How did "Super Mario" grossed a billion dollars and shattered all expectations?

Although 2023 is still in its first half, "The Super Mario Bros" is arguably the undisputed phenomenon of the year, exceeding the most optimistic expectations and achieving records.

Super Mario broke the $1 billion barrier this week, turning the project that began as Studio Universal's Adventure to become the highest-grossing project of the year so far.

Despite its public success, the work received a lukewarm reception from critics, with only 59% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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"Super Mario" and records

Super Mario broke the $26 billion mark just 19 days after its release in cinemas, becoming the tenth billion-dollar animated film and the first animated film to achieve the feat in the "post-Covid-<>" era.

For Studio Universal, the film is already a precedent and has achieved successes that exceeded the dreams of the most optimistic producers, as it is the highest-grossing animated film in studio history, beating the Minions series and the third grossing film overall after Jurassic World and the groundbreaking classic E.T. The Extraterrestrial.

At the level of Hollywood, "Super Mario" is the fourth grossing film since 2019, i.e. before the pandemic and the deep shock that cinema suffered as a result of quarantine, lockdown and the spread of platforms. It is also the highest-grossing film adaptation of electronic games, and the first film in this category to achieve a billion dollars.

"Super Mario" is a computer-driven film, based on the famous Nintendo game of the same name, directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Gelinek, and voiced by a number of American movie stars, led by Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor Joy, Jack Black, Seth Rogan. It is the second attempt to present this world cinematically, in the nineties, a film with the same title was screened, but it suffered a major commercial and critical failure, which made the re-presentation a great adventure that was put outside the framework of serious thinking, until 2016 with talks between the creator of the game, Universal Studio and "Illumination" and the actual production began in 2020.

A movie for all ages

Super Mario was an essential part of the millennial childhood – those born in the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties, and today is the father or mother who takes her children to theaters to watch animated films, which enabled Super Mario to attract several generations.

The film tells the story of beloved character Mario and his brother Luigi, an Italian-American, Mario, a skilled plumber who lives in New York in the family home, and tries to run his own company and prove his ability to succeed in front of his skeptical family.

One night, the Brooklyn neighborhood is flooded with a sewage problem, and Mario and Luigi go to solve it in the hope of gaining fame and obtaining future customers, but by chance and a "magical" drainage pipe they move to a different place they never expected; Mario arrives at the "Mushroom Kingdom" while the unfortunate Luigi lands in the "dark lands" ruled by the villain and colonizer Bozar.

Mario tries to save his brother with the help of Princess Beach, whose kingdom faces the danger of Bozar, so they embark on a difficult adventure to achieve both goals, and events escalate until we reach the confrontation between the sides of good and evil.

Reviving the fantasy world

Critics' lukewarmness towards "Super Mario" and the poor rating it received as a natural result of a film that can be considered below average technically and even technically, compared to even very traditional Disney films such as "Coco" or "Moana" that rely on the journey of the hero who faces risks to save himself or his community, so Mario's story is more simple and childish, and his journey did not even have sudden fluctuations that can amaze the viewer or break the horizon of his expectations.

What Super Mario gave and earned a billion dollars is to accurately re-enact the world of childhood memories on the big screen, and use the details of the original game, such as the movement of the hero and the obstacles that he must overcome to reach his goal at the end of each round, such as the way to jump and get the "mushroom" to overcome the odds, the shape of the princess and her castle, the movement of evil turtles and the incorporation of elements from the very famous soundtrack.

The experience of this film explicitly plays on evoking nostalgia in older generations, and enhancing communication between parents and children with a film that everyone can enjoy together.

Among the factors that contributed to its success were its short duration of about 1.5 hours and the speed of events, which is commensurate with the ability of younger generations to follow the same video/movie for a continuous time, which was affected by the spread of limited-time videos across various applications such as TikTok and YouTube, which the shorter and faster the funnier it becomes for young people.

The film "Super Mario" is a work that no one expected only a reasonable success, and revenues will not exceed half a billion at best, but for various reasons it was able to top the list of the highest revenues and break a number of records.