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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ben Child

Can The Super Mario Bros Movie end 30 years of terrible video game films?

Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) in The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) in The Super Mario Bros. Movie Photograph: Nintendo/© 2022 Nintendo and Universal Studios

“The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Bros. It was a fuckin’ nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin’ nightmare. Fuckin’ idiots.”

These are the words of the late, great Bob Hoskins to Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian in 2007. Anyone who has actually seen the horrifyingly bad 1993 film he is talking about, known for being the first mainstream Hollywood adaptation of a video game, might wonder why we are about to get a remake. Here’s Dennis Hopper, who played villain King Koopa on his own feelings about the movie: “I made a picture called Super Mario Bros, and my six-year-old son at the time – he’s now 18 – he said, ‘Dad I think you’re probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros?’ And I said: ‘Well, Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,’ and he said, ‘Dad, I don’t need shoes that badly.’”

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