I've always been a huge Nintendo fan, and the Mario series is one of my favorites overall.

I've also had an interest in the Gusiness Book of World Records for a while. The Gamer's Edition 2019 was the first time I heard of this new Mario movie being in production, by Illumination. In the book, they just made an offhanded comment about how Illumination came up with the Minions.

That piqued my curiosity, and I let that thought gather dust in my head for several years until mid-2021 rolled around, and Nintendo, out of the blue, just revealed the voice actors and release date for this Mario movie. I, like most, was shocked and turned off at Chris Pratt as Mario, but I was reminded he had done a good job as Emmett from The Lego Movie, so I wasn't too unhappy about it.

Fast forward about a year, and it is now October 2022. We are getting our first trailer! I was very surprised at just how high quality everything was. This is generally the same for both other trailers released.

Some day in April, (I actually forgot which), our family bought a ticket to go see the actual movie. Everything was super high quality, and even rose above my expectations. The--


SPOILER WARNING!!


Well, that was quite rude of you to cut me off like that. Anyway, as I was saying, the Bowser scenario with the pet name "Peaches" was something that I'd never really see in a Mario product, but that's actually not really a bad thing; it feels very oddly in-character for the Bowser of the Mario movie.

When I rewatched the movie yesterday, it was for a different family to celebrate one of their daughters' birthday. Aforementioned daughter we'll call K for convenience and privacy's sake.

K is a person I've known for a long time and basically have grown up with. K is also a big fan of Mario, and she had really high hopes for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. K does not have access to the majority of the internet; her only really way to get news about gaming-related stuff is the TV and the News app on her Switch.

When K, her family, and I were coming out of the theater, we were discussing the movie, and K said that the movie was good but it didn't live up to her expectations. I wondered why this could be, as we seemed to have the same experience going in. I think I know now what happened: she kept rewatching the bit that she did have and her expectations grew of the movie.

Here's another opinion I saw.

There is a person at my school with whom my personality clashes heavily. We'll call her A. When I was talking about the movie at school, A said that when she and her friends saw the movie, they absolutely hated it; they said it was the worst waste of an hour and thirty minutes they had had in a long time. At first I thought A was just trying to be mean and mess with me, but her line about her friends ALSO not liking the movie I was confused about. I don't share a lot of classes with A's friends, but I do share one. The class was going to watch a video on YouTube, and we pulled up the YouTube app, and up came Peaches from some previous activity that had totally not been of my doing (long story), and one of A's friends loudly chimes in "OH, THAT'S THE WORST SONG FROM THE WORST MOVIE!". Everybody in my friend group that had seen the movie instantly disagrees and says something positive about the movie, and an argument breaks out, which was put to rest by the teacher, and we watched the video.


I bring this up because it creates a point that I want to discuss: people who had not played the Mario games watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I think that if you don't get all of the references, you are going to have a way worse time with the movie. I still think the average optimistic viewer will like the movie, but they will probably rate the movie way less that those that do get the references. That is where I think the negative reviews are coming from; those people are paid to watch the movies from a point that is not their own, and rate them purely from a movie standpoint.

The best way to summarize this is thus: A person watching a video game adaptation without having played the game will not be able to appreciate it as much as people who have played the game.

This goes for The Cuphead Show!, The Last of Us, Uncharted, and everything else.

I've been koola, the GameCube intro for the phone was amazing.

(I'm glad they at least gave Charles Martinet a part.)

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