If you've listened to our latest podcast, you'll know that- on our next show- we'll be discussing movies based on video-games. Not really giving any spoilers away, but one film that does get mentioned is Super Mario Bros.; it would be remiss of any discussion of video-game movies not to talk about the first film to be based on a video-game franchise.
Put simply, Super Mario Bros. is... a mess. It's tonally all over the place. The script doesn't really make a lot of sense. Aside from a couple of decent performances and some intriguing visuals, it is not a good film. It's also not a good example of how to adapt a video-game to a movie.
But...when you realise what was going on behind the scenes, the strife and the stress of the production itself, you can kind of understand why the film looks and feels like it does. It doesn't excuse a single thing you see on screen, but you get a sense of what the filmmakers were up against.
So, strap yourselves in for a fascinating story of Oscar-nominated producers, clandestine rewrites, a pair of micromanaging directors, a febrile atmosphere on set (which led to a three-hour rant by a very pissed-off actor), and reviews so bad that they essentially killed careers. Let's go!
IT'S-A ME, MARIO!
Let's start at the very beginning. For those who may not know [hey, it might be possible], Mario (originally known as Jumpman) is a character created by Shigeru Miyamoto as the hero in arcade game Donkey Kong (1981). He was eventually spun out into his own series of games- which added a whole array of new characters, including his brother Luigi- which were released on various platforms by Nintendo
The plot of the 1993 film goes like this: Mario and Luigi are two plumbers from Brooklyn who find themselves transported into an alternative dimension (where the citizens evolved from dinosaurs) to help save a palaeontologist called Daisy from the clutches of the evil lizard King Koopa, and to stop their reality from being taken over by the dinoworld.
You might be wondering how you get from jumping over barrels to saving the world from dinosaur-evolved creatures. Well, here's how it happened...
LIGHTMOTIVE PRODUCTIONS
To make something of a potentially unfair generalization, most video-game movies don’t exactly have esteemed directors or producers behind them (e.g. Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson).
 |
| Roland Joffé (left) and Jake Eberts (right) |
Joffé had noticed the enormous success of the Super Mario games- as they were usually bundled in as part of a Nintendo console set-up- so he knew it would only be a matter of time before Hollywood would come knocking on Nintendo’s door to make a pitch for a film. So, he and Eberts got in there first.
In 1991, Joffé had a meeting at Nintendo of America with then-president Minoru Arakawa (who was also son-in-law of Nintendo supremo Hiroshi Yamauchi). He presented a movie pitch with some illustrations and a rough storyline. Arakawa seemed impressed by the presentation- as it seemed to provide a viable solution to the inherent issue of the games not really having a scriptable plot- but when he told Joffé that other studios had offered up to $10m for the rights, Joffé’s response was “We could probably run to $500,000”.
Under usual circumstances, he should have been kicked out of the office for offering such a paltry sum. But he wasn’t. Joffé describes Arakawa’s reaction as “a rather monkish sort of smile: amused and rather touched.”
A month later, Joffé flew out to Nintendo’s corporate headquarters in Kyoto and waited for a call. And waited… and waited… In the interim, he visited Nintendo’s offices and met Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of the games). He also visited ancient Japanese temples and discussed Japanese mythology. After 10 days, he got the call and he went to meet with Hiroshi Yamauchi himself.
He pitched Yamauchi a storyline involving Mario, Luigi and a host of dinosaurs. ''I went with a storyboard and story outline... 'I said, `This won`t be the story, but it`ll be a story that contains some of these elements.` I was improvising.'' He also knew that he wanted to make Mario and Luigi real people, not computer-generated or animated cartoon figures. But one statement that Joffé made would come back to bite him, and the production, as a whole: “We’re not going to do a sweet little lovey-dovey sort of story. It’s got to have an edge to it.’ Careful the things you say...
