Random: Bob Hoskins Didn't Know Super Mario Bros. Movie Was Based On A Game

Hmm. I’ve seen the movie. That tracks…

I don't understand how someone accepts an acting gig and not know what the character they're portraying is about.

@Mioaionios "would you like this check? You can exchange it for money."
Actor: "Yes. Yes, I would like that."

@Sonos @Rambler
Lol, we have this saying in Dutch: "Voor geld danst den beer". Translated: "For money, a bear will dance".

Yeah... once an artist only thinks about the money, they stop being an artist in my book.

It would be nice to have the Super Mario Bros Movie Skins for Mario Odissey and even Smash Bros.

"The best Mario is not the man who seeks Mario, but the man who has Mario foisted upon him"

I think that the next SMB has no chance to stack up to anything (if we count out controversy at least).

Few mainstream movies are worse than SMB, which is (objectively?) one of the worst movie ever made https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108255/reference/

but in a GOOD way. It’s one of the movies I absolutely adore because it’s so bad, but so full of heart, that’s immensely enjoyable every single time we watch it!

It’s right up there with other classics like Samurai Cop and The Room — and that’s no small feet!

Best Mario Film out at the moment!! (as its the only one)

To be honest I did like it's tongue in cheek awfulness and how bad the whole thing is. It is one of those films that is SOOO BAD it's good! Really wished they did a sequel

@Mioaionios I've been very poor before. It isn't comfortable. I don't knock anyone for wanting a more comfortable life. Living and dying, earless and broke like Picasso.

@Mioaionios Just because he didn't know Mario was a game doesn't mean he didn't know the role. I'm sure he was given a character rundown and the gist of the plot. But video games were not quite then what they are now, there would have been a lot of people, especially his age, that didn't know Mario.

He was offered the titular role in a movie that I'm sure the studio believed was going to be a smash hit, where he'd play one of two Brooklyn plumber brothers that end up in a parallel world where the dinosaurs didn't go extinct but instead became intelligent beings like us. Yeah that might sound like a mad thing to accept, but he'd previously done Who Framed Roger Rabbit which was a huge success.

@Bunkerneath actually Mario has two movies; the 1986 anime film, and the 1993 live action(which we are talking about)

Robert William Hoskins had portrayed other "technicians" before so it might have been the reason he was chosen to play Mario.

Somebody didn't do his job, not necessarily Bob Hoskins. I mean, don't production agencies or whatever have someone to give context on the character someone is playing?

I remember reading the actress playing Samus in the American Metroid: Other M commercial was given a little bit of insight of the character and played a bit of a Metroid game to be ready for the filming of said commercial.

@Rambler him too

The movie was really weird but also kinda nice.

@HammerGalladeBro yeah why didnt he spend a few months breaking giant blocks with his fists and kicking turtles around?

the guy was off Roger Rabbit. He was a bigger name for this role than SMB was at the time.

Kinda hard to believe, I mean Mario was the biggest thing on the planet back then.

@Mioaionios Fun fact: 't is waarschijnlijk precies de beer die net NIET danst voor geld, geld is enkel een beweegreden voor mensen.

For all you not-Dutch-speaking people out there:
It's probablt the bear that would NOT dance for money, only humans act for money.

Not so fun fact: it IS for money that humans abuse the bear until he "dances", but the bear will never see a fair share of the money they deserved, not even in a form that DOES benefit their life quality. Humans and their "animal love" does not exclude breeding them, exploiting them in life or death, eating their dead bodies, destroying their homes, beating them into submission,... Another very human, but very inhumane trait that I hope we will sooner rather than later make a thing entirely of the past, not just because all life has been killed already, but before that.

I watched the movie I think 2 times ever. Ill probably never rewatch it cuz I hardly ever rewatch the same movie, However tbh If you view the movie kind of in a way you would watch an abridged parody of Mario as like a youtube series You can have some fun with it. Its bad but its kinda fun to.

I love this movie specifically because it's so bad. Truly awful movies, the ones that are so bad they're good, are so much more interesting to me than something well made. Those ones are boring.

@Rambler i dont know why i get those two confused - i always do

@Mioaionios He should have googled it at least..

Well, to be fair to him...I don't think anyone did!

@Ogbert

The main issue with the movie was that the script was rewritten about twelve times during development. When they started filming they didn’t even have a finished script and the actors had to wing a lot of their parts due to day to day script changes.

