Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath took on the challenge of bringing one of gaming’s biggest mascots to the silver screen with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. While it’s not the first full-length cinematic take on the character and the Mushroom Kingdom, it definitely is the closest we’ve ever gotten to the original gaming franchise. According to the directing duo of Teen Titans Go! fame, Nintendo was involved in every step along the way.
From story to visual development to the animation, Nintendo has been with us every step of the way.
Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath
It’s no surprise given just how protective Nintendo is about its intellectual property, especially the one that pretty much put them on the map. Though, it does seem they are also using this film as a chance to tell his “origin tale” with some inspirations from Mario’s many iterations throughout the years. We get the Boston background from the 1993 film, a teaser with the theme song from the original The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
It’s a bit of an origin tale. It’s the story of Mario becoming Super Mario.
Aaron Horvath
Though, they also wanted to have elements from the players that brought the character to life live in the animated adaptation. As such, they took that inspirational approach of Mario representing the player experience in how he will always succeed as long as you don’t give up.
When you play the game, if you don’t give up, Mario will succeed. So we transferred that player experience from the game to a characteristic that [movie] Mario would have.
Aaron Horvath
It’s definitely a great little way of including the player in one way or another in the film. While we won’t have a chance to control the iconic character ourselves, perhaps we’ll get some cool outfits inspired by the movie for the net game entry, as we haven’t had an announcement since Super Mario Odyssey in 2017
Source: Total Film
