randomly put in there, I'm sure they have the rights to them. So they might even just pop up in there and it makes sense for. [00:14:13] Speaker B: The Ip Smash universe. That's what everybody wants. Hardcore fanboys mashiverse. [00:14:20] Speaker C: Whoa. [00:14:22] Speaker A: Just give me an origin story about the hands. That's all I want. [00:14:26] Speaker B: I mean, if we're going to go down that rabbit hole, if the original N 64 Smash bros. Was a kid's imagination, the hands were a kid. You remember the intro? He took his toys out of a toy box. They were Nintendo toys. [00:14:39] Speaker C: Classic. [00:14:40] Speaker A: The only thing I remember about, I mean, I remember a lot of things about that game. Like if my cousin chose Jigglypuff, I didn't want to play because he was quite the spammer and he was not a fun winner. Not my cousin, that, you know, a different cousin on my dad's side, but that. And then so happy together by the turtles playing in the original trailer as like a pikachu mascot, a Mario mascot, a donkey Kong mascot, and a Yoshi mascot, like so iconic frolicking in a field, and then they just start wailing on each other. [00:15:09] Speaker C: Oh, that's right. I do remember that now. [00:15:11] Speaker B: Pure nostalgia, though. Pure nostalgia. And I think they actually took those mascots on a tour when that game was getting marketed. I think there was an actual mascot rumble. Like a royal rumble live somewhere. [00:15:23] Speaker A: Oh my God. [00:15:23] Speaker C: It's amazing. [00:15:24] Speaker B: There is clips on YouTube, I have to say. It's probably that in the link when we post this. Yeah, but that's why I think I'm most excited for this new film is the fact that we're finally going to see a lot of Nintendo's ip coming. [00:15:37] Speaker A: To just like in the background of Wreckit Ralph. [00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [00:15:42] Speaker C: Which was still fun. But also I want interaction. [00:15:46] Speaker A: The fact that cranky Kong is just sitting up there as this king and is just being Kong because like the Donkey Kong country tv show with the crystal egg or whatever it was for me, I didn't even care if it was garbage. I was just like, yes, let me consume more donkey Kong. And that whole, like, yes, let me consume more of this ip. I love when there's not a whole lot of iconic ips in the Nintendo realm is kind of how we wind up with the Mario movie. It's like, yeah, you know what? It's big. People will do it. It doesn't matter. If it's good or like, let's go to it and let's make it happen. [00:16:24] Speaker B: The first one, I think with the original Mario movie. [00:16:28] Speaker A: Super Mario Brothers movie. [00:16:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, should we get into that? [00:16:33] Speaker B: I don't know. Do we want to make that segue? We're going to talk more about the new movie or. I don't know. [00:16:39] Speaker C: I think we'll get to the new movie. [00:16:41] Speaker A: We're in the back right now because. [00:16:42] Speaker C: We keep sprinkling it in there. And we definitely want to talk about. [00:16:45] Speaker A: Such a fascinating story. It's a movie. [00:16:49] Speaker C: It's a freaking movie. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Top five movie for me on my. [00:16:53] Speaker A: All right, general playlist here. [00:16:55] Speaker C: Let's dive in. [00:16:55] Speaker A: I'll try to help organize this. Let's start with we all just recently sat down together and watched the Super Mario Bros. Movie. [00:17:02] Speaker B: 100% for me. [00:17:04] Speaker A: I hadn't sat down and watched this movie since we rented it on vhs. [00:17:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:07] Speaker A: So I haven't seen this movie in, what year did it come out? [00:17:10] Speaker B: 1990. [00:17:11] Speaker A: 319 93. So I haven't seen this movie since I was like six or seven years old. So it's been almost 30 years. [00:17:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:19] Speaker A: Brian, when was the last time you watched this movie before? [00:17:21] Speaker C: So I've actually before the other night. I never watched it the entire way through. I always came in in the last 30 minutes or in the first ten minutes and then left 20 minutes later. I kept seeing it at random bits and pieces. I've probably seen the entire movie all the way through, but just like not in one sitting. Yeah. So that was like, oh, context and. Yeah, okay, I get things now. [00:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Nick, when was last time you watched this? [00:17:44] Speaker C: More or less makes sense, I was going to say. [00:17:46] Speaker B: And then you have somebody on the complete opposite spectrum who I think the last time I saw this was probably a year ago. And for context for the listeners, I put this movie in my top five of all times. All times. All time. There's many reasons why. And I'm happy to go into a little bit detail as to why I put it up at five. [00:18:08] Speaker A: Let's definitely get there. [00:18:10] Speaker B: One, I love a movie that you can just sit back and quote. This movie has so many fun quotes that are just stupid. They're fun for people who are fans of the franchise and the ip itself, but just in general, the writers came up with some very awesome trash. Like cheesy trash that you can't get anywhere else. But at early 90s, I'll say like. [00:18:36] Speaker C: Classic early ninety s one liners. [00:18:39] Speaker A: Concert one liners. Why is this happening? Stupid. Like slapstick action sequences, which is like, imagine if you took a Jackie chan action sequence, which involves him rolling over and accidentally screwing up a bunch, but also using jackets and things like that playing into it. Yeah. And then just have the people doing these. Not be good at it. [00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. [00:19:02] Speaker C: Meanwhile, at the time, we were getting movies like Ninja Turtles and three ninjas and surf ninjas. There's a lot of ninjas movie. Yeah, a double dragon movie. [00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And there was so much on tv as, like, we already had Mario in two cartoon forms at this mean you have the original because there's a cartoon which does not have people. Human live action. [00:19:26] Speaker B: Live action. Yeah. [00:19:27] Speaker A: And then there's the iconic, like, do the Mario swing your arms. Like, let's put words to the freaking theme song. Like Koji Kondo. Let's. Let's just bastardize his thing with this poorly singing italian guy with this terrible mustache. And I feel like that show is very much a precursor to what we're going to be getting with Bob Hoskins going into this. Like, hey, out there, there's some real gritty BS going. [00:19:56] Speaker B: But if you look at the actual story of Mario Brother, the lore itself, he is a plumber from the real world and gets sucked into Mushroom kingdom. So he's going to be a brook. I mean, they didn't say, like, it's New York City. Odyssey had new Donk City. So one could say that's actually where Mario is originally. It just. It made sense like this, you know, this Brooklyn talking individual coming into this fantastical world. And I think that's another reason why I love this, is it's fish out of water story, where you have Bob Hoskins, who's a wonderful actor. John Legazambo, that's my number two. I loved him in the pest. Anyone ever see the pest? [00:20:40] Speaker A: One of my only movie I have ever walked out of in my entire life. [00:20:45] Speaker B: We hated it. [00:20:46] Speaker A: We all looked at each other and we're like, you guys want to walk over and try something? No. We were like, yes, please. [00:20:51] Speaker B: I love trash. [00:20:52] Speaker A: And we went and saw Star wars, which was arguably, like, my reintroduction into Star wars after a few years of not watching it. And I would say that I made a good choice in doing that, but I have told Brian, just like a week ago, I was like, I feel like I should rewatch the pest we. [00:21:06] Speaker C: Were just talking about. [00:21:06] Speaker A: It might not be terrible. [00:21:07] Speaker B: The pest is John Liguizamo doing his best ace Ventura impression. [00:21:13] Speaker A: That's what we thought it was going to be. We thought it was going to be Ace Ventura. [00:21:16] Speaker B: Well, it's that mixed with him being a cartoon, like a real life cartoon character. It's a lot of fun. He does a million impressions. The crux of the story is he signs a waiver to try and win, I think a million or a couple million dollars from this hunter who hunts people, like different cultures or like different heritages, like different genes, genetics, ethnicities. And he's just this goofy guy who lives with his parents and somehow folds him up. Spoiler alert. But yeah, it's a great movie. And John Wizamo does a lot of comical things. In the Super Mario Bros. Movie that I love, he plays the dopey brother Luigi so well, who also kind of. [00:22:01] Speaker C: Plays straight the whole time. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Yeah, as a little brother. Luigi is my guy because I've always been player two and I definitely have a soft spot for Luigi because he was the skinny one and I was always the scrawny one in my family. I was definitely underweight for the majority of my life. And he's the tall one and I was usually the tallest kid in my class despite being somehow smaller than everybody else in my class. But seeing him be like an oaf, I'm a little bummed about. I'm glad that he's not like 100% useless as Mario games progressed. But seeing him as an oath as the little brother in the Super Mario Bros. Movie, I remember being like, oh, well, at least it gets the girl. But I kind of wanted peach here. [00:22:47] Speaker B: I would say that's your first instance of Luigi getting a personality because he's just the color. Yeah, he's color swap in the games. So the oath, though, never really left. He is portrayed as the bumbling brother, little brother. [00:23:04] Speaker A: However, I mean, Charlie Day is playing him. I just don't see Charlie day playing. Yeah, we're going to be great. [00:23:11] Speaker C: No, that's it there. That's it. I'm in. [00:23:13] Speaker B: Even being the oath, though, I will say in this film, the original Mario Brothers movie, they were a dynamic duo and they both helped each other throughout the film, which was great. That's what the Super Mario brothers are all about. If you play the later games, they definitely rely on each other. I don't even want to get into Luigi's mansion. Mario wouldn't be alive without his. [00:23:39] Speaker A: Game. On my Game Boy DS, I'm so old on my Nintendo DS doesn't work and so I can't do the suction. [00:23:46] Speaker C: Like you need that action in the game in order to complete the game. [00:23:50] Speaker A: To even start the game, I can't get through the tutorial because my button is unreliable. And so they're like, yeah, just suck up the ghost. And I'm like, I would love to if you would give me alternative controls. So I have not yet played Luigi's mansion because I have dark moon. And I was like, let's go. And then rather, let's go. And then I have not yet played it. But he does. No, he isn't in Super Mario RPG, the greatest Super Mario game of all time. [00:24:15] Speaker B: He is not. Not until Mario and Luigi games, which are. [00:24:21] Speaker A: Which I was really happy for just because I didn't really love paper Mario, especially as an sequel. Like, I was. No, no, I want more. Give me those guys. But I am excited that there is a whole different. Because that's the superstar, right? [00:24:40] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And then like the inside Bowser story and all that. [00:24:43] Speaker B: Just going back to the movie, though, it's just the music itself is just cheesy. Ninety s, r and b tracks mixed with some random composition. [00:24:51] Speaker A: The Dinosaur is in there. [00:24:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Everything about it. It's weird, right? In some instances, I want purity. So, for instance, the competitor Sonic and Sega, the Sonic movies, for the most part are pretty faithful to Sonic lore, at least the character angles. And that's okay. That second one, you have to. It's great. It's great. Yeah, it's fun. [00:25:16] Speaker A: It's not as good as the first one. [00:25:17] Speaker B: I don't know. I kind of like the second a little bit better than the first. [00:25:20] Speaker A: One of my favorite aspects of the first one is that because it's so low budget, they have to really push their product placement. And so like the Olive Garden jokes, the Zillow reference, it's just like, are we in a commercial? And then we go back to. There's something about that was really charming that I was hoping they would keep in the second one. And so I was really hoping for. [00:25:38] Speaker C: Just more like they got a bigger budget. [00:25:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I came here for unlimited salad and bread. [00:25:45] Speaker C: You're a cheesy. