Super Mario Bros at 30

In 1993, directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton made cinema's first video-game adaptation and it almost ruined their careers. Thirty years later and as a shiny new animated movie based on the Nintendo classic hits cinemas - the directing duo reflect on the troubled legacy of Super Mario Bros. and its unlikely resurgence...

- By Simon Bland

If you were a film fan growing up in the early 90s, odds are that Super Mario Bros. was a really big deal. That said, while many young SNES fans sat down expecting to find the adventures of their favourite dino-riding plumbers colourfully brought to life, what they actually got was something considerably different. Soon, cinemagoers will have the chance to see the new animated movie from Illumination that more faithfully adapts the world. But, back in 1993, instead of green pipes, glowing stars and handy power-ups, cinema’s very first live-action video-game adaptation plunged audiences into a richly detailed yet surprisingly dystopian world.

Here, dinosaurs didn’t die after the meteor hit; they simply split off into an alternate dimension and evolved into the dominant species of their own world. Cut to present day and the sentient fungus-filled Dinohattan is now home to King Koopa (Dennis Hopper), a megalomaniac hell-bent on merging his reality with ours. When he discovers orphan Daisy (Samantha Mathis) holds the meteorite shard that’ll make his dream a reality, Manhattan plumbers Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) are sucked into an adventure that’s as messy as it is memorable.

Needless to say, it wasn’t quite what fans were expecting – and critics didn’t hold back, and the box-office underwhelmed – but to be fair, it wasn’t what its directors were expecting either. After years in development hell, director-producer Roland Joffé secured character rights from Nintendo and commissioned Rain Man writer Barry Morrow to pen a script. A touching road movie leaning heavily into Mario and Luigi’s fractured brotherhood, Morrow’s story was so dramaover-comedy, it earned the nickname Drain Man while being shopped around Hollywood.