“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is now out in cinemas, and so far, handily beating expectations at the box-office. Not unexpectedly, attention is also being paid towards the property’s prior 1993 live-action film adaptation.
The infamously disastrous feature starred Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi and was a bomb at the time – sinking any further Nintendo screen adaptations until this film three decades later.
Critical reviews of the new ‘Mario’ are certainly much better, but still more mixed than Universal Pictures would probably like. That said, it’s certainly not seen as the incoherent mess the old film was.
Seth Rogen, who voices Donkey Kong in the new film, has spoken to Variety about his disappointment in the 1993 movie and says he saw it at age 11 and still hasn’t forgotten how it made him feel:
“When I was 11, I saw the original “Mario Bros.” movie, and I was so excited. 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. It really bummed me out. It’s nice to vindicate that moment. It’s nice to know that 11-year-olds out there that they won’t be disappointed in the same way that I was.”
So how do some of the old film’s cast feel about the new one? Bob Hoskins is no longer with us, but John Leguizamo certainly is, and thirty years later is still going strong in movies such as the recent dark comedy “The Menu”.
Leguizamo recently had a response when asked if he’ll watch the new animated movie, telling TMZ:
“No I will not [be watching]. They could’ve included a Latin character. Like I was groundbreaking, and then they stopped the groundbreaking. They messed up the inclusion. They dis-included. Just cast some Latin folk! We’re 20% of the population. The largest people of color group and we are underrepresented.”
This is in line with comments he made a while back to IndieWire where he said: “For them to go backwards and not cast another [actor of color] kind of sucks.”
The new “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” made $66 million globally on its opening day, two-thirds of its budget. Domestically it pulled in $31 million on its opening day thanks to a late surge and is headed for $22 million+ on Thursday.
As such five-day estimates for the movie, previously hovering around $125 million domestically, have been revised upwards and now sit around $141 million.