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Your family like an Olive Garden something. But there was only like one Olive garden reference and it was just to that general. And they're like, Olive Garden guy. [00:25:54] Speaker B: They definitely were targeting us, though, because they took the whole early iteration of Sonic from the tv shows. His personality of being super cool and goofy, not too serious. I appreciated know I love serious sonic from Sonic adventure upwards, but there's something about goofy. Classic Sonic. Joelle White from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. But I think the lovable characters from our video games that we played growing up, they put a lot of that in the original Mario film. Another reason why it's top five. It wasn't 100% faithful. And that's where I was getting at. And I was okay with it because I knew in spirit it was a Mario movie. [00:26:37] Speaker A: How old were you when you first saw the Mario movie? [00:26:40] Speaker B: I was three when it came out. When I first saw it, honestly, I can't remember. I would say six. I remember first seeing it. My parents had early iteration of DirecTV, so you could actually rent the movies from DirecTV once they were released. [00:26:54] Speaker A: Nice. [00:26:54] Speaker B: And we watched it. We rented it from DirecTV and watched it in our basement. And that was, like, the first time I saw that. And I was so confused, because, again, I was expecting some connection to the game. So when I saw the Goombas, I thought they were. They do. Every time they mentioned Koopa, I was like, but that's bowser. [00:27:15] Speaker A: There was definitely some of that on mine. My end, for sure. [00:27:18] Speaker B: I mean, his name is King Koopa, but I didn't know that. Right. So I was expecting. I was like, oh, why didn't they call him Bowser? So there are bits and pieces of confusion at six. Let's just say I saw it in 96. So three years after, when it was. [00:27:32] Speaker A: Was the Snes your first system? [00:27:34] Speaker B: It wasn't. So. My first system was actually the Nintendo entertainment system. I was four years old. We had super Mario Bros. And we had this weird OG Mario. Yes, but I mean, a four year old. How well am I playing that, really? To be quite honest. And I know we're talking about Nintendo. For majority of this episode, Sega Genesis was my true first console that I remember. [00:27:57] Speaker A: Look at cool kid. [00:27:58] Speaker B: Dude, I'm a Sega fanboy, okay? Dude. Alter Beasts was one of the first games. I had sonic. That jog. I go, yeah, dude. I could go down the rabbit hole from a Sega Genesis perspective. But Blue Bomber? Blue Bomber, dude. I didn't play my first Mega man game, even though it's a NES franchise originally was Wiley wars. That's my first introduction to Mega man, which was the rare Sega port. Total random Tangent. But, yeah, NES was my first system, if we're going to be completely technical. So in being introduced to Mario at that age, I knew exactly who he was. [00:28:33] Speaker A: My first system was an ES. So for me, it was a Super Mario world. When I went into the Mario movie, I was like, that's bowser. I know who Iggy Koopa is because Iggy Koopa was my favorite. I mean, probably because I played him more than anything, because he's in the first world. But Iggy Koopa, I poured over those instruction manuals as a kid, and Iggy Koopa and Yoshi were, like, my two favorite things. [00:28:56] Speaker C: Hell, yeah, Yoshi. [00:28:57] Speaker A: And when Yoshi came out in the movie, I remember being like, that's cool as shit, because that's a walking dinosaur where the. This is not. Are they not going to write him? And then they don't even actually meet him for the entire movie till the very end when he waves at. And, like, on some level, you can see them waving, but, you know, they're like, who the hell was that guy? I don't know. Just keep waving. [00:29:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Unless that was in one of the deleted scenes that apparently came in the movies. [00:29:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Which apparently exists. But anyway. Sorry, so you came into this knowing, at least at some level, like, did you know who King Cooper was? [00:29:31] Speaker B: I didn't know his actual name was King Cooper. [00:29:34] Speaker A: I think they might call him that in one of the cartoons they do. [00:29:36] Speaker B: On the family he's known in lore. [00:29:39] Speaker A: I think I knew who it was, but I was also like, yeah, but he's actually just bowser. Call him Bowser. I watched the heck out of that cartoon. [00:29:45] Speaker B: But there were a lot of pieces missing. I mean, Toad was just a guy. [00:29:50] Speaker C: A dude. [00:29:51] Speaker B: He wasn't. [00:29:51] Speaker A: Yeah, there was no toad. Still, I will say, as an adult, I was very happy. The fact that they added so many things in that are, like, homages to Berto and what's her name. Big Bertha. [00:30:05] Speaker B: It was Big Bertha. Yeah, the fish. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Big Bertha the fish, which is a really weird one, but, like, okay, there's a, like, taxi service which know the wiggler is the caterpillar that gets angry and starts huffing and puffing. There's a bullet bills bar or something like that in the background. There's a lot of background stuff in this dystopian world. Nothing else about this makes any sense. [00:30:25] Speaker C: And I feel like they added a lot of the background stuff. It wasn't even part of the main story. I feel like that was like set deck. [00:30:31] Speaker A: That's set deck. Just pulling their weight. Set deck's like something in here's got to fucking reference Mario. Yeah, because Bob Hoskins sure shit isn't Mario, our beloved plumber. I'm not going to kill him. I'm going to rip him apart, and then I'm going to kill him. Oh, this is a children's movie. [00:30:48] Speaker C: Mario's hardcore. [00:30:49] Speaker A: Mario didn't give a shit. No, Mario I'm going to stick this plunger, and I'm going to stick it right up. [00:30:54] Speaker B: I was going to say the feature that you sent me after we watched it when they were going through the set design was unbelievable. I have to admit, the whole dystopian blade Runner aesthetic was perfect for this. [00:31:07] Speaker A: And I almost wished that he would do a cut of this with Blade Runner type music so that it could just have the full Blade Runner. [00:31:16] Speaker C: Somewhere on YouTube. [00:31:17] Speaker B: 100% why? Another added to the long list of reasons why this is, like, top five overall. It's fun. It's bubblegum. What's a phrase? It's not trash. Yeah. It's bubblegum pop. You sit back, it's guilty pleasure. You know what you're getting. It's stupid. It's quick. You could do it within an hour and a half, and you feel fine afterwards. Get a nice pizza and sit down and just enjoy it. [00:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Brian, you saw bits and pieces, but you never actually sat down to watch the movie. [00:31:49] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:50] Speaker A: Did you have an opinion on this movie growing up? Like, I don't really care. [00:31:54] Speaker C: Yeah, it was basically like, I don't really care. So I was into the Mario games, kind of because we had an NES growing up, and then I got more into the Game Boy, and I got kind of more into Kirby for a minute, and then Pokemon, and then we had a Super Nintendo, but I was way more into Donkey Kong, and I had Super Mario World, and I played Mario RPG at a friend's house all the time. That was my shit. In fact, when the SNEs mini dropped a couple years ago, I scoured all around Orange county just to find one so I can play Mario RPG again. And I got halfway through, and I haven't touched it since. [00:32:26] Speaker A: But I still got also a copy of it, right? [00:32:28] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, right there. Look at my eye. [00:32:30] Speaker A: Right next to Super Mario World, which was my first Mario game. Yeah. [00:32:34] Speaker C: So I was into Mario, but the other ips interested me more. But I still didn't hate it by any means. So if the movie came on, I'd sit and watch it for a little bit and know add would kick in, like, what else is on? Or just be at a friend's house and be on. And then we'd, like, go outside, or we'd put on another blessed video game. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Video game hyper focus, like Nick and I were. [00:32:54] Speaker C: Yeah. But also, luckily, I was blessed with some kick ass friends growing up. And one of my friends had a PlayStation, the other one had a sega. And then between us all, we had all sorts of games and all sorts of multiplayer games. Not that Mario wasn't multiplayer, but as a two player game, it was a little boring. But there's so many other games we could have played, and when you're playing. [00:33:18] Speaker A: With somebody who's good, it's two minutes before you get to play again, and then you die in 10 seconds, and it's another two minutes, if not longer, to play a lot. [00:33:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Lacking simultaneous play, for sure. [00:33:29] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:33:30] Speaker A: It's no ninja turtles. Turtles in time. That's all I'm saying. [00:33:33] Speaker C: And we got down with all the Turtles games, and Mario was always there as an option, and sometimes we throw it on, but if anything, we play Mario RPG. [00:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah, Mario RPG is a fun one because that's one of those, you have to have your own discipline for pass and play, which is nice. [00:33:45] Speaker C: Yeah, we had a good system going. [00:33:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:47] Speaker C: Like, three or four of us. [00:33:49] Speaker A: Super Mario World has its option. There's Mario Kart, but I feel like Mario. I mean, Mario Kart only sort of counts. But I will tell you that my Boy Scout camp in our staff cabin, we had Mario Kart, and I had to become good at Mario Kart own honor. [00:34:06] Speaker C: So here's the thing with Mario Kart, I pretty much only played the Super Nintendo version. So when everybody's talking about Mario Kart. [00:34:13] Speaker A: They always talk about 64. [00:34:14] Speaker C: That's what I go to. I didn't have 64, and when the 64 came out, I didn't get one. But by that time, I was really more of a pc gamer. Conquer hell. Yeah. So whenever anybody talks about Mario Kart, my brain automatically goes to the Super Nintendo. When everybody else is talking about 64, I played it a handful of times. [00:34:34] Speaker A: We had stunt race, FX. What do you want Mario Kart for? When we got three dimensions, the FX chip was in full effect. Anyway, back to the video, back to the movie. When you were a kid, Nick, your impression you were saying was like, I don't know what the hell this is. At what point did you go, you know what? I do love this weird, bizarre piece of gaming trash. [00:34:54] Speaker B: Honestly, it wasn't until I was an adult when I saw it again in a fresh lens. Watching it when I was older was straight nostalgia fuel. And I think that's the only reason why I put it in, was the sole fact of like, hey, this is something I remember as a kid, how campy it was, how tied know my love of video games. But I watched it more and more, and it became one of those dvds that you pop in before bed or, like, if you just need to put in the background, but still want to enjoy yourself. [00:35:22] Speaker A: Everybody else was getting the office on Netflix, and you were watching the supermarket, watching Bob Hoskins masterpiece. [00:35:30] Speaker B: But yeah, no, it definitely was fast forward until I was able to understand what this was, why it was the way it was. And I say that as if I knew the story and the history of it, which I'm sure we're going to get into. I didn't, but I understood this is not a direct adaptation is more of what I'm trying to. [00:35:54] Speaker A: A. It's like, what if Mario was this? And I mean, that makes sense. Michael Keaton's Batman was supposed to be like a new gritty and like, that was kind of how they were approaching. It was like, oh, yeah, no, Batman's, like, super serious now. We're taking Adam west and we're. Nah. And so the era of the let's do it. But a gritty version was, like, in full swing at the time. And it shows. [00:36:16] Speaker C: It's getting there. But I mean, even with, like, looking back, Og ninja Turtle movie. Like, that was gritty as hell, but. [00:36:22] Speaker B: That was pieces, too, I will say, and I don't know if I'm using the right phrase to play Devil's advocate to that quote or to actually give levity to the reason why it was gritty is because the actual, as you guys know, both comic book original, the turtles themselves are gritty. [00:36:40] Speaker C: That's fair. That's awesome. [00:36:41] Speaker A: He's. [00:36:41] Speaker B: Van Lear wrote them. [00:36:45] Speaker C: Basically. [00:36:45] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the early story arcs was like, donatell's arm gets chopped. Like, it's brutal. [00:36:53] Speaker A: Reed says it best. Shout out to our friend Reed. [00:36:56] Speaker C: What up, Reed? [00:36:57] Speaker A: Eastman got so lucky because he made this joke comic about basically what happened to the rest of the ooze in the daredevil world. And instead of the hand, it's the foot. And the ooze blinds some kid and then drips down a sewer and turns a bunch of sewer. Like somebody flushed down the toilet. A bunch of sewer reptiles, that kind of crap. And now he's like, yeah, I just have this media empire of turtle ip. [00:37:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:24] Speaker B: Oh, I can't get enough of it. The amount of turtles action figures that I still just, I picked up. Playmates is doing a whole new line of the ninja elite series that I'm getting into. [00:37:34] Speaker A: Are those the really big. [00:37:36] Speaker B: No, they're not. You guys are listeners. This is a podcast. You can't see anything. But I'm actually on Zoom with my boys in the 90s. Original movie Raphael dons this outfit. So they did, like, a fantasy iteration where it's Leonardo and Michelangelo donning the disguise outfit. [00:37:58] Speaker A: Oh, cool. I had one of those when I was a kid, and the trench coat was plastic. [00:38:04] Speaker C: Yep, I had that one too, but. [00:38:05] Speaker A: I definitely had that one. And then I only had one realistic ninja turtle. And my mom bought a handful of them for a friend's birthday, and I was like, okay, but I really want one of these. I'm really bummed that I have to get rid of all of them. And she's like, okay, we'll pick one. Now. Looking back, I'm like, you planned this. You knew me well enough. [00:38:24] Speaker C: You had to have been like, I'm smart, glover. [00:38:26] Speaker A: Two, three action figures. We'll just do this. And then that kid and I got into a fight, and then we didn't talk, and then we didn't speak to each other until college, and then we wound up working together, and he ended up being a really cool guy, so I'm glad I gave him those cool ninja turtles. [00:38:38] Speaker B: It was planned all along, that story. [00:38:40] Speaker A: He made some funny joke in spanish class in college, and I thought it was the funniest shit. I was like, that's the end of our feud. We're done. Guy who I got in third grade, now he has a kid, and he's fantastic. I love that guy. Shout out to Ryan. I'm sure you're not listening to this, but if you are, fucking love you, man. You're great. [00:38:59] Speaker B: So I was going to say, to be fair to the producers and the directors of the Mario brothers, they were putting this movie out in a time where, yes, there was a lot of. I mean, everything was gritty, right? The early 90s, everything was gritty because. [00:39:12] Speaker A: Kids want to be cool. [00:39:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:39:13] Speaker A: This is all Sega's fault for trying to be the bad boy. Mario was like, we could be a bad boy. We're going to get the baddest guy in Hollywood. Who? Dolph Lundgren? Rocky Balboa? No. Bob Hoskins. You sure? Is Hoskins available? Does he have time? [00:39:29] Speaker B: It almost was Tom Hanks. I don't know if you knew that. [00:39:33] Speaker C: Was it really? [00:39:35] Speaker A: Hey, it's me, Mario. [00:39:36] Speaker B: 100%. It almost was Tom Hanks. [00:39:39] Speaker A: I think this group of guy is pretty great. That's my impression of Tom Hanks. Thank you very much. I'll be here all week. [00:39:45] Speaker B: Hang on, hang on. This could be used as a segue to go to the history of there, but if we're talking about casting really quickly. [00:39:53] Speaker C: Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. [00:39:55] Speaker B: The first interest to Nintendo was Dustin Hoffman. And Dustin Hoffman did express interest in portraying Mario. But then after some internal debate with Nintendo in Japan, Arakawa, the president at the time, said he wasn't the right man for the role. [00:40:11] Speaker A: Princess Peach, I think you're. [00:40:12] Speaker B: And then following, they offered Danny DeVito. [00:40:15] Speaker A: Which I would have been all about. [00:40:17] Speaker B: And they would have given him the director's mantle, which were mantis, to bargain. I take back what I said earlier. Tom Hanks was actually originally considered for the role of Ouija. [00:40:30] Speaker A: That makes more sense, especially young, like, just coming off of the burbs. Tom Hanks. [00:40:36] Speaker B: But a string of recent box office failures fail. [00:40:39] Speaker A: You learn. [00:40:40] Speaker B: Oh, God, I can't talk. [00:40:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Never mind the fact that Tom Hanks has not had a year without a movie since, like, 1983. