If you spent part of your childhood in the eighties and nineties, there is a good chance that you sat a long time in front of the screen enjoying jumping barriers, escaping evil turtles and diving into drainage pipes on a long journey to save the beautiful princess from the monster. It is Super Mario games, one of the most successful video games of all time, it appeared for the first time in 1985, and topped video games for many years, well known to those born in the eighties, and its famous music formed the background of their childhood days and dyed it with fun.
Recently, the film "Super Mario bros" adapted from the game was an unprecedented success, with global revenues exceeding the $1 billion mark less than a month after its release on April 377 (358). In the opening week, the film grossed $<> million, breaking the record previously set by the sequel to "Frozen" with $<> million, making it the highest-ever opening of an animated film and the highest opening earnings for the current year so far. Are we witnessing a new era of video game adaptation on cinema screens?
Let's tolerate the past thirty years later
In fact, this was not the first time that the character of Super Mario moved to the screen, it was preceded by another attempt thirty years ago, where another film of the same name appeared, but it was not an animated film, but rather a gloomy and boring live simulation of the characters of the game, directed by Annabelle Jankel and Rocky Morton and starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. This film was a complete failure at the time, and frustrated fans around the world, which made many of them fear when the release of the animated film was recently announced, as the bereavement was still alive despite the passage of all this time.
Fortunately, the new version, which was released with innovative and vibrant modern graphics, did not let them down but is completely faithful to the original spirit of the game. "Super Mario Bros" is the result of a collaboration between Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment, which has previously presented (2) a collection of the most successful animated works, foremost of which is "Minions".
A naïve plot that succeeds in impressing everyone
(Social Media)
"Super Mario Bros" is based on a very simple plot, with a creamy filler of ready-made and traditional canned values about the importance of family, friendship, personal strength and not giving up and trying again. The plot of the film derives the main lines from the plot of the game, but the princess here does not need someone to save her, we are now in the twenty-first century, and the era of princesses in need of rescue is over.
The film tells the story of Mario and Luigi, two Italian-born brothers living in Brooklyn, who try to advance their emerging plumbing business, who are repeatedly failed but do not give up in the face of ridicule from family and friends. With a naïve dramatic justification, and while they seek to save the city from a mysterious and unexplained malfunction in the drainage networks, the two brothers fall into the pipes that take them to a parallel world, and while Luigi falls into the world of darkness controlled by the evil monster Bowser, Mario, the luckiest in the world of mushrooms, falls with his cheerful colors, and seeks to save his brother, and in order to do so, he meets Princess Beach (or Princess Khokha in Arabic) who, unlike the traditional princess in the game, begins to train him and help him explore his latent powers to save his brother. And defeat the villain.
The monster is played by Jack Black, who wants to marry the princess, which leads to a number of comedic ironies, resulting in a feature song that has garnered millions of views over the past few weeks.
We have a fast rhythm, a faithful plot of the spirit and worlds of the original game, where we can see in each scene references and references to the elements of the game in its various versions, as well as a distinctive soundtrack in which composer Brian Tyler draws inspiration from the music of Koji Kondo, the composer of the game's distinctive original music, to provide us with pieces that flirt with childhood nostalgia.
Despite this, the drawing of the characters was flat and very shallow, and many dramatic lines seemed naïve or truncated and unjustified, starting with Mario and Luigi's naïve entry into that parallel world, and not ending with Princess Beach, who we know through flashback technology that she does not belong to the world of mushrooms, and that she may be a human, but this dramatic line is suddenly amputated and the viewer does not understand its purpose.
The film doesn't present a true story that you can remember, but just a superficial and one-dimensional traditional hero who faces successive consequences and manages to overcome them one by one until he reaches his goal, just like the game he was quoted from. Perhaps this is the secret behind its strange success, it is just a simple film, without a complex or innovative plot, suitable for children, or adults who are fondled by nostalgia for childhood, a simple film that you enjoy watching, and then forget as soon as you get out of the theater.
The secret of the success of the game. Endless jogging
Super Mario games in their different versions offer a more simple gaming experience, just run forward, and the screen will continue to scroll to the right. (Anatolia)
This same simplicity was the secret to the success of the game and the reason why we sat in front of it for long hours, falling and rising again and returning to life full of hope to overcome the evil turtles, armed with mushrooms and hoping for the moment of victory over the monster and saving the princess. As a matter of fact, Super Mario has been able to continue to lead for almost forty years thanks to this simple recipe.
Super Mario games in their different versions offer a more simple gameplay experience, all you have to do is run forward, and the screen will continue to scroll to the right, jump over the terrain, eat fortified mushrooms, jump over the heads of your enemies from turtles and others in order to get rid of them, if you are lucky the drainage pipes will take you through shortcuts to advanced stages of the game, and you will get more and more coins.
In the end, if you are one of those perseverance who managed to complete many hours of play, you will get the reward, as in the final battle you overcome the monster and be able to save the beautiful princess from the evil monster, in a simulation of one of the oldest metaphors used in fairy tales, where you can find different variations of princess rescue stories, whether in the tales of the Thousand and One Nights or even in medieval stories in Europe (3).
These are the main foundations of the experience of playing in Super Mario with its different versions, but the game also came with distinctive elements that cannot be ignored, perhaps the most prominent of which is the endless exploration, where there is no map of the game, there is no way to know which drainage pipes you can enter, and which of these templates will give you coins when you break it, and which ones will crash unnecessarily, you will always have to explore for yourself, giving you endless possibilities as a player. The good news is that the hero's death does not mean the end, he will return again to be able to continue his journey again, always running to the right of the screen and continuing to walk non-stop.
Shigeru Miyamoto, Super Mario designer and one of the father of video games around the world. (Reuters)
This simple and attractive design was the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto, the game's designer and one of the fathers of video games around the world, who joined Nintendo in 1977, and was distinguished by his focus on story elements and characters in his games, adding a creative aspect that was not clear before. Mario debuted in 1981 in Donkey Kong, and was quickly developed to emerge as the main character in a successful independent game in 1985, where it achieved tremendous success, and then rolled its releases across various platforms(4).
Despite the limited capabilities at that time and the adoption of game graphics and designs on simple 8-bit technology compared to current technologies, the designers at that time were able to overcome the limitations of capabilities intelligently and with simple tricks that came in favor of designing the characters, for example, the design of the Super Mario Sharp came in this way because it is easier for the team than designing the normal mouth shape, to later become one of the most prominent morphological features of the Super Mario character (5). The game also constituted a boom at the time, as it was the first game to use a scrolling screen, rather than using separate screens as a simulation of progress(6).
According to Gamesight data, the game saw an 89% increase in footfall one week after the film's release, which means more audience, and a new opportunity to revive the game again(7).
Perhaps Super Mario Bros is not the first adaptation from the world of games to the world of screens, and it certainly will not be the last, especially after such overwhelming success, with the story of its protagonist resembling the hero of the original game, doing nothing but running in endless attempts to reach.
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