Imagine the Plot of the Mario Movie

Dudley

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As you may have heard, Illumination and Nintendo are teaming up to make a movie based off Super Mario. Game creator Shigeru Miyamoto will executive produced, and knowing Nintendo's track record of quality control, the movie should turn out decent enough (or at least better than the live-action film)
But what do you guys think the movie will be about? How will it play out? Will it be an origin story? Or will it have Mario already in the midst of a grand adventure? Will Bowser have a big role? Will Mario talk much?
Discuss!
 

ShadowBeast

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It better be actually Mario, and not like that awful live-action film. I don't get what they were going for with that film. Probably too much focus on trying to be realistic.
 

Daikun

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Keep the origin story, but make it simple like the 80s cartoons did. Mario and Luigi are plumbers from Earth who wind up getting sucked down a drain into the Mushroom Kingdom. Don't make it ridiculously complicated like the 90s movie where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs serves as a bridge between dimensions; just make it an Alice in Wonderland type of deal.

Mario and Luigi traverse this strange new land in awe and come across Toad. They banter and learn about this new world and ask if there's a way to get back home. Toad suggests that their princess might be able to help, so they head to her castle. Once they arrive, however, they discover that the castle has been raided and the princess has been kidnapped, so they set out on a journey to save the princess.
 

Peter Paltridge

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I really don't know what to expect because there's not much to draw from. The plot of every Mario game has been incredibly light and simple, summed up in five words: spiked turtle kidnaps royalty again. And if it's not Peach, then it's something similar like the Sprixies from 3D World.

The ways other media have solved this problem usually involve adapting the property a completely different way. In the Super Show shorts Mario and Luigi were basically in a different universe every time, sometimes a parody of something. The movie just used a completely different treatment that barely felt like Mario at all and didn't even use the Mushroom Kingdom. The Mario comics in Nintendo Power turned the whole thing into a wacky cartoon comedy -- this is more likely than the others.

Considering Miyamoto will be in the room, I don't see how far they'll be able to stray from the source material, and there's not much IN the source material. I have no idea what this movie will be like.
 

Mandouga

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The only thing I can imagine this movie to be is a straightforward (as in both non-parody and non-ironic) adaptation (with some laughs) where Mario, Luigi and their friends go on a quest to rescue Princess Peach, or she (and maybe even Princess Daisy) joins them on some other quest that involves rescuing someone else. Heck, I could even imagine it to be a movie where you don't have to play the games to get the most out of it (which is completely different from a movie that assumes the viewers aren't familiar with the games at all; more on that later).

And now, with that out of the way...

I'm really hoping that what this movie won't be is a movie that assumes the viewers have never played a Mario game in their lives, to the point where it insults both their intelligence, as well as the intelligence of those who have even some familiarity with the series. I simply can't imagine a movie that's, for instance, nothing more than Despicable Me, but with Bowser (and either Goombas or Koopas as the "minions"...which they are anyway! Get it? Because Bowser calls them his minions? Ahem...); that is, with Mario only having a secondary, if not an outright minor role (or worse, existing only for a quick, spur-of-the-moment gag), and Luigi...BEING NON-EXISTANT! Get it? Because NOBODY knows who LUIGI is (or alternately, "because Luigi is the player 2 character AND NOBODY PLAYS MULTIPLAYER GAMES")! AH-HA-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha....

Not to mention Peach only existing for the movie to have either damsel-in-distress jokes (e.g., where she either henpecks him /and/or beats him up as she screams for help), or to have localization jokes that hang lampshades on her...uh, "different names" ("Peach? But I thought your name was Toadstool..."), or even both.

(sigh) See what I mean? In other words, I'm really hoping this won't be a movie that only pays tribute to / parodies the series and constantly hangs lampshades for an hour and 30 minutes (or however long it's planned to run), all the while not really knowing what it's talking about. Now we all know that Nintendo wouldn't have it, but again we don't really know just how much Nintendo is really involved with this movie. Shigeru Miyamoto is supposedly a "co-producer", but for all even he knows, that could just be a figurehead position, like this line from one Fairly Oddparents episode refers to (which I may just be paraphrasing):

The Head Pixie said:
We need someone to give a fancy title to who won't be of any threat to us.

I'm also hoping this won't be another Sonic Boom (a production that's both self-referential---which the Despicable Me-alike also would likely be--and generic). On the other hand, we can also leave out the possibility of the movie being a darker and edgier rendition. In any case, another thing that would ruin the movie would be "silent protagonist" jokes where Mario has few to no lines at all, but other characters just won't stop talking (especially if they keep telling Mario to "speak up" or something like that).

This isn't the same thing as when Universal tried to bully Nintendo over Donkey Kong, or when Sony tried to run the show with the Super NES's planned CD-ROM add-on. This isn't Nintendo's product (just like the previous animated TV series weren't their product). The only thing anyone can hope for is that Nintendo's "involvement" isn't just for getting people to watch (which, admittedly they don't think it is, but we'll see what happens) and that the movie turns out to be the way it needs to be.
 

JoeMabbon

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What I think I'd like: A mostly faithful adaptation of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Maybe substitute Peach for Goombella and cut out the Excess Express and Boggly Woods chapters for time. Twilight Town could probably be removed as well.

What I think we might wind up with: Development hell and production never goes anywhere. Or maybe some kids get sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom and become Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad. This will allow the writers to define the characters however they want with the built in defense that these aren't the real characters. Also, the Jumanji Reboot was successful. That's just a coincidence.
 

Mandouga

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An adaptation of a specific game? ...yeah. I think it's safe to say that that will NOT be happening (besides, there's another Paper Mario before that one, you know)...unless of course, it were to be an adaptation of the original 1985 game. This movie will likely either be that or have an original story (that, again, I hope will be non-parody, and non-ironic in either case).

Still, anything can happen. We'll all just have to wait and see.
 

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