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Yeah, but they dropped him. Nintendo didn't want him because his earlier films didn't do too well, so they dropped him. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Keaton were both approached to play King Cooper. So there could have been a world. [00:40:59] Speaker C: Schwarzenegger would have been amazing. [00:41:00] Speaker A: Schwarzenegger is. He was like, all right, I prepped for this role. Oh, I didn't get it. I'll just make it all about Mr. Freeze. Like, you could just take his production of Mr. Freeze and be like, yeah, that's basically what Bowser could have. [00:41:12] Speaker C: Yeah, shoot. So if anybody hasn't been fully familiarized with this, there were so many things going on with this movie that was all over the place, from the directing and the writing and the casting and production, and that's kind of what we're going into now. [00:41:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And coming from a film perspective, having worked in the film industry for as long as I have, Brian, having worked in the film industry for as long as he has, development hell is a thing that a lot of, it's a pitfall. Many productions follow too many hands in. [00:41:41] Speaker C: The cookie jar as well. [00:41:43] Speaker A: You go, okay, we're going to have this guy. And then he can't do it because of scheduling or because the production company says. He recently said some things that are going to get some trouble or, no, he has had recent box office failures. We don't know that Tom Hanks gives us the star power we need, yada, yada, yada. But to have it change as often as it did already is a sign like, hey, this might not go so well. And the fact that they were going to give Danny DeVito, the director's, like, to sweeten the. You're. So who's running this show? If you're still trying to find a director when you're also trying to get these people in. So carry on, Nick. Tell us more about the wonderful history that is everything before we start shooting the Mario. [00:42:31] Speaker B: It sucked. It's trash. Yeah, I mean, there's so much to talk about. Other Nintendo. [00:42:40] Speaker A: Nintendo wants to make this movie. Do they get approached or are they approaching? [00:42:45] Speaker B: They get approached first. [00:42:47] Speaker A: Okay. By Universal? [00:42:51] Speaker B: No, it was Roland Joffey, who was working for Lightmotive, which was a production company, approached Nintendo president Yamamuchi and his son in law at the time. So he was having a business trip out in Japan and saw that Hollywood was booming. We need to blow up this ip, this franchise. And Yamamucci was very skeptical at first. He wanted the storyline to remain in house with Nintendo. And after some negotiations, he finally caved and gave, I think, joffey, like $2 million to contract out temporary control over Mario. So he wasn't 100% sold, but he's like, look, I get that there's going to be financial gain if we turn this character into a film franchise. [00:43:42] Speaker A: Nintendo is very big on keeping things close to the chest. They definitely lend out their ips. Like when I said earlier that Konami made a gambling machine. When I heard that, I was really surprised. I was like, I'm surprised that Nintendo licensed Mario to go anywhere but Mario. Nintendo is super protective of their own ips, more so after this movie, which we'll get to later, but also, who can make a video game? Who can make a video game with that? And japanese copyright law is extremely strict. So even if in post production for this I wanted to play clips, I'd have to be extremely careful just to do any sort of Mario sounds because how protective they are over things. Not that they care about our, hopefully more than 20 listeners. Hi, Tommy. For them to be like, yeah, you can take our flagship IP mascot and make a movie with him is kind of insane. [00:44:44] Speaker B: Oh, it's bananas. Especially of what you just said of like, that's Donkey Kong, this guy. All right, that's it. End of episode. [00:44:52] Speaker A: That's it. That's my time. Thank you, everybody. Be sure to tip your waitresses. [00:44:57] Speaker B: But no, it's absolutely wild. So here comes this guy who works for a very small production company, says like, hey, you have the potential of blowing up this character and making a lot of money with Mario in Hollywood. Yamamucci was hesitant at first, was like, okay, cool, we'll sign this $2 million contract so long as we have the merchandising rights for the film. Okay, go figure, right? He pulled like a George Lucas with Star wars. The character is popular. I think they saw. If I'm just reading between the lines, Nintendo saw it as opportunity to make money through the realm of just like blitzing out the character. Right? Who cares if the movie failed? We have exposure. [00:45:40] Speaker A: No such thing as bad, basically. [00:45:43] Speaker B: And Javi actually really wanted to sell the rights that he won over to a larger production company because he said if the transition from light motive to a larger production company, Nintendo would have more creative control over the film. But Nintendo literally had no interest in creative control and believed that the Mario brand was strong enough to allow an experiment with an outside industry because Nintendo didn't make movies. [00:46:07] Speaker A: How bad could it be? [00:46:10] Speaker B: Oh, just you wait. How bad could it be? So they kept it within light motive. [00:46:15] Speaker A: I just found out when the wizard came out, the 1990 movie the wizard with Fred Savage, Nintendo got paid $100,000 just so they could license their logos and put a little bit of game footage in the film. [00:46:31] Speaker C: Wow. [00:46:32] Speaker A: Like in 19. $90. So Nintendo is already like, oh, wait, we can make lots of money on this. Okay. But they're clearly not doing it for nearly what they'd be charging now for use of the IPP. [00:46:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. You need somebody to write it. Well, even if it was with a smaller production company, they have the money to shop it around. Right. To see who would want to jump on this from a screenwriting perspective. So the first screenplay was actually written by Oscar winning screenwriter Barry Morrow, who wrote. [00:47:02] Speaker A: Oh, so he's like, I already know Dustin Hoffman. [00:47:05] Speaker B: And the production titled script was Drain man, which is so funny. Makes sense. Taking some excerpt from Wiki Maro was like, describing that the screenplay was in study contrast, like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. So the relationship between Luigi and can. [00:47:28] Speaker A: I can buy that. I see that. That's kind of where they're going. [00:47:31] Speaker B: But the premise was an odyssey or quest like the game itself, like rescue Princess Peach. So it seemed more in line with what you interpreted from the storylines that you received from playing the games. Right. [00:47:42] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:47:42] Speaker B: So at first glance, we were on the right track. Of course, that didn't happen at all. Nintendo ended up passing on this story because it was a bit too serious as opposed to a fun comedy, which was all the rage outside of just, it was either a dark, gritty action movie in the early ninety s or like a fun, zany comedy. Right. That was like the triple balance and. [00:48:05] Speaker A: They wanted edge because they figured it would open to a bigger audience. [00:48:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, credit ghostbusters, too, of coming out, too. So they wanted to follow in the footsteps of there. So they shopped it around to another screenwriter who wanted to write more traditional adaptation or steer away from a more traditional adaptation. And I guess that's where it just kind of hit a standstill of like, okay, you were doing traditional. Don't want to do traditional. What's going on? The producers couldn't find the right balance of what the story should be. So Joffie, who was working on the contract, received the contract. He was trying to figure out, okay, what are we doing next? And that's when he began thinking of Max Headroom, if you're familiar with that tv show, which was like a Sci-Fi tv show. And that's where he ended up being the directors Rocky Morton and Annabelle Jenkill. And they come from the Tim Burton school. Filming their background is like animation and comic books. So they wanted know, dive into the unreality in that. And. [00:49:05] Speaker A: And they directed on Max Headroom, right? [00:49:07] Speaker B: Correct. They directed Max Headroom. And this is funny. We were talking about earlier of how Tim Burton's Batman came out and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out around the time they approached Joffie and were like, look, if we do this in the vein of Max Headroom and dark comic book esque adaptation, we want a darker tone popularized by these films, Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So they didn't want it to be super family friendly. They wanted to be a dark dino world. [00:49:34] Speaker C: Wow. [00:49:34] Speaker B: And so that's where everyone kind of just held hands. It was like, okay, let's do this. It said they were also taking inspiration from diehard, Mad Max and Blade Runner for this film. Super Mario Brothers. Super Mario Brothers. [00:49:48] Speaker A: Super Mario Brothers and Mad Max. [00:49:52] Speaker C: Dark and apart. [00:49:52] Speaker A: I mean, I guess with those cars, they're fully electric, fleet progressive. But that's, well, there's no can have. They have to do electric dinosaurs. [00:50:01] Speaker B: There's no up. That's basically where we ended up and how we ended up getting the version that we saw. But once they jumped on board, there was, like, multiple rewrites. They didn't know exactly what they wanted to do from a story perspective. There's rewrites because of things Bob Hoskins didn't like, things that John Legazamo didn't like. [00:50:23] Speaker A: How many writers were attached to this project? [00:50:26] Speaker B: Because I know there's a lot I want to say. I don't know off the top of my head. There are ten. Nine. There's nine. There's got to be nine. [00:50:36] Speaker A: There's nine. [00:50:38] Speaker C: That's insane. [00:50:39] Speaker A: That's insane. [00:50:40] Speaker C: So, like, movies typically will have, like, two to four. [00:50:44] Speaker A: Sometimes you give writer credit to one of the actors who keeps on putting in their own bits to the point that it's like, all right. [00:50:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:50:50] Speaker A: And none of these writers are from Nintendo? [00:50:52] Speaker B: Oh, not at all. [00:50:53] Speaker A: Not a one. Not a one. [00:50:55] Speaker B: Nintendo had complete hands off. [00:50:57] Speaker A: So we got Rain man guy. We got Max headroom. [00:51:01] Speaker B: People started it with Rain man guy, and then. Yeah, Max headroom. [00:51:05] Speaker A: We very briefly had some guy named Greg Beeman, according to my Internet article that I pulled up real quick. [00:51:12] Speaker C: And with that many people, that means enough of their story and writing material was in the final script. [00:51:18] Speaker A: Yeah. If they're keeping these, like I said. [00:51:22] Speaker C: Like, two to four, you might get, like, so and so and so and so. And below that and so and so and so and so. [00:51:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:51:29] Speaker C: And it's like, first group did a first pass at the script, second group did a second pass, added some things, but they kept most things from the first. And, like, that's kind of it. Where this movie with nine of them, it definitely explains a. Yeah, so, okay. [00:51:43] Speaker A: So we've got nine writers. It's a bit of a mess. At some point, they leave their first script behind. We've now moved on to a second script that Nintendo is a second script. I'm sure there were several in there, but at some point, we get a script going that Hoskins and Nintendo approve of. Right? [00:52:00] Speaker B: Yes. [00:52:01] Speaker A: Okay. So then we start filming. And they filmed in North Carolina, right? [00:52:05] Speaker B: They filmed in North Carolina, yes. There's a studio just outside the city. [00:52:09] Speaker A: In the featurette we watched, it was like a full. [00:52:12] Speaker B: It was an old cement factory. [00:52:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Cement factory. That's right. [00:52:17] Speaker C: They shoot in Wilmington. [00:52:19] Speaker B: I want to say yes, probably. [00:52:21] Speaker A: I mean, that's where everybody else shoots. [00:52:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Screen gems out of there. [00:52:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Wilmington, North Carolina. In the ideal cement company plant that was abandoned, and they reconfigured it to be a blade runner dystopian world known as Dinohattan, which is awesome. [00:52:37] Speaker A: Instead of Manhattan. [00:52:38] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a parody. It's a parallel universe. Just like there's. [00:52:41] Speaker A: Manhattan is clearly named because of the people that live there. That's where man lives. It's a hat where people live. And this is a Hatton where dinos live. You guys don't live in a Hatton? [00:52:53] Speaker B: No, man. [00:52:54] Speaker A: I live in Garden Grove Hatton. So we start filming this damn thing. [00:52:58] Speaker B: And there was a brief pause, I forgot from when the directors stepped away for a little bit. Because there was a lot of just headaches, people. Yeah. And then they came back and finished it. [00:53:08] Speaker A: So they leave and they're like, we're not attached to this project anymore. Enough that in modern era we would have had probably a screen rant article about it. Then they decide that they're just like, you know