The Super Mario Bros. Movie – mama mia it’s making a lot of money (pic: Universal Pictures)



A reader examines the surprise success of The Super Mario Bros. and what it means for Nintendo’s place in the video games industry.



As I write this The Super Mario Bros. Movie is on course to be the biggest animated movie of all time , beating Frozen 2. After Pokémon: Detective Pikachu being only a so-so hit, that didn’t get a sequel, I’m not sure what anyone expected from the Mario movie, but I don’t think it was that. I also don’t think people realise what this is going to mean for Nintendo’s future, since they will now have Hollywood knocking at their door, desperate to make movies based on their games.



Just stop for a minute and think what being the biggest animated movie means. That means it’s bigger than any animated film Disney has ever done, and Disney has been around for 100 years. But that’s nothing, Nintendo has been around for 133. Apparently, there’s a bit of a grey area over whether The Lion King remake counts as live action or animated but either way it’s the ninth highest grossing movie of all time. Frozen is the 13th, so that’s the kind of company The Super Mario Bros. is keeping.



Like GC said, a Zelda movie is a given now. There’s no way it’s not happening, as well as, I’m sure, spin-offs for Donkey Kong and Mario Kart and whatever else is deemed big enough from the Mario movie. Animal Crossing has surely got plenty of potential, and what about Metroid (please get Ridley Scott to direct!)? Or Pokémon, Fire Emblem, Splatoon, Kirby, F-Zero, and Pikmin. This level of success means we’ll probably see a Chibi-Robo movie before Hollywood gives up trying.



All this success and yet… the movie isn’t actually very good. I saw it with my kids, and they liked it, but the story is very bare bones and there are surprisingly few jokes for adults. There’s a lot of fan service but as a movie it’s not nearly as good as I was hoping and way below something like The Lego Movie, which took an idea that shouldn’t work and weaved magic.



It seems the real reason the film was a success is not because it was good but because people love Mario and his universe. They love Nintendo. Nostalgia played a big part but the end result is people turned up to a movie about an Italian American plumber fighting a giant turtle even though the reviews said it was terrible (and they weren’t really wrong). Imagine what would happen if the film was actually good!



The success of the movie has so many implications. Nintendo is going to be rolling in even more dough than usual and if they need investment for the Switch 2 they’ll get it, no problem. Companies will be queuing up to get involved. They’ll feel encourage to bring back older franchises not just to make new games but because they might have potential for future movies. We always seem lucky to get a new Pikmin, because it never sells that well, but a movie could do great and fully justify Pikmin 4 and beyond.



It also means we are going to be drowning in new video game adaptions for the next decade or more. Especially as the superhero fad seems to be falling away. But I think Hollywood will find pretty quickly that that Mario and Nintendo are special and no matter how many platform mascots they sign up, they’re not going to have anything like the same appeal to general audiences.







Which brings me to my central point. Nintendo may have their ups and downs – because unlike Sony and Microsoft they actually try different things each generation – but overall they are always going to be more popular than PlayStation and Xbox. That’s partly because of nostalgia, yes, but it’s also the consistent quality and wide appeal of their games.



Everyone can and does enjoy Mario and Zelda games but the grimdark world of The Last Of Us and non-stop violence of Halo and Fallout is not for everyone. Many will compare the success of The Last Of Us TV show to the Mario movie but it’s not the same thing at all. The Last Of Us show is really good and is based on a game that is already a linear story with minimal emphasis on gameplay. Mario is a not very good movie based on games that are nothing but gameplay and imagination.



Sony do get it more than Microsoft, I think. They know that you need big name exclusives, with likeable characters, for people to get attached to and enjoy, but so many of their games are single-player sad dad experiences that while successful have a glass ceiling for how big they can be. Mario, and Nintendo in general, has no limits, and that’s why, no matter what else happens in the industry, Nintendo will always be number one.



Many try to deny it but that’s always been true, but now Hollywood has proven it once and for all.



By reader Onibee









The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.



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