When The Super Mario Bros. Movie was announced, with the company best known for the inescapable Minions franchise at the helm, fans were prepared for the worst. People made bingo cards, predicted hilariously bad creative choices, and imagined Toad taking over the role of Illumination's iconic annoying species. With every new bit of footage, the film has earned the benefit of the doubt.
The most recent spot for The Super Mario Bros. Movie features a full recreation of the Mario rap from the 1989 cartoon The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. It's packed with new takes on beloved old material. In a world that appears to be growing sick of callback-centric cinema, the Mario movie seems to have found its way to the fans' hearts through strategically placed references.
What does The Super Mario Bros. Movie Plumber trailer reveal?
The brief new trailer isn't a curated highlight reel of scenes from the film like the earlier trailers. Instead, it depicts the beautiful new designs for Mario and Luigi in a full recreation of the Mario Rap from the cartoon. It's framed as an ad for the Mario Bros. Plumbing service, which serves the Brooklyn and Queens areas of New York City. The ad depicts Mario and Luigi's work fixing sinks and toilets with the catchy rap song from the original cartoon. The ad comes complete with a website and a phone number. For those wondering, the number features a message from Charlie Day's Luigi encouraging the listener to send a text. A text will yield a digital business card. All of this fun side material establishes the character's backstory and links it to earlier material.
Mario and Luigi are plumbers from Brooklyn who get sucked into a pipe and wind up in a magical fantasy land. The trailer makes the film's Isekai status very clear. The Brooklyn plumber backstory hasn't been canonical to the franchise since the 90s. The film uses the format established by the cartoon to frame the journey in familiar terms. Unlike a lot of other media franchises, Mario doesn't often look back at the sillier eras of his success. Nintendo loves to recall the hits, but the weirder entries don't always get a modern spotlight. In the case of the film, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show is the perfect reference point.
Is the Mario Movie related to The Super Mario Bros. Super Show?
While there's likely no canonical link between the film and the cartoon, it's clear that the movie will be using the show as shorthand. By grounding the film in the narrative of the cartoon, it's able to appeal to longtime fans and make the story more enjoyable to newcomers. Hardcore fans were understandably unhappy when Nintendo announced Mario's return to the screen. The first film adaptation was a bit of a mess, despite a stellar performance in the title role by Bob Hoskins. The cast of the film raised eyebrows with a few great choices and some dodgy ones. The first trailer seemed to shock the world, leaving fans grappling with the possibility that the film could be good.
With the latest trailer, The Super Mario Bros. Movie won over a ton of longtime fans. The very justified fear when the film was announced was that the Mario franchise would be hollowed out and turned into a marketable cover for a terrible film. Illumination is primarily known for artless disposable trash that exists primarily to sell merchandise to fans of all ages. The Minions are a target of mockery for their irritating humor, but they're more notable because they're everywhere. Tying the Mario movie to the franchise's history on screens of all sizes assures the fanbase that some amount of love and understanding is going into the project. This is the rare good kind of callback. It delivers new information through an old lens, it has thematic meaning to the work, and crucially, it's referencing material that the world isn't already sick of.
Through one clever callback and some genuinely good teasers, The Super Mario Bros. Movie seems to have assuaged all the fanbases' worries. The overall quality of the film remains to be seen, but it's fair to say that it's managed to build excitement where there was once only fear and derision. The Mario Rap was never the pinnacle of the franchise. That late-80s era of video game cartoons is only occasionally remembered fondly. However, as a basis for the upcoming movie, the Super Show finds its perfect modern incarnation. These kinds of callbacks can become annoying if they're overused, but The Super Mario Bros. movie has currently found the perfect balance. If Mario performs the full "Do the Mario" musical number, it might get a bit old, but it's the perfect ad campaign. The Super Mario Bros. Movie seems to know exactly which pipes to jump down.