what? Okay, like the Lego guys leaving the Star wars project and then coming back and being know. Ron Howard, it's fine, we got this. [00:53:28] Speaker B: I jumped the gun. They considered leaving. So there was, oh, they didn't leave. They didn't leave. But they realized that no other director could at that point come was okay. [00:53:35] Speaker A: So they were like, oh, this is shit. But it's not going to get done if we don't stay because no one else wants to be attached to this project. [00:53:41] Speaker B: I just want to say for the listeners here that Nintendo was literally waiting just for this to be finished. They had no idea what was going on until the end piece. [00:53:50] Speaker A: And this is Nintendo's first ip film project. So they're not necessarily fully aware of exactly how Hollywood works. [00:53:57] Speaker B: No, again, I think I mentioned it. [00:53:59] Speaker A: Of like Miyamoto's just like, I guess if that's what you say, they just. [00:54:04] Speaker B: Saw it as money and exposure for the character and the brand. [00:54:08] Speaker A: They didn't care that much about money. [00:54:09] Speaker B: As bad as this movie was, I think there's a lot to say about the franchise in general and the game series, how much of an effect it had on pop culture overall. Right? So that's why this film has such a legacy. And it shows, like, even if it was bad and had no relation to the movie or like the games itself, Mario was in the zeitgeist like the hottest thing, and people were going to go see the movie. People were going to know what you're talking about, even if it was stupid and it was inaccurate. [00:54:39] Speaker C: So going back to the script stuff, which I'm on the great source of Wikipedia. So last year, part of the reason why we didn't do a lot of recording last year, because I was living in Wilmington, work, working out of the film. One of the film studios that I think they used for this movie, we filmed everywhere around the city for the show. I'm sure other productions do as well. But reading on that stuff, the cast came to shoot in Wilmington and got new scripts that they weren't aware of. They landed and got handed new scripts. [00:55:12] Speaker A: So they're like, okay, we approve of it. Let's film. And then on day one they're like, sorry, there were some rewrites yeah. [00:55:17] Speaker C: And so part of that project was because Disney purchased the film's distribution. [00:55:25] Speaker A: Television, Buena Vista Productions. [00:55:27] Speaker C: Yeah. So that's interesting. [00:55:28] Speaker A: But, yeah. [00:55:29] Speaker C: So there's all sorts of Buena Vista Pictures. Yeah. [00:55:32] Speaker A: So some subsidiary of Disney is like, aha. Money for us. [00:55:37] Speaker B: Speaking of Disney, I just discovered this several weeks, so before we even got into the shooting. So the scripts, like, somewhat figured out, even though it still gets rewritten during shooting. [00:55:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:49] Speaker B: Before production 100% starts. Here's a fun fact. Disney purchased the distribution rights to this film and demanded significant rewrites. [00:55:59] Speaker A: Disney demanded the rewrites. [00:56:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So they probably added to the rewrites. Wow. That's a fun fact. [00:56:06] Speaker A: Collider, who I've got pulled up because Collider has a great article that kind of breaks down this shit show. Or as my new friend from the comic shop I met today would say shark show. Bennett and Runty. I don't know who they are ultimately credited with writing the film, but they also served as, like, middlemen for all the producers, actors and directors because apparently none of these people actually talked to each other. And so they were all kind of going through playing this game. This is a script made in a game of telephone. [00:56:37] Speaker C: Wow. [00:56:37] Speaker A: And no one was talking to anyone. And none of these conversations about changes, et cetera, until they were actually finalized, were ever going through to Nintendo. So Nintendo is just kind of getting, like, sidelined for this entire process. But they were happening apparently so quickly that Hoskins and Lazamo basically stopped memorizing their lines because it wasn't worth it. Oh. [00:57:02] Speaker B: It was a lot of improvisation. They were drunk on set, which is. [00:57:05] Speaker A: There'S a difference between it's improvisation because we're letting them riff and it's improvisation because they have decided to stop reading the script. [00:57:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Holy crap. [00:57:14] Speaker B: That's off to them for finishing it, though, right? [00:57:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:57:17] Speaker B: Even though rip. Rest in peace, Bob Hoskins, before he passed, he said the worst thing, and this comes out of a 2007 interview, the worst thing he's ever done in the history of his career was super Mario Brothers. He said it was, and I quote, a fucking nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. [00:57:34] Speaker A: Hoskins broke his finger during the driving stunt, and he wound up wearing a cast for the rest of the shoot and can be seen and the cast can be seen in several scenes of the film. [00:57:45] Speaker C: Holy shit. Which is funny because if a lot of you don't know, they typically shoot movies out of order. Like, they're not going to go all in order. So that cast has to be in random things, random shots, random scenes in the movie, depending on what they were doing in that six week time frame, I'm guessing where you had to wear it. [00:58:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And then this hopper was not necessarily known for always being the most amical person on set. Apparently he at one point finally broke down and screamed at the production team for 3 hours straight. [00:58:19] Speaker C: Holy shit. [00:58:21] Speaker B: He also said it wasn't a complete nightmare and that he just did it for money. Basically, no one really wanted to be part of this production once it went underway. [00:58:30] Speaker A: But apparently spike and iggy basically don't say a single scripted line. They're just improv the entire time. [00:58:37] Speaker C: Oh my God. [00:58:38] Speaker B: Good for them though, because they have some great lines. [00:58:40] Speaker A: Arguably, they are way funnier than I remember them being as a kid, I think I was so frustrated that I was like, where is my Mario movie? When I watched it? Because I remember as a child being really uncomfortable, you said, what is this? But for me, I was like, this is supposed to be Mario. And I lived for Batman and Ninja Turtles. I loved those movies. And Ghostbusters for that matter. But all of them had some sort of ip elsewhere that was respectively taken care of that this movie was just not doing. [00:59:12] Speaker C: And I think that's part of the reason why I never really sat down and watched it as a kid, because I was just like, this isn't Mario. And then walk out the room or change the channel or whatever. [00:59:22] Speaker A: Do you have the infamous Rocky Morton coffee story in your notes? [00:59:27] Speaker B: I do not. But from what I recall reading in shameless plug the console wars book, he threw coffee or he got coffee thrown on him. [00:59:36] Speaker A: No, he poured hot coffee onto an extra because he believed that the extra was not, quote, dirty enough. [00:59:45] Speaker C: Wow. [00:59:46] Speaker A: And apparently a stuntman's pants actually caught on fire because of a stray spark. And then an electrician nearly died grabbing an electrified lever that got him, thankfully, kicked from the source. It fried him enough that he got launched back instead of gripping on, which happens a lot. They're lucky he didn't actually die, which means it was enough electricity that launched him instead of the alternative. [01:00:09] Speaker C: That's fucking insane. [01:00:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Growing up with a father who knows a ton about electricity because of what he does for a living, the amount of electricity that is required to kill you is not a lot, but the amount that will cause you to grab on and hold tighter because your muscles will all freak out is a pretty wide range. But if you have, that's why we use Tim's units. It will launch you. And that's how hot. This particular lever was that this poor electrician grabbed. [01:00:39] Speaker B: Lord. [01:00:40] Speaker A: So the process of this is just a disaster. [01:00:43] Speaker C: It makes me think, like we said earlier, with as much as we've been in the industry, I wonder if we know anybody who worked on it. [01:00:50] Speaker A: Our friend Devin, he worked on a music video, and he was in a house of some guy, and the guy happened to be, like, a costumer, and they were shooting music video in his know, he's renting it out for the production. And Devin was, like, trying to find a place to stash a light or something, and he opened up a closet door, and the jump shoes were in the closet, and Devin's like, oh, my gosh. Are these real? Because Devin lived for this movie, Devin asked his father to get him a plunger, and then Devin would run around the park with a plunger. And then he had to stop because all the moms started giving his dad dirty looks because they were like, look at this irresponsible father letting your son. He's like, it's a clean plunger. I just got it from the store. But he's like, sorry, Devin, you can't take the plunger to the park anymore. But so Devin, who loves this movie and who lived for it when we watched it, I sent him a picture of Yoshi. I remember absolutely no context. And he went, Yoshi, like, immediately knew what it was real quick. Frankly, seeing that image of Yoshi out of context, you're like, what is this badly puppeted dinosaur? Except it's actually a fantastic puppeted dinosaur. But Jurassic park also came out, like, a year prior. My standards are very high. But Devin saw these shoes and was like, are these real? And the guy's like, oh, yeah, they let me keep those. And he's like, what the hell? Like, just, the stompers are just here in your closet. And he's like, yeah. And he's like, oh, my God. So I never had to work around those. [01:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd frame those. Or not frame them. Encase them in a glass box. [01:02:19] Speaker C: Right. [01:02:20] Speaker A: Put them in a shadow box. You said six weeks, by the way. It was a ten week shoot. It got pushed to 15 weeks. [01:02:27] Speaker C: Oh, no. I said six weeks for. Because typically, if you broke your bone, you're typically in a cast for six weeks. [01:02:33] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:02:34] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:02:34] Speaker A: Which means less than half of production, but more than half if production was. [01:02:39] Speaker C: On schedule, still a decent chunk to be chunked in a cast on set and try to hide it somehow. [01:02:45] Speaker A: Oh, my God. So Morton and Jangle, who were the directors, were not allowed to help with reshoots when they needed more action scenes, they were barred from the editing room. [01:02:57] Speaker B: Makes sense. [01:02:58] Speaker A: Before the film came out, their film careers were basically already ruined. [01:03:04] Speaker C: Brutal. [01:03:05] Speaker B: There's so much negativity surrounding this film, but yet the legacy, I think, is the reason why we're talking about it now. [01:03:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:03:13] Speaker A: I mean, it's a fascinating dive into. I mean, it's why we watched Tiger King. Sometimes you want to see a train wreck. [01:03:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:03:21] Speaker B: To understand it, I would love to see a biopic of a recreation of the production of this movie. [01:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Just to make a movie about the Mario movie shoot. [01:03:33] Speaker B: Let's pitch that the man himself, Miyamoto, though, I think I mentioned to you guys earlier that he actually was decently. He was okay with the film in the said, you know, in his words, he said it was a very fun project that they put a lot of effort into. Do we want to say that? Is that a lot of effort? I guess that's a lot of effort, right? A lot of effort. Yeah. [01:03:55] Speaker A: Considering you had to save three people's lives or this. [01:03:59] Speaker B: Maybe we could use this as, like, a launching pad into the new movie, is that. He said some of the regrets that he had was that the movie tried to get a little too close to what the Mario Brothers video games were. And in a sense, it became a movie that was about a video game rather than being an entertaining movie in and of itself. [01:04:17] Speaker C: Wow. [01:04:18] Speaker B: That came from Miyamoto, which is think quite the opposite. I think it shoehorned a lot of the video game references in there. Yeah, it tried to big time. [01:04:27] Speaker A: It was a movie that was referencing, like, made reference to video games at best. [01:04:32] Speaker B: I think it didn't get into the lore of the source enough. And that is what I think illuminations is now doing with. [01:04:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:04:40] Speaker B: And of course, this is the reason why Nintendo now has a say in the other. [01:04:46] Speaker A: Well, and the rumor online for a long time, because there was always this question of, like, when are we going to get a live action Zelda movie? When are we going to get a Metroid movie? [01:04:55] Speaker C: Because we haven't had anything from Nintendo since. Right. [01:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:59] Speaker A: No, the first live action film from Nintendo, Nick was just telling us earlier. [01:05:05] Speaker C: Yeah. Sega and Pokemon aside, because they're technically different companies. [01:05:09] Speaker B: Well, Pokemon it was. So 2019, Detective Pikachu was the next live action iteration of any Nintendo Ip since the Super Mario Bros. [01:05:20] Speaker A: Anything since. [01:05:20] Speaker B: So that was more than a decade. That was 16 years. [01:05:23] Speaker A: We did get the Donkey Kong. We did get television. [01:05:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:05:27] Speaker A: We had the Donkey Kong. Cartoon. We had Mario Cartoon. I don't know that. There's probably a Kirby anime or something. [01:05:35] Speaker C: Did we get. Oh, yeah, I think there might have been. [01:05:37] Speaker A: There's definitely a Zelda anime. Wait, is that the one with, excuse me, princess? [01:05:41] Speaker B: No, that's not the anime. That's the actual north american video game. No, there was a Saturday morning Zelda. [01:05:49] Speaker A: Cartoon, and it was, like, jammed into the Mario, right? Yeah, that's where. Excuse me, princess comes from. Yes. There's Zelda manga. There's. They definitely had no problem putting it out into various