Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.

"Super Mario Bros. The Movie" is currently being screened all over the world, breaking many records such as the global box office opening of an animated film and the best opening box office of a video game adaptation film in North America. This movie also evoked the memories of many middle-aged and elderly audiences: Thirty years ago, there was actually a live-action movie called "Super Mario Bros." (Super Mario Bros.). However, although the two movies are based on the same game, their fates are very different. (Note: Previously, it was often translated as "Mario", but because the father of "Mario", Miyamoto Shigeru, believed that "Mario" was closer to its English pronunciation, so Nintendo currently confirms the official translation as Mario)

Super Mario Bros. poster

After the release of "Super Mario Bros.", the box office can be described as terrible. The two directors, Rocky Morton and Annabelle Yankel, were on the Hollywood "blacklist" and never got the chance to direct any films. Interestingly, with the passage of time, "Super Mario Brothers" has re-attracted a group of "heavy taste" fans because of its strong 1990s style, and has become a cult movie in a certain sense. Now that the animated version has been a big success, the live-action version has also been dug out again. A few days ago, the two directors accepted media interviews and explained why the film that pioneered game adaptation failed.

Foreshadowing of failure

Live-action Super Mario Bros. starring British actor Bob Hoskins (Captain Hook, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and Latino talk show star John Leguiza Mo (John Leguizamo) plays the protagonists Mario and Luigi brothers respectively. The story is about what happened before the game's plot. At this time, the earth has already split into two parallel worlds due to the impact of an asteroid 65 million years ago. Here, the dinosaurs did not die out completely, but they all fled into a parallel world called "Dread Hatton", and even evolved into human-like creatures. Coming to Brooklyn in 1993, the plumber brothers met Daisy, a top student in the Department of Archeology at New York University, and after she was awarded an award by a mysterious person, they came to "Horror Hatton" through Dafa. There, they learned about Daisy's amazing life experience and the evil conspiracy of the big devil Kuba...

British actor Bob Hoskins as Mario

Speaking of the origin of this movie, Roland Joffé, a famous British producer who had filmed "Killing Fields" and other films, saw the global popularity of the Super Mario video game, so he patiently persuaded the then Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo, finally got the chance to bring this explosive game for the red and white machine to the big screen.

Originally, he and his production partner Jake Eberts (Jake Eberts) planned to follow the fantasy comedy route of the 1984 "Ghostbusters" and adapt this well-known game IP into a popular commercial work that appeals to young audiences. The scriptwriter they hired was Barry Morrow, a gold-medal screenwriter who won an Academy Award for "Rain Man" and other films.

As a result, Morrow's script, dubbed "The Plumber", failed to be approved by the producer because the story was written too seriously. Jim Jennewein, a young screenwriter who is good at writing comedies, ) was enlisted to take over, and soon after handed over a brand new script in the style of dark comedy. But before the filming started, the producer felt that this comedy style was a bit too much, so they found someone to re-edit the script. But not long after the script was revised, Disney bought the global distribution rights of the film and asked the producers to re-alter the script to make it more suitable for children. In this way, after several twists and turns of the script, although the original story line was preserved, there were a lot of incompatible arrangements in the details, and the overall appearance was uneven, with no unified style at all, which also laid the groundwork for the failure of the film. Foreshadowing.

director annabelle yankel and rocky morton

As for the director, the producer has searched for many candidates, and finally settled on Rocky Morton and Annabelle Yankel from the UK. The husband-and-wife duo have never made a film before, but they are well-known in the British film and television industry and are regarded as rising stars of tomorrow because of a TV show they produced earlier.

In April 1985, British TV 4 aired a short drama called "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future" (Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future), directed by the couple . In front of the camera, they created a virtual host who claims to be the "grandfather of AI hosts in human history"—actually a live performance, using various makeup techniques and blindfolds—successfully won the attention of young audiences, and let this "AI "Host" has its own titled program.

With such an innovative spirit, the two were selected as the directors of "Super Mario Bros." and reached a consensus with the producer, hoping to make the film into the 1989 version of "Batman", "Mad Max", "Blade Runner" "The dark feeling of desolate doomsday comes.