When Yamauchi quizzed him why Nintendo would want to sell the rights to a boutique producer instead of a major studio, Joffé argued that Nintendo would have more control over the finished product – although it turned out that the company actually had little interest in that. To them, this was an experiment, “some sort of strange creature that was kind of rather intriguing to see if we could walk or not”. (Although as part of the deal, Nintendo did retain merchandising rights)
And so it was done. Nintendo sold Joffé and Eberts the rights for $2million (a lot less than they could have got for them). Hollywood was in uproar that Lightmotive, an infant production company, had got the rights for one of the most sought-after brands of the 1990s. But at the most basic level, Lightmotive had paid $2 million for three words: ''Super Mario Bros.''
Where do you go from there?
THE SCRIPT
You'll have heard me banging on about this on the podcast before, but the script is fundamental. It's your blueprint and, if you don't have a stable foundation, the house isn't fit to stand.
It's no exaggeration to lay a fair chunk of the blame for the utter trainwreck at the writer. Well, writers. A total of nine writers worked on the script, although there are only three of them credited: Parker Bennett & Terry Runté and Ed Solomon.
But, like a lot of things with this film, there are some unexpected names that come up when you look at the history of the screenplay. The first being: Barry Morrow.
That name might not mean much to you, but you'd know his work: in fact, in 1989, he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar (along with Ronald Bass) for Rain Man. So once Roland Joffé got the rights to make the film, he hired Morrow based on the strength of that screenplay. I mean, the guy can certainly get to the heart of the relationship between brothers.
Morrow initially envisioned the film to be an origin story (virtually unheard of in the early 1990s), “gamelike in its silliness” but with the relationship between Mario and Luigi at its heart. This led to the script being nicknamed "Drain Man". Ultimately, Morrow’s screenplay was never used and- in fact- never even completed; a courier arrived to pick up the script with Morrow still to write the final scene.
If Morrow’s screenplay invoked Rain Man, the next writers- Jim Jennewein and Tom S. Parker – produced a script which mixed The Wizard Of Oz and Shrek. It featured a journey into a new world, and subverting and satirizing fairy tale clichés, whilst focusing on the relationship between the brothers.
 |
| Screenwriters Terry Runté (left) and Parker Bennett (right) |
The next set of writers to assay the script are also a surprise: British writing partnership Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were asked to flesh out the story and characters- expanding the roles of Princess Daisy and Koopa’s consort Lena- and provide a more adult tone. UK readers will know Clement and Le Frenais as writers for Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?, Porridge, and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. They also wrote the screenplay for Alan Parker’s The Commitments. It was this script that started bringing actors on board. With this draft in place, the film officially moved into pre-production.
There's a lot more to say about the script issues- which directly impact on production issues- but for now, we'll shift away from the writers and look at the power behind the cameras...
IN THE DIRECTOR'S CHAIR(S)
Greg Beeman (License To Drive) was originally attached to direct, but was dismissed by producers after the dismal performance of Mom And Dad Save The World. Joffé then offered the role to Harold Ramis (Caddyshack, Groundhog Day), who declined. Danny DeVito was also considered to direct at some point. Roland Joffé admitted “I felt the project was taking a wrong turn [...] And that's when I began thinking of Max Headroom."
Max Headroom was a wise-cracking computer version of a crusading TV reporter (played by Matt Frewer) who appeared in his own TV show which played on Channel 4 in the UK. The show was created by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton. a husband-and-wife team from London, who- aside from Max Headroom- directed music videos for Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Talking Heads, and Rush, as well as producing adverts (their ad for Pirelli Tyres was the world’s first fully computer-generated commercial).
Their innovative and inventive approach to technology was what Joffé was looking for, despite their only feature film directorial credit being the 1988 remake of D.O.A., starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. So the pair was signed on to direct. They also suggested the alternate Dinohattan theory which made it into the script.