other different mediums. [01:06:06] Speaker C: But we haven't had a. [01:06:09] Speaker A: Had any. Are there any animated. I guess there's Pokemon. The first would. But that was a cartoon. [01:06:15] Speaker C: Yeah. And again, that was the Pokemon company. They end up just working really close with Nintendo. That wasn't a straight. Still. [01:06:23] Speaker A: They're still owned by Nintendo. [01:06:25] Speaker B: But it's not Nintendo. Give it. To Brian's point. It's not Nintendo calling the shots with Pokemon. I feel like they have more loose ties versus, like, Mario. I want to know how much of a hand they had with illuminations film. I'm assuming a good chunk, but is that percentage online is something we could. [01:06:42] Speaker C: I'm sure it will be after the movie comes out. [01:06:45] Speaker A: Also, in regards to this illumination film, we are talking about a group of filmmakers. One of the reasons I like cartoons a lot right now is because the majority of people making cartoons right now are my age. And so people who were raised on Super Mario World, Nintendo 64, Kirby, things like that are coming to this production, having grown up with it, and they. [01:07:12] Speaker C: Want to do it right. [01:07:14] Speaker A: No one working on that film was a child when Mario came out. No, not at know. They all were adults coming to this. I think Leguizamo is a gamer and had some opinions on how faithful it was. I'm pretty sure I've read that somewhere. Or another. If I'm wrong, fight me. John Leguizamo. Please don't. I've seen you in action sequences. I don't want to do that. Go see Violet Knight. [01:07:36] Speaker C: Everyone just, oh, my God, he's so. [01:07:38] Speaker A: I mean, he's good in pretty much. [01:07:40] Speaker C: Every movie he's in, even Mario brothers. [01:07:43] Speaker A: But with this movie that came out, Super Mario Brothers movie, the original Super Mario brothers with Bob Hoskins and all them. This is a bunch of adults who are like. I think this is what the kids like, and they're not necessarily in it, whereas the ones who grew up with Ren and Stimpy and all that are the ones who are now animating cartoons. And so you go, hey, let's make a movie about Super Mario World. And they're going to be like, bro, we got to include Cranky Kong. Including Cranky Kong. That is not the call of somebody who loosely understands Mario. That's somebody who is deep in that. [01:08:13] Speaker C: Shit and is like, who played all that stuff and watched all those cartoons and has a love and respect for all that. [01:08:20] Speaker A: Exactly. And I think that's why Detective Pikachu could not have come out before it did because, God, that movie is so good. I love Detective Pikachu. Same with Sonic. Yeah, but you had to be a kid with Jaleel White being like, that's no good. I don't remember what his other. He has another line in the cartoon. I tried to do a deep dive into Sonic about six months ago and it didn't last long because those cartoons are in fact kind of terrible. But the cartoons and the other ips and playing the video games as kids and frankly, how we played on the playground as kids, I don't know about you guys, but I was constantly pretending I was in a video game on the playground. Oh, yeah. If I ever work in the video game industry, I'm going to be like, I've been designing video games since I was seven years old because I have been. I've been like, and then they throw this at you and then they do. [01:09:11] Speaker C: This and then you got to go across the monkey bars and that's a whole level. [01:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's cool. I feel the love in this. [01:09:18] Speaker C: Even the trailers. Yeah. Nick, what are you saying? [01:09:20] Speaker B: I was just going to say, if we're on that tangent really quickly, one of the greatest video game adaptation video games that I made, it was, I think, when Jack and Dexter came out, the craze of the adventure platformers like running guns. I was such a crash Bandicoot fan because I think I was playing the PS two version, whatever iteration of Crash that was. I was like, wouldn't it be sick if you took crash and gave him guns and it was called Crash going Commando? [01:09:48] Speaker C: He would run around with guns is. [01:09:50] Speaker A: Basically ratchet and claim. [01:09:51] Speaker B: But with the crash characters and the Crash formula, I thought that would have been really like. But you know what's so funny is Conquer's bad for a day kind of did that with Conquer. With the Xbox iteration. They had the multiplayer where it was essentially a parody of saving private Ryan, but with the squirrels. [01:10:11] Speaker A: And, you know, it's interesting too, because Jack and Daxter is that action jump around platformer. But Jack two, its sequel, is a run and gun like grand Theft auto game. You can steal cars and stuff, and you're in this dystopian future and you've got a hardcore gun. But the first game is very much that. You roll and then you jump. It's like half the soundtrack, and it's like a jumping platformer. And then the second game comes out and it's like, oh, and now you have these weird ass magic powers. There's some dark stuff. The first line Jack says is, I'm going to kill Baron Praxis. And who's. Because he was that silent protagonist that never says anything. And so the second game came out and it's like, oh, no. Jack's gritty now, and he's got a gun. And that's kind of what naughty Dog did. Because they also made Crash Bandicoot. I mean, the last of us, when its first pitch came out, the first pitch for last of us was basically, let's make a new Jack four. And as they got further and further into the pitch, they were like, are we really making a new Jack and Daxter game, or are we just slapping an ip on it because we know it'll sell? And so they abandoned the Jack and Daxter thing, pushed that storyline further, and eventually it turned into what would become the last of us. [01:11:27] Speaker C: Wow, that's cool. [01:11:27] Speaker B: Isn't that crazy that the crash Brandicoot guys made the last dude? [01:11:32] Speaker A: Right? But if you look at the progression from that to Jack and Daxter, into the grittiness, into uncharted and then into last of us, it kind of makes sense that they've been growing up for a. But, yeah, that's. It's nuts to think that we started with that guy going, hey, Nintendo, I'm coming for you outside. Like, I'm the new mascot for bad boys. [01:11:54] Speaker B: And I think I want to cap off talking about the original movie and the legacy. There is somebody, a longtime fan, I think his name was Ryan Haas. He created a fan site, Super Mario. I think it's called Super Mario Brothers and movie archives. I'm going to find this right here. It's an actual website? Yep. It's on smbmovie.com. So it talks about literally everything about this film, the production onward. There's merch you can buy. It's legit. A fan website for this movie that, again, speaks. [01:12:30] Speaker C: That's amazing. [01:12:31] Speaker B: So much about the. Wow. [01:12:32] Speaker C: The legacy. [01:12:33] Speaker B: The legacy, dude, this merch I'm just looking at right now is so cool. I need to buy a shirt? I have to. Yeah. [01:12:40] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [01:12:41] Speaker B: You should trust the fungus, man. It's basically, may the trust the fungus. May the forest be with you on that. I know we didn't talk about the general plot, but for anyone who's unfamiliar. [01:12:52] Speaker C: Is there a general plot? [01:12:53] Speaker A: Well, let's do that then. Real quick. Real quick. [01:12:56] Speaker B: Break it down. Break it down. [01:12:57] Speaker A: Is Mario Luigi are living in the regular world? [01:13:01] Speaker B: No, we got to start earlier than that. There's a meteorite. What if the death of the dinosaurs. [01:13:06] Speaker A: When the meteor hit, it created a alternate dimension? [01:13:10] Speaker B: Yes. [01:13:10] Speaker A: And all the dinosaurs did not die. Some of them went to this alternate dimension, Earth. [01:13:16] Speaker B: Which we touched on into people, dinohattan. [01:13:20] Speaker A: And then eventually they become a full fledged civilization. Conquer America from indigenous dinosaurs and turn it into Dino Hatton. I don't know if they did that part. If they were Dino fest destinying the place. [01:13:35] Speaker C: That's some solid headcanon. I can dig it. [01:13:40] Speaker B: It's not far fetched. It's true. That's what I want. [01:13:45] Speaker A: I want Koopa's ancestors. The thing that got me, Oregon trail. [01:13:49] Speaker B: The thing that got me was, okay, so the meteor hit, right? And Koopa goes on about talking, like, de evolution and evolution, like, which dinosaur? Which early version of the dinosaurs that lived in Dino hat. And came up with that machine and evolved them to humans? Right. Did they instantly turn into dino humanoids from the impact? [01:14:10] Speaker A: I thought that there wasn't a reverse. [01:14:13] Speaker B: Yeah, there was, because the king got reversed. Deevolution to the fungus or to mushroom? To goof. Right, fungus. [01:14:20] Speaker A: I thought that the deevolution thing was what its original purpose was. And then, I don't know. Koopa as a stupid villain was like, you know what? Throw a reverse on this, just in case. So that we can evolve people. Because that's how they make iggy and spike. Smart. [01:14:36] Speaker B: All right, we're jumping ahead anyways. [01:14:39] Speaker A: So then we cut to a freaking church or fire station. I don't know which. [01:14:44] Speaker B: It's a church. [01:14:45] Speaker A: It's a church, okay? Where a woman drops off and abandons a baby. So right off the bat, we are just jumping the freaking. We're jumping ship from Mario lore. And then she drops off this baby. It's got a jewel around its neck. And then smash cut to. Do we then go to the quarry or do we then go to Mario? [01:15:05] Speaker B: No, we go to Mario and Luigi. [01:15:07] Speaker A: Smash cut to Mario and Luigi. Luigi is lazy and he doesn't want to work. And he spends all day playing video games. Which will rot your brain. [01:15:15] Speaker C: Goddamn millennials. I tell you what. [01:15:17] Speaker A: I tell you what. And then Mario wants him to learn how to do plumbing things, but he doesn't remember. And he's like, what do I need to know that for? I got you. And Mario does not at all sound. What's. Who's the voice of Mario? [01:15:30] Speaker B: This is not Bob in the games. [01:15:33] Speaker A: Oh, my lord. [01:15:33] Speaker B: I met him at e three. [01:15:35] Speaker C: I just saw his name. [01:15:36] Speaker B: Marine or Martine something. Martine. Charles. Martine. [01:15:41] Speaker A: Charles. Martine. Yeah. Instead of getting somebody like what Nintendo eventually puts out with, it's a me, you, Mario wa. Instead you get, like I said earlier, I'm going to rip off all his limbs and then I'm going to kill him. [01:15:55] Speaker B: But it's not too far fetched because at that time, the other live action iteration of Mario was an italian plumber. [01:16:02] Speaker A: Who was a very italian plumber who sounded like this, straight from Brooklyn, had a big old mustache, was always getting on. His brother Luigi, who looked like he was, like, easily 40 years older than Mario. Yeah. Record. Like, that guy was like. They were both very old. And you're like, what are you guys. [01:16:19] Speaker C: How were you guys cast? [01:16:21] Speaker A: How old is Mario? Why is Mario being played by this near 60 year old? But then again, it was the 80s, so he was actually probably 27. [01:16:28] Speaker C: That's fair. [01:16:29] Speaker B: But he was watching. Yeah. We don't know Mario's parents, so technically, it kind of makes sense that he was a little older. Right, sure. [01:16:37] Speaker A: And in the movie, Mario. Mario has raised Luigi. How many marios between Mario, Mario, Luigi, Mario. [01:16:47] Speaker B: There's three marios. [01:16:48] Speaker A: Three marios. [01:16:49] Speaker C: Could love that line. [01:16:50] Speaker B: It's just great. Put these marios in their cage. Yeah. So lazy Luigi, they go on a house call. Seems like they get beat into the house call by a rival plumbering company. It was at that moment they meet the princess. Not peach. Daisy. [01:17:09] Speaker A: Daisy. Right. Which is another thing. I was like, who the heck is this? [01:17:12] Speaker B: The only time we know or have seen Princess Daisy was in the Game Boy game Super Mario land. She was not. [01:17:20] Speaker A: We already had a Nintendo, so that. [01:17:23] Speaker B: Was an OD choice. But Game Boy was out at the time, so they pulled from a source. So kudos to them. But anyways, we find out that Daisy is actually a princess of Dinohattan. She gets kidnapped by. [01:17:35] Speaker A: Points to her. She's a paleontologist. [01:17:38] Speaker B: Go figure. She has connection to the dinosaurs. She gets pulled into the alternate dimension by Iggy and Spike, who we mentioned earlier, which are the dumb descendants or cousins of King Koopa. And that's kind of like the gist of it. Mario and Luigi follow to go after and rescue Daisy. [01:17:56] Speaker A: Very, very cool graphics with some warbly walls. It's not terrifying at all to watch these people get sucked into this thing. [01:18:03] Speaker B: So in terms of visual effects, believe it or not, Super Mario Bros. Innovated it and introduced many techniques that have been used today. From a VFX standpoint, that documentary was saying, yeah, it was the first film to have used. I'm not too familiar with this because I'm not a VFX guru, but it's like the software Autodesk flame, which is an industry. Yeah. [01:18:24] Speaker A: It was the first film Autodesk makes the. They're the cad software that is used for everything. They had a whole commercial for Autodesk at the oscars this year, and they did. [01:18:34] Speaker B: Super Mario Brothers was the first film to use it. That software. [01:18:37] Speaker A: Oh, shit. Autodesk needs to push that. I don't know why they don't mention that more. [01:18:42] Speaker B: That should be. Yeah. [01:18:43] Speaker A: Since Mario Brothers. [01:18:45] Speaker B: But, yeah, a lot of effects. You get transported to a blade Runner dystopian of Dino hat and. Which is super cool. We touched on the. Yeah, I mean, the general theme of the movie is Mario and Luigi, like, going to rescue the princess, but in a very weird dystopian world. And now the more that I keep talking about, like, the plot actually is very similar to the solid Mario plot. [01:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it is. We skip all the sucked in part. [01:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:11] Speaker A: It's not just jump up and hit a block that's like, hey, welcome to Dinosaur island. Yeah, you may get some coins. Yeah, grab some coins. Have that dinosaur. Eat some berries on the way, and watch out for the turtles. [01:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah. But they go through