1993's Super Mario Bros. Changed Movies For Seth Rogen Forever (& Not In A Good Way)
Childhood is a time of seeing the films that will shape the way you view the form for the rest of your life. Which could be one reason why the 1993 "Super Mario Bros." film has retained such a strong reputation of badness for three decades and counting — a whole generation of Mario fans were traumatized by its various grotesqueries. One of those fans was young, 11-year-old Seth Rogen, who voices Donkey Kong in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" out now in theaters.
That tidbit comes from a recent package of interviews in Variety with the film's cast and crew at the premiere of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," the first feature film in the Mario franchise to come out after the notorious 1993 incarnation. "When I was 11, I saw the original 'Mario Bros.' movie and I was so excited," the actor recalled. "But it's one of the worst films ever made. I was so disappointed. I think it made me realize that movies, like, could be bad. That never occurred to me until that moment."
Rogen sees the new Super Mario Bros. Movie as the cinematic redemption for the franchise
"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" seems a little more palatable to audiences than its cinematic predecessor, even as it fails somewhat with critics. And in his remarks at the premiere of the more recent big-screen Mario adventure, Rogen says that the new movie is sort of a redemption after the failure of the old one. "It really bummed me out," Rogen said. "It's nice to vindicate that moment. It's nice to know that 11-year-olds out there won't be disappointed in the same way that I was."
As notorious a bomb as 1993's "Super Mario Bros." may be, it's still unusual to see a movie star using such unadulterated language in discussing a movie, especially one that is technically part of the same franchise as the new release being promoted.
But it makes sense that the makers of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" would want to try and distinguish their film from the 1993 anti-classic, which stars Bob Hoskins (who later said he regretted making the film) and John Leguizamo as the titular plumbing brothers, and Dennis Hopper as Bowser. A live-action film that makes significant visual changes to the established Mario mythology, there's little question that "The Super Bros. Movie" was made with more fealty to the franchise's diehard fans in mind.
Then again, maybe the experience Rogen had was, in its way, a positive one, and the fact that people still talk about the 1993 "Super Mario Bros." movie is by one metric a mark of its actual true value. If "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" is indeed more of a mediocre "meh" in execution, it's unlikely anyone will still remember it in 2053.