The Super Mario Bros' Blu-ray comes with the excellent documentary "This Ain't No Video Game" that details how it turned into such a colossal mess. Super Mario is a rightfully beloved gaming franchise from Nintendo, and whether he's leaping across platforms or doing some aggressive go karting, the character remains an icon. Super Mario Bros the movie has a legacy all its own, being the first live-action movie based on a video game. Sadly, it would also set the tone for the subgenre's reception, since it had little to do with the source material and was critically reviled.
Super Mario Bros was also a bomb, grossing back around half its production budget. Despite this, many video game movies followed, including 1994's Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mortal Kombat. The former was a solid hit but received terrible reviews, which is seemingly why a sequel didn't follow, while Mortal Kombat is still fondly regarded. The genre, on the whole, earns little respect and while its produced hits like the Resident Evil franchise, very few earn good critical notices.
Despite Super Mario Bros' initial reception, the movie has earned itself a loyal cult fandom over the years. For better or worse, there's really no other movie quite like it and it has some undeniable charms, from the excellent production design and animatronic effects to Bob Hoskins' performance as Mario. In 2014 the film made the leap to Blu-ray in the UK from Second Sight Films, which highlighted how good it looks and it came with the in-depth documentary "This Ain't No Video Game," exploring how it went so very, very wrong during production.
"This Ain't No Video Game" runs for less than an hour and features retrospective interviews with everybody from co-directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel to star John Leguizamo, editor Mark Goldblatt and producer Roland Joffe. The latter is the director behind the acclaimed likes of The Killing Fields, so off the bat, his idea to approach Nintendo with the notion of making a Super Mario Bros movie seemed like a bad fit. The documentary charts how Joffe won the rights from competitors and various unused story ideas through to hiring Morton and Jankel, who were then best known for Max Headroom.
Super Mario Bros drew less inspiration from the games than Tim Burton's take on Batman, but from the time the cameras started to roll, things were a mess. The directors clashed with cast and crew, and seemingly everybody involved was working towards a different movie. There were constant, conflicting rewrites and an overall sense of chaos and confusion. Hoskins and Leguizamo famously took to drinking to deal with filming too. "This Ain't No Video Game" leaves no stone unturned, with the interview subjects being honest about the stressful nightmare it became to make. Which isn't to say there aren't lots of laughs to be had in the documentary either. For those who love the movie or hate it, Super Mario Bros "This Ain't No Video Game" is a fascinating insight into how it was made.