a lot of shenanigans. You learn more about Dino hat and how King Cooper came to be. [01:19:27] Speaker A: There's a lot of petunias out there looking foxy. [01:19:30] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Lena, who is King Cooper's. I was about to say mistress or. [01:19:36] Speaker A: Just, I guess. [01:19:40] Speaker B: Slam piece. Is that appropriate to say on this podcast? [01:19:46] Speaker A: I mean, Lena, who might be possibly Pauline, who's possibly stupid. [01:19:52] Speaker B: The Cooper or Mario. Yeah. But, yeah, a lot of video game. A lot of references to the game characters, like Big Bertha. There was the babom that we saw, which is an item. [01:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah, the babom that you never actually really get the. Like, I guess you can jump on it and throw it. [01:20:09] Speaker B: You could do it in Super Mario Bros. Too. That was like, I think, when it was introduced. [01:20:13] Speaker C: Yeah. When you start throwing. [01:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:16] Speaker A: Then you got the Cordyceps dropping down. There's fungus everywhere, weirdly enough, which is just really just dangling, dirty silicone. [01:20:26] Speaker B: I think that's another reason why I love this movie, is, like, there's subtle nods to the games. You hear the sound effects of the coins, the one up throughout the movie. But it's, like, all fun references. Not straight on the nose. And then, of course, we were talking, and I texted you guys when we were watching it. I was about to say sylphain scope. This gives me PTSD of the first episode. We were talking about silent scope, Bryce, you know what I'm talking about. The Super Nintendo rifle. [01:20:53] Speaker A: Oh, the super scope six. [01:20:55] Speaker B: Yes. So they made, not to be confused. [01:20:57] Speaker A: With the blaster gun. I don't remember what it's called. It's right there. It's sitting on the blaster, and I'm pointing over at my. [01:21:03] Speaker B: Are you talking about the NES gun? [01:21:05] Speaker A: The, like, Nes gun? [01:21:06] Speaker B: The Zapper. [01:21:06] Speaker A: Oh, the Zapper. Yeah. [01:21:09] Speaker B: So, yeah, it was just, like, fun video game references. [01:21:14] Speaker A: They use superscopes. That's right. In the movie, they use the superscope at the end, like the guns that they're actually shooting. Mario has a gun for some reason. [01:21:23] Speaker B: The Devo guns. That's what they call them. [01:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah, the Devo guns. [01:21:28] Speaker C: So, like you said, you were texting us. We basically had, like, a live tweet session in our text message, so I'm pulling that up. And, Nick, you sent a nice little gif of the live action Mario guys dancing. These dudes look so much older than they probably should be. [01:21:45] Speaker A: But swing your arms from side to side. Come on. Let's go. Let's go. We'll do the Mario, but no, the. [01:21:53] Speaker B: Movie set way to where we're headed in the next three weeks. [01:21:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:21:58] Speaker A: Well, and I will say that there's the Devo chamber. The Goombas that arguably look way more like Goombas are short. It's funny because in the original, they very clearly look like angry, mean mushroom. But I didn't play the originals when I was a kid, so to me, a goomba is that circle that walks around in Super Mario world. Because Super Mario World was my first Mario. [01:22:27] Speaker C: I was going to start reading stuff off the text chain, but I'm like, this is so out of context and out of. [01:22:32] Speaker A: I mean, we definitely talk a lot. We were going Aunt Petunia. And because she's definitely giving Dennis Hopper a foot job here in the mud. Up next on the Cooper casting couch. [01:22:46] Speaker B: Well, if you guys want to have your very own session, I don't know if I should be promoting the fact that this is on archive. You could watch the full movie for free on the Internet. [01:22:57] Speaker A: Scopelli was the alternative guy. [01:22:59] Speaker B: You guys could have your own film. Movie night with us. [01:23:05] Speaker A: Anybody listening at home, just go watch this on archive. You don't even have to go spend the $5 you can get it for at Walmart. [01:23:11] Speaker B: But it's cool to have a physical copy because who knows when the apocalypse happens and you need to watch this movie. [01:23:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:23:20] Speaker B: Can't go to digital. [01:23:21] Speaker A: Love is the drug from Sucker Punch. [01:23:23] Speaker B: That was a soundtrack, man. There's another reason why boom boom room. [01:23:28] Speaker C: We got excited for this new movie coming out, and we were like, we need to do a podcast on the OG movie, talk a little bit about the games, and just kind of, like, reminded me of, like, oh, yeah. While they weren't, like, my number one wanted to play games growing up, they were definitely still in the easy top five. [01:23:43] Speaker A: Super Mario World, according to, I think it was retro gamer. They did a poll, and 20% of the people said that Super Mario World was the greatest game of all time. It was so much fun because it is. I mean, like he says in the gaming historian video, it's challenging, it's frustrating, it's entertaining, and it's addictive. [01:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:10] Speaker A: And it's fun. Well, he doesn't say and it's fun, which is really weird, because he's like, it's most importantly, it's addictive. And I'm like, most importantly, it's fun. [01:24:15] Speaker C: It's fun as hell. [01:24:16] Speaker B: It's a fun addiction. [01:24:18] Speaker C: Yeah, there it is. [01:24:19] Speaker A: But Super Mario World is out in. What is that? 1999? 91. [01:24:23] Speaker B: No, I want to say Super Mario World. Well, I think it might be 91. [01:24:27] Speaker A: All the way to 92. I don't know. [01:24:30] Speaker B: 90. [01:24:31] Speaker A: 1990. Yeah. The year the Super Nintendo. [01:24:34] Speaker C: No. [01:24:34] Speaker B: 90 in Japan. 91. North America. [01:24:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Okay. So, like, Super Mario World and Mario as an ip obviously lived past this movie. [01:24:45] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:24:45] Speaker A: Oh, before we go on, we should probably jump back real quick. Koopa is deevolving people, has deevolved the king into being a giant fungus that is covering all of Dinohattan. And Daisy has a MacGuffin hanging around her neck, which is. A MacGuffin is a term in film for the thing that everybody has to get. Daisy's, like, crystal or whatever is the MacGuffin. And they've been kidnapping princesses because the movie also includes a whole thing of this string of women who've gone missing in Brooklyn, and one of them happens to be Daisy. And Daisy happens to be descended from the king, and so know, locks her in a room or whatever. Locks her with all the other princesses. One of them very much looks like peach. And she and a bunch of other brooklyn women are all there being, like, talking as though they all have a part. Later in my cousin Vinny, it's a trick question. The Cooper car didn't come with a four bank? No, there's no slip differential. Anyway, they all get trapped in the thing, and then they're like, it's Daisy. She's the one we need. So they pull Daisy out, and then Cooper hits on her. He's clearly, like, 30 years older, older. And he says the iconic line. They say girls never forget their first kiss from a lizard. And you're like, what? I was already grossed out. And then he does some tongue thing with some bad CGI into the. Lena lets her out because Lena's got some beef with the koopa. And then the Mario brothers, they get together, and they somehow escape from prison because they get immediately caught because they're somehow involved because Iggy and Spike. And then Yoshi shows up to the lady. It's very seductive. There's some music. You're not sure if Daisy and Yoshi are gonna get it on. They might. It is dinosaur times. But is this dinosaur a real dinosaur, or is he a de evolved dinosaur? Did Yoshi used to have a personality like toad? I don't know. And then they eventually all fight. Koopa, who is Dennis Hopper with weird skin on the top of his head, turns toad into a goomba. Goomba. Toad helps him out. They do some swaying back and forth. It's a fantastic scene in the elevator. This is a podcast. It's the way to do it. [01:26:51] Speaker C: That's the way to put it. [01:26:52] Speaker A: Yeah. I loved that scene. I thought it was hilarious. And then they turn Koopa into an actual dinosaur. He's in, like, a bucket thing that looks vaguely like his little flying machine in super Mario world. And then they leave, which, know, they go back. They're now doing their Mario things. Daisy's like, I gotta stay because my mushroom dad is now a person played by some dude who looks vaguely like first Dumbledore. And then she stays. And then the movie comes to its logical conclusion, until Daisy comes back in, covered in ammo and guns, like she's ready to go kick some more dinosaur. [01:27:34] Speaker C: Ass in a very, like, back to the future. [01:27:37] Speaker A: It's your kids, Marty. We got to do something about your kids. [01:27:41] Speaker C: Those were the vibes I was getting from. [01:27:46] Speaker A: Then, um. And then she says, we gotta go. I need your help. Mario and Luigi. And then they're like, oh, okay. And then that's the end of the movie. [01:27:55] Speaker C: Roll credits. [01:27:56] Speaker A: Where's the sequel? [01:27:57] Speaker B: Never happening. [01:27:59] Speaker A: Yeah, never happening. But Nick asked an interesting question earlier about what our sequel idea would be. And I am very curious. If you could very quickly pitch a sequel Mario Brothers with Bob Hoskins, what would it be? Nick, go. [01:28:16] Speaker B: In Super Mario Bros. Two, the video game you learn at the end of it. Once you beat it, Mario was dreaming of the entire sequence. I think the sequel would be Bob Hoskins. Mario wakes up from her dream in a hospital, and then it's just another episode of Grey's Anatomy. [01:28:34] Speaker C: That makes total sense. [01:28:36] Speaker A: Brian, go. [01:28:38] Speaker C: They go back into the portal, and there's a weird time jump of, like, five and a half years. But Daisy still looks young and hot. I mean, she'd probably age great anyways. But it turns out there's now a gorilla. [01:28:52] Speaker A: I'm liking where you're going here. [01:28:54] Speaker C: And they call him Kong maybe. [01:28:56] Speaker A: I don't know. [01:28:56] Speaker C: I feel like it's too on the nose for Donkey Kong. [01:28:59] Speaker A: And he's got oil barrels and he's actually an oil baron. [01:29:02] Speaker C: No, he doesn't have oil. Yeah, but I want to say he's like an olive oil baron because it can't be too close to the game. [01:29:12] Speaker A: That's fair. That's fair. We don't want to actually take anything from them. [01:29:14] Speaker B: No, I love oil baron. That's fantastic. [01:29:18] Speaker C: And shenanigans ensue from there. And then he gets on a helicopter, as you do. And that's where the ending fight is. I don't know how they get there, but that's what I want to see. [01:29:29] Speaker B: The whole movie is them progressing up a building like the Sears tower. [01:29:35] Speaker A: Kind of a mix between the original. [01:29:38] Speaker C: Donkey Kong and, like, I don't know. [01:29:42] Speaker A: According to Collider, the first script was way more based on, like, a diehard scenario. [01:29:47] Speaker B: Nice. [01:29:48] Speaker A: The first script for Mario was kind of already there. So, like, you're already halfway to this pitch. [01:29:52] Speaker B: You're just like. [01:29:53] Speaker A: Yeah, just reuse the old script. [01:29:54] Speaker C: Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. And then something having to do with the mushrooms again. I don't know. Maybe they spring up some new flour that tastes really spicy and he breathed on somebody. [01:30:05] Speaker A: He breathes fire for sure. [01:30:07] Speaker C: No, he does not breathe fire because that is way too close to the game, sir. [01:30:09] Speaker A: Even throwing fireballs is not the same as. That's too close for you. [01:30:13] Speaker C: Yeah, no, this has to be like slapstick 90s comedy where he's, like, too. [01:30:17] Speaker A: Hot and steams coming. [01:30:18] Speaker C: Steam's coming out. And then he breathes on somebody, and then they have some sort of weird allergic reaction to it. That's where I'm feeling, Bryce. [01:30:27] Speaker A: So they go back through the portal and they get in there. We've got baby Bowser, young Cooper, played by Danny DeVito. The 90s Danny DeVito. [01:30:37] Speaker C: Boom. [01:30:37] Speaker A: Baby Cooper, played by. Yeah, baby bowser. Clearly the son. They're going to say baby Bowser, though, and never explain that he's actually son. Like, they'll say he's Koopa's son, but we'll never explain why we don't call him Koopa. And he is starting his campaign in order to take back over in a diplomatic process. This time, he wants to do it legit, but instead, he's a real estate tycoon who has become very popular for no good reason, even though he's kind of an idiot. [01:31:03] Speaker B: And then he adopts an orphan, and she is torn because he is this billionaire tycoon who makes a lot of money, wants a family, sings it's a hard knock life. [01:31:20] Speaker A: But then it turns out that there's a secret antagonist who's actually getting in their way, and they don't know it till about halfway through. Their cousin, who they didn't even know about, who got sucked in way earlier, before the Mario movie. Mario. [01:31:32] Speaker C: Mario, of course. [01:31:35] Speaker A: And at the very end of the movie, when Wario. Mario barely gets away, he's like, we got to call somebody. I can't let this stand. Get my brother on the line. And that's how we cut the end of the credits. [01:31:47] Speaker C: No, it should be get my brother in line. And it's just. You don't mean. Then you go to boom. [01:31:52] Speaker A: And then quiet. And it says, wario will return. And very faintly, with a lot of reverb in the background, you hear, sold. [01:32:04] Speaker B: Done. [01:32:04] Speaker A: Okay, so this movie bombed. Had horrible, horrible critical destruction. Just every critic was like, what was this movie? [01:32:14] Speaker B: Movie. Movie bombed. They did not make their. I think the budget was. I think it was like 48 million. And they only made 32 million or something along those lines. [01:32:24] Speaker C: Yeah. So, I mean, not that we really love going off of Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 29% of both the audience score and the critic score. [01:32:36] Speaker A: It's nice to see them align. [01:32:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:32:38] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. So the movie bombs. Endo