“We weren’t wildly enthusiastic gamers,” says Jankel. “I don’t think either of us had ever fully involved ourselves in the game at all, which might have had something to do with the end result. We played it for research. It’s a bit like if you’re doing an adaptation of something, you do your due diligence. But it’s not like we were up all through the night playing it.”
CASTING
One of the few things the film has in its favour is the cast. However, the film could have looked very different indeed if some of the original casting considerations had gone ahead.
For me, one of the most surprising names to come up was Dustin Hoffman. He expressed interest in playing Mario, as his children was “Nintendo maniacs” and wanted to impress them. Executives were interested in Danny DeVito to play the main role; DeVito entertained talks but ultimately chose to concentrate on directing and co-starring in Hoffa. Other actors considered for the role were Bruno Kirby and Cheech Marin.
Tom Hanks was considered for the role of Luigi, but a string of recent box-office failures dropped him from consideration (bear in mind, this was before Hanks’ double Oscar win), whilst Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Keaton, and Kevin Costner turned down the offer to play King Koopa.
Ultimately, Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo were cast as Mario and Luigi respectively, Samantha Mathis was cast as Princess Daisy, whilst Dennis Hopper took the role of King Koopa. Acclaimed film and stage actress Fiona Shaw signed on to play Koopa’s consort Lena, while Fisher Stevens and Richard Edson were cast as Koopa’s sidekicks Iggy and Spike.
PRODUCTION
So, you have a top-drawer cast including two Oscar nominees (Hoskins and Hopper), and a crew chockful of talent: including Roland Joffé (producer), Fred Caruso (co-producer), Alan Silvestri (composer), David L. Snyder (production designer), Mark Goldblatt (editor), Chris Woods (special effects), and Peter Levy (cinematographer).
This all begs one simple question: what went wrong?
Production on Super Mario Bros. began in 1992. They immediately set about creating ‘Dinohattan’ (the alternate reality New York where Koopa rules) inside the large Ideal Cement Factory in North Carolina, where Terminator 2: Judgment Day shot its finale [it had also been used for the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and would go on to be used in The Crow]. Snyder was brought on to echo his acclaimed art direction for Blade Runner, with Dinohattan’s dark alleys, neon-signed streets, and yellow cabs powered by overhead cables.
The production was haemorrhaging money, so the producers had to look for additional investors. However, due to the more adult tone of Clement and Le Frenais’ script, family-friendly studios weren’t prepared to back it. Under pressure to make the project more appealing (especially as a deal had been struck with Disney for the distribution rights), Joffé hired screenwriters Ed Solomon (co-writer of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and Ryan Rowe (who went on to write The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and the 2000 Charlie's Angels movie) to add more comedy to the script.
But here’s the issue: neither the cast nor the directors were made aware of what Solomon and Rowe had rewritten in the script (or, what Morton would call, “dewritten”).
And they only found out when they arrived in North Carolina to begin filming.
They turned up, to be presented by a revised script that didn’t match anything they’d been working on in pre-production. Morton says "I had storyboarded the entire film from beginning to end from the original scripts, and when the new script came in it didn't match any of my storyboards. I remember ceremoniously burning them in a car park and saying 'okay now we're flying from the seat of our pants.'"
On reading the new script, Jankel and Morton were unimpressed and wanted to quit the project. However, they decided to stay as “we knew all the characters and could piece the new puzzle together. We decided to soldier on and rectify the film as we carried on”. They were also in an unenviable position of having to “defend” the new script to the equally unimpressed cast, and encourage them to stay on. With what I can only describe as masterful understatement, Morton describes that as “very awkward, and uneasy, and difficult.”
It was the quality of the Clement/Le Frenais script that had secured Hoskins, Shaw, and Hopper to the project. The script they were now given didn’t resemble that script at all. Moreover, rewrites were coming thick and fast, not just from Solomon, but from previous writers Parker Bennett and Terry Runté who were rehired after Solomon left after they visited the Wilmington set on a whim! This gave rise to what has been called “the rainbow script”, and is described by LA Times journalist Richard Stayton as: “thick as nearby Wilmington’s phone book, rainbow-colored with rewritten pages. The only page color missing is the original draft’s. No white pages remain.”
