Given the genre’s continued inconsistencies, it’s ironically fitting that Hollywood’s first-ever major video game adaptation turned out to be so terrible. In a way, Super Mario Bros. set the tone for what was to come over the next 30 years, for better and worse.
Breaking down the relentless behind the scenes discontent, the movie was seemingly always destined for failure. Nine different writers had taken a crack at the script before a single frame of footage had even been shot, the Nintendo-backed disaster went vastly over budget and well behind schedule, and barely anyone involved had anything nice to say about directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel.
A recent retrospective has opened up the can of mustachioed worms all over again, and even Super Mario Bros. sympathizers are struggling to see how anything remotely resembling a salvageable end product could have emerged from a shoot that was tortured every single step of the way.
Stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo infamously turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism just to get them through, with injuries and unprofessionalism adding another wrinkle to what was already a reported $50 million flop-in-waiting. To be fair, that’s the one front on which the film managed to deliver.
Savaged by critics, loathed by fans, ignored by general audiences, and unable to recoup its budget at the box office, Super Mario Bros. went down in a ball of flames on almost every imaginable level. It may have flirted with cult favorite status once or twice, but for the most part, it inadvertently defined the video game genre and its reputation for a long time – for all the wrong reasons.