does make more of these. This is not a good idea. And it starts a long tradition of bad video game movies. And there's a lot of them out there. Like, doom is terrible, even if it does have Dwayne the rock Johnson. Assassin's Creed has Michael freaking Fassbender. Not good. Not good has, like, some really cool moments. Mostly what's going on here. I'm trying to think other really bad. [01:33:09] Speaker B: Well, there's. There's bad, but commercially successful. So, like, the Resident evil original series, critically bad. My wife employed me, but those made millions of dollars. I mean, they actually did really well. [01:33:22] Speaker A: Commercially, those did do really well. [01:33:23] Speaker B: Silent hill forgot. [01:33:26] Speaker A: I love that game. And I own that dvd, like, three times now. [01:33:31] Speaker B: House of the Dead. [01:33:32] Speaker A: House of the Dead. Is House of the Dead a movie? Yes. [01:33:35] Speaker B: It's horrible. [01:33:36] Speaker A: It's like, where's my time crisis movie? [01:33:39] Speaker B: Oh, dude. [01:33:39] Speaker A: Yes, it exists. It's actually clockstoppers by Nickelodeon. [01:33:43] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a long list. And then there were some successes like Mortal Kombat, the 1995 original. But the sequel is just absolute trash. [01:33:52] Speaker A: You know what's funny is one of the most common tropes I'm seeing right now about a bad guy saying, you think this is so bad. But for me, it's a Tuesday. That's from Street Fighter. Oh, yeah. He's, like, talking to Ming Na Wen at Chun Li, and he's like, wait. [01:34:08] Speaker B: Chun Li was Ming na Wen? [01:34:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:10] Speaker B: No way. [01:34:11] Speaker A: The cavalry. [01:34:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:34:13] Speaker A: So Ming na Wen Mulan herself is, like, sitting in M Bison's lair. And Bison's like, you know, you think it's so terrible that all this stuff happened and it changed your life. But for me, it was a Tuesday. But for me, it was a Tuesday is such a meme. And that comes back to freaking Street Fighter. But, yeah, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat. They were, like, commercial successes for sure. But if you go back and watch those movies, they have no better of a plot or an understanding of the game than anything that Mario had. Hell, Mario was actually taking some chances. Street Fighter is like, we'll make Street Fighter the name of their crime fighting organization. Yeah, sounds good. [01:34:57] Speaker B: I need to see this. So I haven't seen the street Fighter movie, and I really need to watch another good one. [01:35:03] Speaker A: Oh, when you're done with it, go watch the subsequent Street Fighter cartoon that came out afterwards. It was made by the same guys who made the X Men cartoon. [01:35:12] Speaker B: Okay. [01:35:13] Speaker A: And it makes far less sense. There is a great deal of absolutely, like, racist. [01:35:21] Speaker C: You just watch these, right? [01:35:22] Speaker A: They're on retro Crush, which is a channel we have on our Samsung tv and is also a YouTube channel. And I love watching them because they're so bad. But Wei Fong is clearly a white guy doing just his best Charlie Chan that he could possibly come up with. And Ken, I think, is the voice of. He might be the voice of link because he definitely has that same voice. Like, oh, yeah, just me and the ladies. [01:35:50] Speaker C: That's fine. [01:35:51] Speaker A: Yeah, he's got very, excuse me, Princess vibes. [01:35:55] Speaker B: But it's great. It's a good tangent to go off of the string of unsuccessful movies, but now I think we're in a renaissance of where there are. I mean, they're still trash. Like the Resident evil reboot was. Don't ever watch that movie. It's like, even, yes, that show. But I'm talking about welcome to Raccoon City, the reboot movie Raccoon City. Yeah. But there's also the resurgence of success. So, like, Sonic one and two, phenomenal. [01:36:23] Speaker A: Oh, dude, Sonic is so good. Yeah, Detective Pikachu also. [01:36:27] Speaker B: Yes, Detective Pikachu. Great. I'm hoping this sets up the new Mario movie to be equally as successful. And thus we start the Nintendo verse and do it right this time around. [01:36:42] Speaker C: Well, you know what? Even the newer mortal Kombat movie I didn't hate granted. Yeah. [01:36:46] Speaker A: Oh, it's got some moments that you're. [01:36:48] Speaker C: Like, what is this? But there's some really cool stuff in there. [01:36:51] Speaker A: I still liked it more than Godzilla versus Kong, and I knew what I was getting into with both of those. [01:36:55] Speaker C: Yeah. But kind of bringing it back around to newer, successful movies and being excited for them and kind of just how it speaks to all sorts of generations. My four and five and a half year old nephew love the Sonic movies. Love them. And when I go up to Denver in a couple of weeks, I'm going to take him to the movie. Like I already told my sister, I'm like, oh, this is happening. Put it into our schedule. My sister has an Ses mini as well. And they were all about playing the Mario game and it was Super Mario world and they really wanted to play with me last time I was there, but it was Christmas time. There's a lot of Christmas stuff going on, but it's cool seeing that new young generation being all about these kind of old school games and old school ips still. [01:37:34] Speaker B: Yeah, brian, that's awesome. I'm going to be taking my nephew, who's six, and he got into Mario because of me. Saw me playing Super Mario brothers deluxe on my switch and was like, oh, this is so cool. What are you playing? He got really into it and then he watched me play Super Mario 64 too. And so now his bedroom, he's got like a Super Mario Kart twin bed now and he keeps asking for the characters draws Mario. So he's so hyped for the movie and I can't wait. [01:38:03] Speaker A: That's so awesome. [01:38:03] Speaker B: I can't wait to take. [01:38:04] Speaker A: But like kid is living in the. [01:38:05] Speaker B: Golden era, oh, 100% because he's playing all the iOS games. So Mario run and the Mario kart. [01:38:12] Speaker A: For Super Mario Run is so good. [01:38:13] Speaker B: It is good. It's great. But I can't wait for him to actually get the hang of the actual Mario platformer once he gets a switch. I'm getting like Mario everything so he could actually dive into it and understand stuff. But yeah, it's great to see that this character who we grew up with, who we knew who was such a big thing for us in pop culture in the, don't want to say making a resurgence because he never died. Just passing it on to the next generation. The next generation. [01:38:42] Speaker A: See him getting the love though because I feel like in recent years Mario Odyssey I don't think was nearly as big as like Mario 64 was. Mario Sunshine, despite being really huge, was kind of a sleeper. I feel like everyone who played Mario Sunshine was like, dude, this is great. And everybody who didn't play it was like because the Gamecube itself was not like crazy. Galaxy. I've never beaten Mario Galaxy, but I know Galaxy. I mean, Galaxy had Galaxy too also. But in recent years I feel like Mario's been getting a lot more traction again and it's like now Mario's cool again. [01:39:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:39:14] Speaker A: Which is really nice. How do we feel about this casting? [01:39:18] Speaker B: I'm hopeful. [01:39:19] Speaker C: It was interesting at first, but I'm hopeful. [01:39:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I was skeptical at first, but after seeing the trailers, I'm excited. [01:39:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:39:26] Speaker B: Charles Martinet, I would love to see him. And that would have been an instance of in Sonic two, the actual voice actor got to play tails in the actual movies. So that would have been a cool thing to see Martine finally get like his. [01:39:39] Speaker C: He's got to have some sort of cameo. [01:39:41] Speaker B: He does. We don't know what it is, but I'm excited. But yeah, Chris Pratt, I'm indifferent. But after hearing him, it kind of makes sense and I'm okay with it. [01:39:50] Speaker A: He said a few interesting things too. He's been like, guys, I'm not wearing overalls. This isn't a live action movie. I don't look like Mario. I get that, but give me a shot here. And after hearing his voice in the trailer in both trailers, because even in the first trailer, I think a little bit, he says, let's go. I really hope that with everyone's comments on the trailers that they went back and were like, let's rerecord a couple of those and add on just a little bit something. Yeah. [01:40:21] Speaker B: But overall, excited. It's a fun cast, a lot of great comedians, a lot of good people. [01:40:25] Speaker A: So excited for Charlie Day as Luigi. [01:40:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:27] Speaker C: Jack Black is bowser. [01:40:29] Speaker B: Like, he's killing so far. [01:40:30] Speaker A: Honestly, a little worried until even for Jack Black, because, you know, Jack Black has a tendency to kind of stick to the higher register, and I don't like large, hulking things. Having high voices, it comes from a linguistic standpoint. You have tiny vocal cord. You have to have small vocal cords in order to make high pitched voices. So you have to be able to shrink those bad boys. Jack Black, despite being kind of a bigger guy, clearly has a large, wide range. A giant dinosaur should not have Jack Black coming in there, being like, he can't be in there, like, singing friggin'kickapoo, and Wonderboy, which is funny, but can he? But when I heard his voice in that first one where he's just like, open the gates, I was like, yeah, that's bowser. [01:41:11] Speaker C: That's it. [01:41:12] Speaker A: And then they start launching the little penguins, launching their little balls at him, and he's just standing there. [01:41:20] Speaker B: Do you yield a lot of illumination humor, which I'm also excited for. I think it fits the universe quite well. [01:41:29] Speaker A: I was a little worried about that, too, because while I do love the Lorax, and I know that part of this is just the excess of meme usage and things like that. So minions kind of. I got tired of them. But having illumination be in charge of this. Illumination uses the same mouth for every single character. It's that half cock smile. DreamWorks, particularly, they've been just throwing that character design on everyone, and it felt to me like every character design team was basically coming from one guy's head. And when I saw illumination was doing this, I was really worried. And then when I saw the trailer, I was like, oh, you guys really stuck to what Nintendo has absolutely established, because you could not do Mario and diverge the way that you did with Bob Hoskins again. Murdered in the streets. [01:42:17] Speaker B: Yeah, they won't. I bet my money on it. I will go out on this episode saying that it's going to be a good movie. It's going to do well at the box office. I would be shocked if it didn't. It's going to ride the hype of the theme parks opening up. [01:42:30] Speaker A: So excited for that theme park. I have wanted a Nintendo theme park since I was six years old. I'm so hyped to go punch some yellow blocks and come out of tubes. I know. [01:42:40] Speaker B: You know you could hit Reed. [01:42:42] Speaker C: Yeah. Him and Britt have gone a couple of times. I think at least once. I know a few other people have gone too. [01:42:49] Speaker A: Annual pass holders. [01:42:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:42:51] Speaker B: You got to do it, Super Mario, man. It's a good time to be a Mario fan. It really is. I want to leave and jump from this episode with the question of two questions. One, if you only could play one Mario game for the rest of your life, what would it be? [01:43:09] Speaker A: Super Mario RPG. [01:43:10] Speaker B: Okay, that's one. Brian. [01:43:12] Speaker A: Sorry. For me, it was one of the first games that I owned by myself. It's the first rpg I ever played that I liked because I don't like turnbase combat that much. It's why it took me so long to play Pokemon. I love Geno. I love Mallow. I love the faux three d that they've got going on there. Boshi is the coolest Yoshi that ever was. And the blue Yoshi was always my favorite. All the minigames that are in just. I have played through that game so many times, and I just don't know that there's another Mario game that has ever captured my love the way that one has. [01:43:44] Speaker C: Yeah. For a regular Mario game. Because for some reason they consider that kind of like a side game. [01:43:52] Speaker A: Yeah. It's such a weird offshoot. [01:43:54] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not in the Super Mario brothers. [01:43:56] Speaker A: They also don't consider it within the Mario canon or whatever. [01:44:00] Speaker C: It totally is. Whatever. But I'm going to say Super Mario World. Taking it back old school to the Super Nintendo. [01:44:06] Speaker A: My very first Super Nintendo game. [01:44:07] Speaker C: Yeah. I played Mario one, two, and three on the NES, but when that Super Nintendo came out, I don't. I spent so much more time with that and I don't think I've ever actually beaten it, but I would play through those first couple levels hundreds of times and not get bored. [01:44:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:44:23] Speaker C: Very rare for me. [01:44:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And Super Mario World is really fascinating because they tried to jam that whole game out in like a year. And thanks to the delay of the actual super Nintendo system, they were able to have more time with it. But they announced that Mario Bros. Three hadn't even come out yet. [01:44:42] Speaker B: Nick. I would say Super Mario 64. For me, that will forever be my favorite. [01:44:46] Speaker C: Yeah, we know you're love of that. [01:44:48] Speaker B: It's my favorite n 64 game. Top five. I watch the speed running community play it all the time. It just has the most. It never gets bored. I never get bored. [01:45:01] Speaker A: It has such a fantastic soundtrack, too. [01:45:03] Speaker B: The soundtrack is great. I remember the first time I saw somebody pop it in when the n 64 came around. And I get that exact same feeling every time I boot it up. [01:45:12] Speaker A: I asked for that game for so long, and I finally got it on my birthday, and I have beaten it, but I have never gotten the 120 stars. Yoshi at the top of the castle thing. [01:45:23] Speaker B: Got to grind it. [01:45:24] Speaker A: You and I talked about this because that was our plan when we tried to live stream this, and that did not work. [01:45:30] Speaker B: It takes a while. I eventually did it, but, yeah, you have to do it. It takes a while. [01:45:34] Speaker A: It's that pyramid level, man. Yeah, I've