Stayton’s set report- published on August 16th 1992- pulls no punches about the fractious nature on-set. The cast and crew’s disparaging nicknames for the directors- which included “Rockabell”, “Rocky and Annabel, the Flying Squirrel Show” and “The Hydra” – and the world-weary reaction of the film’s stars to the constant rewrites is writ large in the piece. One particularly damning quote comes from Shaw who laments “The first script I got was witty… that was maybe 10 scripts ago. Now they’re talking about taking a bath with worms.” (and yes, in the completed film, there is a scene where Hopper and Shaw are in a bathtub of mud). Interestingly, a report by Michael Specter of the New York Times, also published on August 16th 1992, makes no mention about any on-set tensions, instead focusing heavily on the production design, set decoration and art direction by Snyder and his team Beth Rubino and Walter Martishuis.
With so many forces pulling in so many different directions (Joffé still wanted a film in the same gritty, more adult mould that Jankel and Morton wanted to make, but whereas he was prepared to compromise to get the money in to get it made, the directors were less willing to do so) and everyone seeming to be working at cross purposes, it’s no surprise that the working environment on set was difficult.
Morton describes one such awkward on-set moment thus: “We had an order that we were gonna shoot everything in and we were building the sets accordingly, and because we had to shoot it in a different order because of the way the script was, I can remember [one of the sets] not being ready — [it was] half built and the paint was still wet, and the only way I could shoot the scene was on a long lens looking in one direction. If I pointed the camera off you could see that the set wasn’t completed, so there were things like that. And I can remember asking Dennis Hopper “Please walk this way, because if I pan the camera this way you’re gonna be off the set,” and then we had this argument about it. Things like that, it would just go on and on and on, there were just so many problems. It threw the film into chaos, basically.”
Richard Edson also describes one particularly tense day where Hopper- frustrated at the rewrites to the script- let loose a tirade of profanity and insults to Jankel and Morton on set. He was still going 45 minutes later. With 300 extras standing around waiting to film, and no real clue how to handle the incandescent Hopper, they called lunch. Lunch turned out to be two more hours of Hopper tearing the directors and producers a metaphorical new one. Eventually, after some placating- which involved offering Hopper to rewrite the scene or go back to an original draft- Hopper agreed to do the scene as written. The entire debacle lasted three and a half hours and not a word was changed.
 |
| Director of Photography Dean Semler |
Stayton’s set report also says that “just this week an audio-animatronic dinosaur named Yoshi had arrived and had to be integrated into the story.” Lead creatures designer and supervisor Patrick Tatopoulos, aware of the upcoming Jurassic Park, consciously designed the creatures to look cuter and more cartoonish. Four versions of the Yoshi puppet were built: a stand-in, a wireless model, a half-puppet for the tongue, and a fully functional model. The fully functional puppet utilized 70 cables and nine operators, costing $500,000. Of course, you can’t really have a Super Mario film without Yoshi- they’re one of the most iconic characters in the franchise- but, to me, that sums up one of the major issues the film has: spend lots of money on something and then shoehorn it in to the plot, coherence be damned.
Principal photography of the film began on May 6th 1992, and wrapped on July 27th 1992 (approximately a 12-week shoot). Contrary to some reports, Jankel and Morton completed the contracted shooting of the film, although there was an additional three weeks of reshoots- done by Director of Photography Dean Semler and several second unit directors. When it came to post-production, Morton claims he was locked out of the editing room and they had to appeal to the Directors’ Guild Of America (DGA) in order to get access to it. Morton also said: “I tried to get the editor to cut it digitally, but they refused. They wanted to edit on Moviola and Steenbeck machines, so the process was laboriously slow, which didn't help us get the special effect cut in on time".