Dennis Hopper was pretty open about that aspect of the film. Every day he was handed a revised script for Koopa. He eventually just zoned out and did his own thing.

@TheBigK

Agreed. I love Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter The Movies for that reason.

Although in Street Fighter’s case, they had Raul Julia. And he was one of those amazing actors who could turn a turd into solid gold.

So even though Street Fighter is a train wreck, you can always watch Julia’s scenes. If you cut the movie down to just Raul Julia’s scenes, it would be one of the best movies ever made.

@Jhena

The making of the movie is so entertaining.

It was a disaster from start to finish. And honestly it’s amazing that a film even came out.

Howard Lincoln was one of the first people to see the final cut before release. And he knew it was bad.

But at that point sunken cost syndrome applied. It was an expensive movie to make. So everyone, despite their disgust at the time, signed off on the release just to recoup what they could.

Oddly enough Miyamoto liked it.

Ha ha ha, that's okay. Most of us fans didn't know it was related to the game either!!!!

To be fair, neither did Shigeru Miyamoto.

How on god's green earth did he not know who Mario was? Literally one of the most popular mascots in fictional media.

Even people who've never ever seen footage of a video game know who Super Mario is. Nothing against Bob Hoskins personally but good lord, the ignorance.

Edit: Just re-read the article. I'm dumb. The movie was so awful, he didn't even realise it was based on Mario. My bad.

@OrtadragoonX

I am happy they decided to release the movie. And the Mario Brothers are likeable if I remember correctly.

I wonder what he must have thought of it if he hadn't heard of Mario. If you know Mario you would think it was a weird adaptation, but without that context does the movie make more or less sense?

@RubyCarbuncle
Yeah, same. I get what he meant now.

Loved the movie for the memes, Mario Mario, Luigi Mario, and the 'toy' Bob-omb. 😂

@Aya-chan It was the early 90s, and since many back then still viewed video games as kids' toys, Hoskins wasn't in the target demographic.

Plus the NES wasn't as big as in the UK (where Hoskins was from) as it was in the USA due to a botched distribution deal with Mattel, and home computers and Sega consoles were more popular then.

@Rambler This is millenials not even wanting to put in basic research.

Can people really not tell that he's joking?

@XE77 Brazil is such a fantastic movie

@Mayro82833u We're talking about the 1993 film.

@benmalsky198 I know that, the problem is that you said that this movie (which we are talking about) is the ONLY Mario movie, but there was already an adaptation before that

I still have the VHS. It was entertaining enough to fulfill the "we'll only buy it if we'll watch it ten times" rule the family had about home media at the time.

@Royalblues That makes perfect sense.

In any case, it is certain that next year's animated film will not be able to hold a candle to the 1993 live action film. One of the best films of the 1990s for me.

@OrtadragoonX not what I was talking about but yeah he has been open about that. Did you mean to reply to someone else?

I was just trying to tell people they were probably being a bit ignorant with their conclusions about Bob Hoskins and his reasoning for taking the role.

@Aya-chan @Rainbowfire @Shredderlovespizza Not that hard to believe. Hoskins was a middle aged man in the early 90s when gaming was still in a period of relative infancy and was primarily enjoyed by children and teens. To compound this, he's an Englishman. If you were gaming in the UK during that time, it was more likely to be on a microcomputer like the Amiga and if you did have a console it was much more likely to be a Sega system. Mario was not the biggest thing in the world at the time, he was popular for sure, but not to the same degree as in North America and Japan.

Have people making a movie then they don't even know that it's a video game, they are not invested in the content, no wonder the movie came out bad, it's so sad when people do a disservice like this.

I can't think of a single reason he would have known. He never struck me as someone who even plays video games. I play loads, but I watch no sports, so I don't readily know the names of the best at sportsball stuff

@Mayro82833u The animation's on youtube. I watched it a few months back, and noticed that a lot of stuff that could be considered Mario "lore" was already there. Also a lot of stuff that was shoehorned in because of the medium as a children's animation with obligatory musical numbers.

I'm not even sure the filmmakers themselves knew that they were making a movie based on a video game.

Yeah, people have known that for a while.

@Mountain_Man 100% Truth.

@Mioaionios I can't understand how directors can adapt something to film and not know a thing about it. :/

@Mioaionios I believe we can file this under "I needed the money" and "The check cleared."