LOS ANGELES — One hundred and thirty. That's the minimum number of references to the various "Mario"-branded video games that "Super Mario Bros. Movie" composer Brian Tyler estimates he included in his score for the film.
We're not fact-checking him, but to get anywhere near that number requires a certain type of obsession and passion. Ask him about the music for "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," and in seconds he's connecting the game's original composer, Koji Kondo, to John Williams' work on "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and "Close Encounters," as well Jerry Goldsmith's compositions for the "Rambo" films and '80s electronic music. Of course, he just saw Depeche Mode — a band whose music he describes as capturing a moment of ecstasy before an impending doom — so the latter is on his mind.
"I was influenced by the fact that 'E.T.' and 'Donkey Kong' came out in the same era, at least as I was playing it as a little kid," says Tyler, sitting in a basement home studio flanked by an assortment of keyboards, including one of his childhood synthesizers. "That's what this is. I have that soaring, romantic big movie quality that I remember from that Steven Spielberg and John Williams stuff, but combined with this world of 'Super Mario.'"