Hispanic talk show star John Leguizamo (right) as Luigi

From starring to Nintendo, I have experienced a nightmare

"Super Mario Bros." started filming in May 1992 and wrapped up in July. During filming, it is said that there was a lot of friction between the two directors and the cast and crew.

Bob Hoskins, who passed away in 2014, said in an interview with the media in 2007 that the most trashy thing he has ever filmed in his life is this "Super Mario Bros." "It was a xxx nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. The husband and wife directors had no talents, some were just full of egos. By the end of the filming, even their own agents couldn't stand it, Let them go back and forth wherever they want! It's a nightmare for XXX! What a pair of idiots!" In 2011, Hoskins was asked by the media, "What is the worst job you have ever taken in your life? What is the work that I feel most disappointed in? What is the bad record that I most want to erase from my life history?" When asked three times in a row, he answered three more in one breath: "Super Mario Bros."

John Leguizamo, who played Luigi, stated in his memoirs: During filming one day, director Morton did not know whether it was intentional or inadvertent, and poured a whole cup of hot coffee on an extra actor.

Dennis Hope as the villain Cooper

Dennis Hope, who plays the villain, thinks the same. Hope, who died in 2010, said in an interview in 2008, "It was a nightmare. The couple were control freaks, and they talked to themselves all the time. They didn't communicate with others at all. One day, my son watched After watching this movie, I came to ask me, Dad, I know you are a good actor, so I didn’t expect you to act in such a bad movie. I told him, there’s no way, Dad just wants to make money for You buy new shoes, that’s why you’re in this kind of movie. And he replied, Honestly, I’d rather not have my new shoes.”

In May 1993, "Super Mario Bros." was officially released. Prior to this, film critics in the media had watched the film in advance and gave it all negative reviews without mercy. Most of them think that the film is notable for convincing Taoism, and the imagination in art design is also rich, but the bad thing is that the story is too poorly written, let alone compared with the original game, in terms of restoration. I'm really sorry, but the overall rather dark atmosphere is also incompatible with the joyful atmosphere of the game itself.

In particular, the well-known film critic Roger Ebert also gave the film a bad review on the TV film review program hosted by his partner, and selected it into their 1993 bad film list-the same year. The selected films also include "Game of Death" starring Madonna, "Witches Are Crazy" starring Sarah Jessica Parker, "Mysterious Disappearance" starring Jeff Bridges, science fiction comedy "Pointy Alien" Family", the parody film "Robin Hood Is Crazy" directed by Mel Brooks, etc. Now it seems that if nothing else is said, just talk about Douban scores. Two words come to the conclusion.

"Super Mario Brothers" stills

Going back to thirty years ago, when the Internet was just born, what determined the fate of a movie at the box office was not word of mouth on social media, but the life and death of full-time film critics in media newspapers. In this way, "Super Mario Bros.", which received a lot of negative reviews, only received a global box office of 38.9 million US dollars after its release.

According to producer Roland Joffe, after the film was released, neither Nintendo nor Hiroshi Yamauchi contacted him, and never complained to him about anything, "They were very polite." However, as early as 2017, former Nintendo of America President Reggie Firth Amy publicly stated that this "Super Mario Bros." made Nintendo's game development team very frustrated. Before the release of the new version this time, Nintendo also mentioned by name that there was such an adaptation that cast a shadow on Nintendo's golden signboard, so that they were bitten by a snake once, and they were afraid of the well for ten years. For a long time, I dare not cooperate with Hollywood to develop movies.

Nintendo doesn't care, and the producer randomly changed the script is the main reason for the failure?

"Super Mario Bros." directors Rocky Morton and Annabelle Yankel founded a production company called Cucumber Studios in the UK in the 1970s, specializing in the production of various MVs and TV shows. The advertisement featured a combination of real people, animation and the most advanced computer special effects at the time, which won the favor of Hollywood. The duo was chosen to direct Super Mario Bros. after their film debut, DOA, was a hit with the media.

