Super Mario Bros: The Movie: The Thread

[Dennis196492]

2022 edit: You're probably looking for the extended Morton Jankel Cut from much later in this thread. It's here:

https://archive.org/details/super-mario ... vhs_202207

https://mega.nz/folder/tZsTkbQR#Qo7T39voEUoVsPBgKz7i9Q

You can skip to discussion of the extended Morton Jankel Cut here.
viewtopic.php?p=11255#p11255

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https://www.youtube.com/user/RodimusFilmsnThings
http://www.smbmovie.com/SMBArchive/foru ... f=6&t=1575
http://www.smbmovie.com/
http://smbthecomic.com/

The Super Mario Brothers Movie.

Being in production since 1991, this Allied Filmmakers project, in colaboration with Lightmotive, began as a film that explores the relationship between the Mario Brothers. Jake Eberts in the late 80's saw his kids playing NES, and he was immensively interested in the game, so much that he tought that it could make a good movie. While the first Wizard-of-Oz inspired drafts were being written, they we're looking for directors,and by the time the Fantasy-sci-fi Ghostbusters draft was written, Husband-and-wife directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel came in and had WAY too many ideas for the project.

It's hard to explain the evolution process, but it goes like this:
''Koopa is a monster'', one states, ''who is this monster?'' the writer asks,''probaly a Dinossaur''. says the man of many ideas ''Wasn't Dinossaurs extinct?'' ''yes, but the meteorite created a new dimention where the dinossaurs continued to live!'' ''But wait, all this time surviving, they must have gone through some sort of evolution...I know! The Meteorite radiation gave them the perception of survival and they slowly became inteligent and small!''
And that's why Koopa is a human; Not to mention, it is from here that all the cyber-punk stuff came from.

And in 1992, The Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais Mad-Max inspired draft was finished, and featured many plot-points that we're present in the final film, along with many other subplots. This was the draft that brought in Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper and Fionna Shaw, as well as the Blade Runner set designer, David Snyder, it didn't took long to gather the film's crew; needless to say, the Mad-Max script attracted a lot of attention; Despite that, they did their best to squeeze references to the game.

And then Disney bought the film's rights hoping to integrate Nintendo characters in their theme parks, it only goes downhill from here; They began with toning down the Mad-Max draft, and what was lost? A sex scene, An Desert-Chase action scene among other adult-themed concepts that were dropped, that pissed off the crew very much, because you had all this great people that worked on amazing movies, making a kids film.

The Director's weren't helping either, according to Bob Hoskins, they were a incompetent duo in which their arrogance was mistaken for talent; there were constant fights among newer writers wanting to do a kid's film, directors wanting a mature film, the producers trying their best to not make everyone quit, the actors complaining about the re-writes, and Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo drinking on the set to lessen the pain. What was supposed to be 4 weeks of shooting became 17.

In the end, the final film was 2 hours and 10 minutes long, with the possible rating of PG-13.
Disney ordered the film to be cut down so that it can achieve at least a PG rating; entire sub-plots were deleted, estabilishing shots we're kept to a minimum, and an entire action scene of Mario being chased by Goombas were cut. They also added that stupid animated prologue that automatically makes me want to do something else.

There was quite a lot of anticipation for this film, you can't blame the film's failure on the advertising because trust me, it wasn't that.
with a trailer like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtMZKYnLg5c, who wouldn't want to at least check this out?
And then, in May, 25th, the film was released, and in the first week it grossed at least 20 Million based on it's 40 million budget, it was then, that shortly after, Jurassic Park was released and it destroyed this film. The reviews didn't helped either, the final film does have a lot of pros and cons, but it was Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel that pointed out the film's main flaw: it doesn't know who to target.

So in the end, this was not a bad movie, it has potential, it has some cool stuff, and as far as the story goes, it's well developed and it flows nicely; The problem is that it a real unbalanced film, the jokes throw me off completely, the goofy stuff is out-of-place, and the Alan Silvestri's score is something you'd hear from a TV-movie sitcom rather than an action-oriented film, not to mention, the stuff that was deleted that could have improved the film's quality.

Like Blade Runner, except more naive, the film has a cult-following, which is gathering a 20th Anniversary screening, you can check their website for more information on the film.
smbmovie.com

The film doesn't has many chances of being released on blu-ray, the American version of the DVD's is a non-anarmorphic laserdisc transfer with pink highlights, while Japan and Sweden have an Anamorphic 16:9 transfer with nice yellow/blue colors, with the resolution of 1024x576. I'm trying to get the Japanese release, which is weirdly named ''Super Mario Bros.: Goddess of the Demon World''...cool title, I guess.

There's also a fan-edit made by a fan that fits in some Mario music/SFX, deletes a few jokes, and adds a few shots here and there, from trailers/promotional materials. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gKx2SkhNFE

I may do a fan-edit myself, delete a few shots, re-adjust the editing here and there, delete the Alan Silvestri score when I think it's innapropriate, enhance the action scenes to make it more ''dark'',like the trailer; and use alt-shots here and there, to make it feel more like what the film could have been if they went with the Mad-Max draft, which is btw, my favorite draft.

