This article contains spoilers for The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
With 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Super Mario Bros. Movie having and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us earning , we've entered a new era for video game adaptations. Just as gamers eager for the medium to achieve recognition outside of gaming circles proclaimed after the success of Castlevania, Pokemon Detective Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, The Last of Us, and now, Mario: the video game curse has finally been broken.
But the success of these adaptations may be visiting another curse upon us. It just so happens that video game movies and TV series are blowing up just as the superhero genre hits its worst run in over a decade. Ant-Man: Quantumania and Black Adam both bombed at the box office. Shazam: Fury of the Gods performed so historically badly that only three superhero movies have grossed less worldwide and only five released in the US have done worse domestically. It's already available on VOD less than a month after its release. I've speculated before that video🌸 game adaptations might replace superhero movies as the dominant form of blockbuster. Now that the latest returns are in, it seems increasingly likely that that is happening. Mario might be video game moviꦇes’ Iron Man moment.
And just like Iron Man 15 years ago, Mario ends with a post-credits scene setting up a sequel. Fans are that incorporates movies based on The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Metroid, and Kirby, before culminating in a Super Smash Bros flick. The Mario movie doesn't seem to have those kinds of ambitions. It's more in line with how both Sonic flicks have ended with nods to characters from the games. But, after seeing the Mario movie over the weekend, I'm already exhausted. Staring down the warp pipe, I glimpsed the void. Not because the movie is bad. It's okay. But, because after 15 years of Marvel and DC comics being mined for content, and just as many years of fans dissecting every hint of a hint of a nod to obscure lore, I just can't take another decade-plus of pop culture being dominated by media that primarily exists to reference and set-up other media.
It seems like that's where things are headed. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was filled with allusions to the plumber's 42 years of interactive history. Pauline makes a cameo, and Foreman Spike from Wrecking Crew is a significant character before the brothers get sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom. The movie is filled with nods big — like the Mario Kart scene — and small — a logo for "Jumpman" being visible in the shot of Mario gathering his courage to confront Bowser — and if the sheer number of articles running these Easter eggs down is any indication, nerds still have an appetite for this kind of thing.
I'm less irritated that this stuff is in the movie — it didn't detract from my enjoyment — than I am with a pop culture landscape that remains fascinated with nods like this. Was it fun to see Nick Fury show up at the end of Iron Man? Yeah, because no one had ever done anything like what Marvel was clearly attempting to do. It was new and fresh and promised an interconnected universe at a time when comic book movies had the opposite problem: being far more siloed than the comics they were based on. But the Mario movie ending on a literal (Easter) egg sort of gives the game away. We know what the egg means — Yoshi will be in the next one — and, for some reason, we're supposed to be excited.
Movies can do so much more than this, and I don’t just mean art films. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John Wick: Chapter 4 offered breathtaking choreography. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Avatar: The Way of Water took us to a gorgeously realized alien planet. Just in the realm of family films, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Puss in Boots: The Last Wish brought rock solid storytelling and visual verve to kids in the months꧋ before Mario arrived.
I don't think Mario is a bad movie. It's a solid six out of ten for me. But, it's a symptom of a kind of film and media culture that we desperately need to outgrow. Another iconic Italian-American famously said that “‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation,” and that’s what nods like this are. Not bad, per se, but inconsequential.