Today, both of them are nearly seventy years old, and they have long been far away from Hollywood, but there are still people in Hollywood who remember them. On March 11 this year, Quentin Tarantino specially planned the 30th anniversary screening of "Super Mario Bros. During the banquet, they revisited this old work that they had never seen in thirty years. "I didn't expect the audience to be so enthusiastic. Not only were all the seats full, but there were also people queuing up to take photos and sign autographs with us." They said excitedly in an interview recently, "Thirty years have passed, and we have finally received the late recognition. , Thirty years of painful memories are swept away."

According to the director and his wife, in fact, from the very beginning, they never thought about reproducing the plot of the game. The plan at that time was to film the previous love story. In addition to being the first time in Hollywood history to bring a popular video game to the screen, the biggest difference between the live-action version and today's animated version may be the degree of participation of the game developer Nintendo.

In today's animated version, Nintendo has participated in the whole process from the beginning of development, and even has a great say in the selection of actors. As for "Super Mario Bros." in 1993, Nintendo did not participate in it at all, and it was all produced by a company affiliated with Disney. It is said that Nintendo had zero experience in film development at that time, so they chose to try the idea of letting the film investors do the work. "If you could go back in time, if you could have persuaded Shigeru Miyamoto to come on as a co-producer, we could have been a team, and then this would be a completely different movie," Morton said.

The animated version of "Super Mario Bros. The Movie" is produced by game developer Shigeru Miyamoto (right)

As a result, the film has not been officially released yet, and various media reports have already frightened Nintendo. The developer of the Super Mario game, Shigeru Miyamoto, chose to completely cut ties with the film, and even once very repelled letting Hollywood adapt his own game.

In addition to Nintendo's indifference, "Super Mario Bros." actually had a lot of problems during the filming period. The production cost of 48 million U.S. dollars was not cheap in the 1990s. According to the director and his wife, "There are only two weeks before the filming starts. The producer announced that the original script needs to be completely overthrown and rewritten, and they do not allow us to communicate with the screenwriter. But by this time, we have already followed the original script. The story has built a lot of sets and prepared a lot of props. The money has been spent, and it is not a small amount."

In the end, the script was changed beyond recognition. The actors who had already been familiar with the original script were caught off guard and complained a lot, while the director and his wife could only take care of the overall situation and appease their emotions. Of course, this is just the director's rhetoric.

A reporter from the "Los Angeles Times" wrote an article after returning from the visit that year, saying that the shooting scene of "Super Mario Bros." was a mess, and the director and his wife refused to even accept the interview. And Dennis Hope, one of the leading actors, added fuel to the fire, saying, "They don't want to do interviews? That's really the smartest choice I know they have made. It would be right not to do interviews, but that It's the only sensible thing they both did."

The day after the newspaper came out, the CAA brokerage firm where the couple worked terminated their agency relationship on the grounds that they violated the contract by not doing interviews. "That's it, the movie hasn't come out yet, and our movie careers are over," Morton recalls.

"Super Mario Brothers" stills

In 1993, "Super Mario Bros." was officially released. Critics and audiences criticized the plot of the film for being too different from the game itself. It can even be said that it has nothing to do with it. I also don't like the game itself because of the movie. This is precisely the counter-effect that Nintendo is most worried about.

But the director and his wife said that, in fact, the film was nearing the end, and a scene was originally filmed: After the Mario brothers finished their adventures in the parallel world, they returned to their home in New York. From the top management of Nintendo game company. The two expressed that they had learned about the amazing stories of Mario Bros. from the news, and hoped to interview them and use these stories in a game the company was developing..."This scene fully explained the movie and the game. The continuity itself explains why our movie and the game itself have little to do with the plot. As a result, the producers cut our scene."

Anyway, "Super Mario Bros." stumbled, and the biggest damage done to the director and couple was that they never got any movie opportunities again. Her husband, Rocky Morton, later started a TV advertising company called MJZ. Over the years, he has shot many excellent advertisements and won many gold awards at the Cannes Advertising Festival. His wife, Annabelle Yankel, works in the field of television and has been publishing works in recent years.