Despite Hopper describing it as “a nightmare, very honestly”, Samantha Mathis was more conciliatory, stating “I had a fondness for both Rocky and Annabel, I just felt like the production was so much bigger than anything they’d done before”. The final word on the production should, I think, go to Morton for another of his massive understatements: “It was a tough schedule. It was a big project. It was just very, very difficult.”
AFTERMATH
Premiering over Memorial Day weekend of 1993 on 2,000 screens across the U.S., the film ended up fourth at the box office, bested by Dave, Made in America, and Cliffhanger. It was also released just two weeks before Jurassic Park, so pretty much disappeared quickly. The Box Office only had room for one film where actors engaged with animatronic dinosaurs.
It didn’t help that it got a bit (well, a lot) of a kicking from the critics. Stephen Garrett wrote in Time Out “It will baffle kids, bore adolescents, and depress adults.” Not only did Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel give it the dreaded "two thumbs down", it also made it onto their list of the worst films of 1993. Michael Wilmington for the Los Angeles Times wrote “like a video game itself, when it’s over, the screen goes blank, the mind goes blank”, whilst David Denby’s scathing review in New York Magazine bluntly stated that the directors “demonstrate no talent whatsoever for the narrative art of feature movies” and that the film is “stunningly dull” with “literally nothing for children to get involved in or enjoy in this smash-palace fiasco”. Ouch.
There were some reviewers though, that saw some of the positives: Mark Caro, for the Chicago Tribune, noted that, despite the “loose threads, missed opportunities, inconsistencies, [and] wildly uneven jokes… the movie's no stinker” and praised Hoskins’ and Leguizamo’s performances. Hal Hinson of the Washington Post praised the film's "rambunctious toss-away spirit" and said it was "sweet and funny and full of bright invention". The New York Times’ Janet Maslin stated that “its special effects are well executed even when their purpose is less than clear”, that Hoskins “can handle any role with grace and good humor”, Mathis and Leguizamo “make likeable ingenues” and Hopper was “alarmingly natural… [and] seems entirely comfortable with everything he has to do here”. Hopper’s on-set behaviour clearly wasn’t brought to Maslin’s attention…
Ultimately, it didn’t do the business at the box office, grossing $20 million in the US, against a production cost of $50m (that doesn’t include marketing costs) and an estimated worldwide gross to approximately $35.3m. However, it was one of four Disney films under consideration for the Best Visual Effects award at the 66th Academy Awards (with the nomination eventually going to The Nightmare Before Christmas).
It remained something of a bête noire for Hoskins; in a 2007 interview with the Guardian, he said “the whole experience was a nightmare”. When interviewed by the same paper in 2011 and asked what the worst job he’d ever done, his biggest disappointment, and what he would change about his past, his answer to all three questions was… Super Mario Brothers.
Whilst the majority of the cast came out of the ordeal relatively unscathed, the same cannot be said for the directors. It would be 25 years before Annabel Jankel directed another film (2018’s Tell It To The Bees), although she had directed for television in the interim. Rocky Morton’s filmography only shows some music videos and shorts after Super Mario Bros. In an interview, Morton waxed lyrical about the experience saying “Video games just aren't movies… That's the biggest challenge. You're shoehorning something, you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. You have to come up with a clever take on it that oils the wheels of storytelling. You have to be inspired by the video game and then make something that's true to the movie genre."
 |
| Shigeru Miyamoto |
Despite all the issues, Roland Joffé thinks well of the film: "In its own extraordinary way, it was an interesting and rich artefact and has earned its place. It has strange cult status." However, he never heard what Hiroshi Yamauchi or Nintendo thought of the finished product. "They never phoned up to complain," Joffé says. "They were very polite, Nintendo."
What a story! Hopefully, this has whetted your appetite for our video-game movies podcast, which will be with you shortly.
No comments:
Post a Comment