got, like, two stars on that level. I can't get. [01:45:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a TikTok. Yeah, it's the clock one for me. [01:45:42] Speaker A: Weirdly, I think because I got stuck on that so early on, I wound up putting a lot more time into it before I finally got decent at it. I bet if I put it on right now, I would be utter trash. [01:45:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that was the first game I ever played on a big screen. Something I think I talked about on our last podcast years ago about it, my dad and I went to a fries and they had it hooked up to their big old flat screen tv. At the time, I don't know if it was a projector or what, but I remember having to look way up and take a step back to play it on this big old screen in fries. Yeah. [01:46:21] Speaker B: Nostalgia for sure. [01:46:22] Speaker A: Plus, if you don't want to play it, you can just stretch his face. I mean, you could just stretch his face. [01:46:27] Speaker B: Sink so many hours into that. [01:46:29] Speaker A: I think the stretch stretching thing I was watching did, you know, gaming and they were talking about the face stretching software being like a whole thing that a guy made that just kind of last minute got tossed in there. But it was actually kind of indicative of just how far the 64 could go. And he was just kind of, like, messing with it. And then they just kind of were like, yeah, let's just throw it in there as this fun other thing you can have. [01:46:52] Speaker B: Well, it's a great tool to show the 3d capabilities of 64. [01:46:57] Speaker A: It's a tech demo. [01:47:00] Speaker C: That was a release game with the 64. So it's like, yeah, here's what this new big badass thing can do. [01:47:07] Speaker A: Yeah, our 64 came with 1080. We didn't get Mario Brothers or Superman. Oh, yeah. [01:47:10] Speaker C: Because you can get either or. [01:47:11] Speaker A: So we got 1080 and we got a copy of Armyman sergeant's heroes. And that's like, I didn't get Mario 64 until. I don't even know. I think it was like four years in maybe. I think it was in middle school when I finally. [01:47:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I was the same way. [01:47:25] Speaker A: Was on its way. And I was like, I still haven't played Mario 64 yet. I put 90 hours into Jet force Gemini, but I still haven't jumped through a friggin painting. [01:47:34] Speaker C: Right. [01:47:35] Speaker B: Last question before we take it out. What are you most excited for about the new film? Both of you guys? [01:47:42] Speaker A: Brian, you first. [01:47:43] Speaker C: Honestly, I think just to take my nephews and to see, like, that's sweet. Yeah. Just to see how much fun it's going to be and be like, if you guys like that, check this stuff out and then show them everything else. But just to see Mario up on a big screen, too. But what looks like it's going to be a decent version of Mario and really respecting the ip in general over the last 35, 40 years now. God, we're old. [01:48:09] Speaker B: We're very old. Before Bryce answers, I will say for me, it's just like the old film of getting giddy about all the little Easter eggs and references to the actual franchise. As you saw in the trailers, it looks like we're going to be getting some stuff from Donkey Kong country from various different levels, from various different games. Mario Kart. So I had to know, get really excited. [01:48:32] Speaker C: Then, of course, I didn't realize they would include all that stuff. [01:48:35] Speaker B: No, neither died. So when I saw in the trailer, it was so. And also just because I'm accustomed to it, because of the MCU and DC universe, I can't wait to see if there's going to be an end credit scene and we're going to get the smash universe. I hope that happens. [01:48:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong country was a game that my brother and I got together for Christmas. So we both like, that's our game. And I lived for that Donkey Kong country cartoon. I mean, much like Beast wars, it was one of those cartoons that I could only watch at a very rare occasions, so I never got tired. [01:49:10] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:49:12] Speaker A: Diddy Kong. And Donkey Kong was also one of those games where being player two wasn't just a reskinned character. [01:49:17] Speaker C: Yeah, you were a completely new, cool character. [01:49:20] Speaker A: You couldn't do the ground pound, but you could cartwheel and jump way further. [01:49:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Do the spin fly thing. [01:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And then Dixie being able to do the spin fly thing and Donkey Kong country two was actually streamed on Twitch while we were raising money for St. Jude. And I did that whole DMX thing. Thanks shout out to our friend of the podcast, Eric, for paying money to make me do the DMX voice for way too long. But it's to see Donkey Kong. I'm really excited that it's not just DK, but, like, cranky is there. [01:49:48] Speaker C: Got the whole fam. [01:49:49] Speaker A: Funky is in the background. I'm really hoping that we get some Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong action, too. Yeah, I just bought the Prima guide. Donkey Kong country returns. I'm probably more excited about seeing Donkey Kong than I am about the rest of it. But also, Charlie Day is Luigi, because I'd love me some Charlie Day. That's a voice I don't get sick of. [01:50:06] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a whole different podcast. Yeah, well, yeah. So that kind of covers our Mario episode. [01:50:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's what you need to know. We didn't talk about any of the games specific details, just this crazy ass. [01:50:18] Speaker C: Yeah, right. [01:50:19] Speaker A: But it's cool that giving Mario movie a chance again, because there was this online rumor for a long time that we aren't going to get that movie that you want. You're not going to get your video game movie because Nintendo is terrified to make movies because of that one time with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. Long Jeg Bozamo, John Leguizamo. And yeah, I am so excited to see Nintendo taking this chance because I feel like this opens up a possibility of maybe getting an actual Zelda movie or maybe getting a metroid movie. And those are much more adult ips. Those aren't going to have the same draw that Mario will. So maybe we'll go. [01:51:00] Speaker C: I'm done with that. [01:51:01] Speaker A: I'm a Nintendo kid through and through. I had a Super Nintendo. I had a 64. We didn't switch to PlayStation until the GameCube came out. And by that point, we were like, well, if we're going to go to disks anyway, we might as well get one that actually plays dvds. [01:51:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:51:13] Speaker A: My love for Nintendo company has been here since I was a little kid. So to see Mario back on screen again, and I really hope that we get some reference to John, to the Super Mario Brothers movie. I'm hoping for some Easter eggs specifically related to that insanity, as well as some Easter eggs for just in general that are a little bit more adult themed. That's my favorite type of comedy. Where it's like, this is an adult joke and it will go over the heads of every single child. [01:51:45] Speaker C: But when the kids watch it, in ten years, they'll be like, oh, my God, like half the 90s movies. Yeah. So as we end all our usual podcasts, Nick, what kind of geeky things are you reading or watching or playing? What you got going on over there? [01:52:02] Speaker B: Oh, wow. So much geek. I alluded to my Twitch channel. It's coming back up. I took a long hiatus last year because I got married. [01:52:13] Speaker C: That was a fun wedding. [01:52:15] Speaker B: Yeah, you were. And we had an absolute blast. Yeah, I'm just picking that back up. I'm getting back into speed running. I'm going ham on Kano report, dude. I have to. If you come gunning for my world record, I'm going to have to say some things, but, yeah, collecting some action figures. Been on a hunt just recently getting also back into retro I in terms of, like, retro gaming, I have an eBay store, so I just put up some game Boy advanced games up on there. So really putting my hands in a million different things in terms of geek, mostly in the gaming sphere, because that's all I really have time for, as much as I want to get back into comics and movies. Yeah, games. Games and action figures. That's about it right now. [01:53:01] Speaker C: Very nice. Bryce, what you got going on these days, sir? [01:53:06] Speaker A: I just read a nice house on the lake. Like, I literally finished that, like, two days ago, and that is fantastic. But more in the realm of gaming and stuff, I just picked up Jet Force Gemini again, which I never. So Jet Force Gemini is my favorite 64 game of all time. I never beat it, and I never beat it because I've always said, because there was some sort of glitch that prevented me from collecting the last tribal. But as an adult, I'm beginning to wonder if I just never actually found it. I can't imagine that I didn't, but my copy from childhood is in Oregon right now with my cousin. So if he sends that back to me, I'm going to go give it a shot and see if I can just beat the game then. But instead, I've been playing through the entire game again because Nick promised me an episode of the Bernami code on it if I did. So I set up the Nintendo 64 in my bedroom, and I got really sick, like, two weeks ago, and I probably put in upwards of, like, 20 to 30 hours of just laying in bed, feeling like garbage, running around, shooting giant ants. So getting back into jet force Gemini has kind of been where I'm at, which I'm sure will piss off all of my friends who are like, finish the last of us too. [01:54:15] Speaker B: Beat Jet Force and we will get that episode. [01:54:19] Speaker A: Heck yeah. Heck yeah. So I've been going collecting tiny little bears and shooting. I've been chopping ants heads off because I use the Shuriken more than anything else. But apparently that game's collected in a collection for the Xbox in like. [01:54:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:33] Speaker A: Rare replay collection. The rare replay collection. Which, do they have original perfect dark on there? Yeah. [01:54:38] Speaker B: Yes. [01:54:39] Speaker A: Do they have the second perfect dark in there? Maybe I need an Xbox. Probably not, but yeah, Jet Force Gemini has kind of been the sole taker of my time as far as gaming is concerned. And then I've been watching way too much. Oh, I've been watching a ton of attack on Titan. [01:54:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:54:59] Speaker A: Because Attack on Titan just released a new episode and that's been crazy. [01:55:03] Speaker B: I was going to say it's also the crossover this season. Fortnite. So Aaron Yeager. [01:55:08] Speaker A: It is. It is. I just heard about that. I'm hoping that when they drop the Aaron Yeager skin that we also get some ODM here so we could start flying. [01:55:15] Speaker B: We will. [01:55:16] Speaker A: And then. Brian, what are you reading? What are you watching? [01:55:19] Speaker C: What are you playing? [01:55:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:55:20] Speaker C: So in related Mario news, like, leading up to this podcast, I was like, I want to play some more Mario. So I got Odyssey, only Nintendo on the Switch had this, like, voucher thing where you pay $100. You get two vouchers. You basically get two games for $50, which is pretty decent. [01:55:33] Speaker B: Deal. [01:55:33] Speaker C: Picked up Mario Odyssey, and then I picked up Donkey Kong tropical freeze. [01:55:36] Speaker A: Oh, you have Donkey Kong tropical freeze? [01:55:38] Speaker C: Yeah. I haven't played it yet, but I've been playing a bunch of Mario Odyssey, and it's been fun. [01:55:42] Speaker B: It's a great game. [01:55:43] Speaker C: It's very open world, but not super crazy open world, which is kind of nice. I got so many games on my backlog I want to try and get through, or even new games like Donkey Kong. So I'm like six levels or so in on that, having a good time. And then I just finished doing the audiobook for Jedi survivor battlescars, which is the prequel novel by Survivor coming out next month. Kind of gives a nice little update to where our mint is. Crew is in the. That's kind of where I'm at right now. And still trying to play through Pokemon Violet. [01:56:19] Speaker A: I'm still trying to play through Pokemon Red. [01:56:20] Speaker B: I'm still trying to play through Pokemon Violet, too. Ryan, we have to do a raid together. [01:56:25] Speaker C: Yes, we do. [01:56:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't have a switch, so I'm not allowed to get us. I was told I was not allowed to get a switch until I absolutely was 100% done with my master's degree. Since I am still in the approval stage, I have to wait until they come back and say, yeah, but you're. [01:56:41] Speaker C: Done writing it, basically, yeah. [01:56:43] Speaker A: I have to write an abstract. Yeah. [01:56:44] Speaker C: Notes, abstracts. Nothing compared to what you just. [01:56:47] Speaker A: I've already written half of it's on my phone, so I feel good. Compared to the 63 pages that is my current master's thesis. In size ten font, I might add. No, it's in size twelve font, but it is in 1.5 spacing. [01:57:01] Speaker C: But, yeah. So I think that covers the Mario episode. [01:57:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's Mario. [01:57:05] Speaker B: Mario. [01:57:06] Speaker C: Mario. [01:57:07] Speaker A: Let's go. [01:57:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us. Let us know what you guys think of the movie. [01:57:14] Speaker A: We'll see you at the movie. [01:57:17] Speaker C: Boom. [01:57:17] Speaker B: That's it. [01:57:20] Speaker C: Cool. Thanks for joining us, Nick. [01:57:22] Speaker A: As usual, it's always being here. [01:57:24] Speaker C: We miss your face. This is a podcast, and we have them on Zoom on a separate computer and some headphones and stuff. [01:57:30] Speaker A: Yeah, our setup is a little wild in here today. We got, like, two laptops recording two different tracks, but we're making it work 100%. [01:57:36] Speaker B: Technology is great where we can do this. [01:57:39] Speaker C: Yeah. And once you come out here, there's some really cool video game shops that we found, and we'll take you on a nice little tour. [01:57:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And then we'll go to Barney's beanery. [01:57:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there we go. We need to do a live episode at the bean dude. [01:57:52] Speaker C: Down. We'll get Reed. [01:57:55] Speaker A: We're here to talk about new gun wrench, the history of the Nymordians of the trade Federation. [01:58:01] Speaker C: That is a little bit.