I haven't tackled the audio, but here's the Car Chase scene, without audio. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42k0l97oW6g

[Garrett Gilchrist]

2022 edit: You're probably looking for the extended Morton Jankel Cut from much later in this thread. It's here:

https://archive.org/details/super-mario ... vhs_202207

https://mega.nz/folder/tZsTkbQR#Qo7T39voEUoVsPBgKz7i9Q

You can skip to discussion of the extended Morton Jankel Cut here.
viewtopic.php?p=11255#p11255

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Original post:

To recap, briefly:

A topic of conversation during the Friday Livestreams has been the movie of Super Mario Bros. Dennis, who is on Youtube as RodiumFilmsnThings, is fond of what it was trying to achieve, especially early drafts of the film which had a dark, Mad Max-like vibe. Making a film from the Super Mario Bros. games, at least at the time, was something of a fool's errand, and the film bombed, as it took a lot of unusual chances and turns and didn't deliver what kids of the day wanted -- combining a darker tone with moments of stupidity.

Dennis would like to reedit the film to take out the stupider moments and take things more seriously. This includes some of Alan Silvestri's score. Deleted scenes from this film are not really available, although snippets appear in trailers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42k0l97oW6g

He would like to remove the score from scenes, leaving the dialogue and sound effects. He's asked how to do so.

If the DVD has a good 5.1 mix, the center channel should mostly contain the dialogue, with minimal music and some sound effects. Each channel of the 5.1 mix should really be listened to individually, to see which channels might not include the music, and be useful for an edit. Actually removing the music would be quite difficult, although I've known audio wizards who could probably do it. [The Smiley Smile forums contained people like bruiteur doing very interesting things with the original SMiLE demos, and the 2004 version.]

Perhaps Dennis could post the 5.1 AC3 DVD audio here for our perusal?

[Dennis196492]

DVD 5.1 audio:
http://www.mediafire.com/?p07pfcbbnpmh18w

Thanks for the interest. I am also looking for Dinossaur footage for the new opening, as well as Bob Hoskins saying ''Oh sh*t'' , you mentioned some film at the livestream, but unfortnatly I've forgotten it.

I would appreciate immensively any help.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

Listening to the Super Mario Bros. AC3 audio in MPEG Streamclip, I'm not sure you have a lot to work with at the moment. The dialogue and louder sound effects are very present in the center channel of course and much quieter (almost absent) in the rear surround channels. But there's no channel that will really give you a version with sound effects but without music. I would suggest replacing the sound effects in places, perhaps with audio from another film.

Your soundless edit is a little bit choppy; continuity isn't good. There's a lot of dumb stuff in the scene, but look at your edit objectively and see where more or less footage is needed. When you know what kind of shot you need, pull it from somewhere in the scene and make it work. You have a very limited amount of footage to work with obviously, but an edit like this is pretending you don't, and editing the footage you wish you had.

For example, the goofy wanted photos of them as "aliens" could actually be replaced with different photos with a bit of special effects, if that shot is needed.

[Dennis196492]

That's good news, I wasn't pretending to rely totally on the film's sound effects as I have much better ideas for it.

As for my edit: At first, I wanted to concentrate on the fast-paced action rather than the characters, which is why I removed several reaction shots; I changed it before I read your post, I moved some scenes around, no Mario being distracted which results with them crashing the car, shots I previously removed were slightly tinkered so I could use it; but as for the 'mugshot' scene, you didn't noticed , but I deleted far more dialogue, maybe you don't know how the dialogue goes, or how I will apply the sound effects, but compared to the original scene, it's much more serious, But maybe removing the mugshot scene and over-lapping the police chatter around the characters reactions could work, I'm willing to do anything with this movie, given the limited material I have.

But I know what you mean by dumb stuff, that crazy cheering lady, that whole scene where they land and Luigi tries a door but ends up going on the door Mario went.

[Shamanic Shaymin]

I suppose you know of this site already, but this has the largest information of the Mario Bros. movie I've ever seen: http://www.smbmovie.com/

The earlier designs for the costumes look like something out of a BDSM film. :o

[Garrett Gilchrist]

Nice site.

http://www.suppermariobroth.com/post/51 ... commercial

[Shamanic Shaymin]

Oh man, sweet sweet memories. "But it's-a me, Mario!" "Tell that to the judge."

[Garrett Gilchrist]

http://smbthecomic.com/

[Garrett Gilchrist]

Reading about the Street Fighter Movie Game made me write this .... a game I wish someone would make ...

Forgotten Nintendo Games: The unreleased Super Famicom/SNES title Super Mario Bros. The Movie was intended for a Christmas 1993 release and was based (loosely) on the Bob Hoskins-starring film. Unusually for a Mario title, the game was developed not by Nintendo but by the California-based studio Visual Concepts, with Ringler Studios handling the also-unreleased Game Boy version.

The simple platforming gameplay most closely resembles the original Super Mario Bros., albeit in a much darker, dystopic landscape. Similar to the then-popular Mortal Kombat series, actors were photographed as live-action video, and their likenesses then digitized into the game. Unlike Mortal Kombat, the game altered the actor likenesses to have "big heads" and be more cartoonish. The end result was somewhere between Mortal Kombat and Toshiba's Super Back to the Future 2. Live-capture footage was shot against blue screen during the shooting of the film itself, with actors including Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Samantha Mathis, Francesca Roberts and Lance Henriksen reprising their roles to some extent. However, the game does not closely follow the storyline of the film, taking equal inspiration from the first four Super Mario Bros. video games.

The opening cutscene is very cartoonish and shows Koopa (Dennis Hopper) riding a giant mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex and kidnapping Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis). Mario Bros. to the rescue! Or not. After the poor reception the Super Mario Bros movie received, Nintendo decided to shelve the game, and it was never publicly released. By all accounts an above-average platformer for the time, with an unusual visual style, we're still hoping for a ROM to leak …