Nintendo’s upcoming animated adaptation of ‘Super Mario Bros.’ will reportedly address Mario’s catchphrase without focusing on it. The beloved video game character has been a Nintendo staple ever since he first appeared in 1981’s ‘Donkey Kong’. Along the way, Mario has taken on a wide variety of personas and appeared in countless games, comics, cartoons and merchandise associated with the ‘Super Mario’ franchise and Nintendo as a whole.
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Yet, despite the success of the character and the extended family of characters seen in the ‘Super Mario’ games, it’s somewhat surprising that the games haven’t given way to a hit film franchise. The reasons for this are arguably two-pronged in that Nintendo is famously strict about how their licensing rights are granted, but also because the previous time a ‘Super Mario Bros’. film was released outside of Japan, it brought disaster. The 1993 live-action ‘Super Mario Bros’. is still reviled by many even today, and its cast was notoriously critical of the film in the years following its release. But as awful as the film was, it did succeed in making it clear that the next time the game franchise was adapted, the best option would be to tackle the world of Mario and his brother Luigi through animation.
And so, the upcoming ‘Super Mario Bros.’ film will mark the first time that Mario and co. will appear as animated characters in a theatrically released feature film outside of Japan. However, given that Mario is a somewhat stereotypical caricature of an Italian man, the use of his famous catchphrase “It’s-a-me, Mario!” was bound to be a challenge. -Screen Rant
