First, if you haven't seen Super Mario Bros the Movie yet, please do not. Do not let a single thing we say in this article persuade you to do so. It is an evil movie, the cinematic feature version of a brown note, an ourborous of hatred and destruction, a black hole from hell. It is so bad, Mario will be ruined for you forever. For those of you who have seen it, just know, the pain never goes away. It'll possibly ruin the franchise for you, it'll ruin your opinions of a few good (and some not-so-good) actors, and you'll feel like you might as well have just spent your time sitting around watching paint dry. Actually, d♉o that. You'll probably get a bit more enjoyment out of it.

Super Mario Bros. the Movie is a nightmare of a film. It's about real live humans pretending to be video game plumbers saving a Princess from a dinosaur. Except it has more in common with Blade Runner than Mario. It is a horror show, and -- perhaps due to it creating a black void of time once people watch it -- there's a lot of neat thi💯ngs you might not know about it🐠. Such as...

15 First True Video Game Movie

 At this point in time, with there being adaptations for every game under the sun -- Assassin's Creed, Doom, Rampage, Hitman, Driver, Crazy Taxi, Sonic, Final Fantasy, and even that homebrew your cousin made last week -- you might find it hard to believe that there weren't a lot of video game movies until recently. You might also be surprised to know that Video Game Adaptations exist despite the inaugural one featuring a giant lizard, mushroom monsters, and the most dystopian city since Mad Max. (Wait, that sounds awesome. It was all that but also a Super Mario movie. Okay, better.) Yes, somehow video game movies became a thing -- with some of them even approaching the level of adequate -- despite th🌱e entire genre starting off with a movie about two obnoxious New Yorkers falling into a hidden kingdom where the dinosaurs never died.

14 It Was Made By The People Behind A Surpri🦩sing Film

Super Mario Bros. is a very dark movie. However, is it as dark as some other stuff? No. No, no, no, no. However, the film came into being thanks to a producer who had just proven himself on a movie called The Killing Fields, an Oscar winner, about a Cambodian tragedy. It's a harrowing, horrible movie, that features, as one of its leads, a man who had recently gone through the actual Cambodian events. How did this brave producer get from there to here? Simple: money. He decided that Mario could make him some money, so he pitched to Nintendo, got the rights, and the rest is, erhm, the subject 🐬of this article. Read on!

13 Co-Directed By The Creator Of A Popular Digital Se🗹nsation♌ 

Max Headroom was a weird viral (before that really existed... so, VHSal?) sensation that was half Space Ghost Coast to Coast, half Johnny Mnemonic, and half the really bad weed your sister left in her room for nine years. It was powerful and striking when it first came out, mostly due to its advances in weird film techniques, such as the fact that that dude up there isn't actually a poorly CGI'd man, but a human who went through hours and hours of make-up. The creators of Max Headroom were chosen as they were a pair of striking, bold auteurs who could make a dazzlingly fresh and original movie, inspired by a red-suited dude who jumps on just so many turtles. Their original idea was dark and interesting, and pretty much nothing like Super Mario. But more on that later.

12 Danny DeVito Could Have Been Mario

Before we get into the weeds, let's reflect on a crisis that was averted. As we'll soon discover, nothing about working on this film was fun, which is why -- perhaps -- noted psychic Danny DeVito avoided it. He was in talks to play the lead role of Mario and honestly, who is a better physical match for the Italian plumber than DeVito? The man has perfect comedic timing, is willing to make a fool of himself, and can even play to children. He would have been wonderful as Mario, but unfortunately for us -- fortunately for him -- it didn't work out. So Bob Hoskins, fresh off his successes in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Hook came♓ in as the fire-spitting, Tanooki suit-wearing h⛦ero. And boy would he regret it.

11 Approaching The Story The Wrong Way

Let's take a step back and talk about another dark movie: Rain Man. It's the story of an autistic man who can count cards and a dude who takes advantage of him. It won Oscars. Your weird, art-interested "the Q stands for questioning" sibling probably loves that movie. Now, imagine wanting to make Super Mario Bros. Is the screenwriter for Rain Man who you would go to first? Nah, it'd be more someone like, say, the Richie Rich writers. Because they could do kid-oriented and bombastic. Okay, good call, and the directors eventually decided to go that route, but first they went to the Rain Man guy. In what world does a Super Mario Bros. movie exist, the credits of which feature the Max Headroom creators, the Killing Fields producer, and the writer of Rain Man? How did this film exist? How?!

10 Luigi Crashes A Van, Breaks Mario's Fingers

As mentioned, working on this film was about exactly as pleasant as... well, something really unpleasant. The stars of the film drank to cope with the horrible reality of making this film, with the actor who played Luigi getting so inebriated he crashed the plumber'sඣ car the Mario Bros. have, and broke the Mario actor's fingers. Now, Bob Hoskins, who played Mario, doesn'🌟t even think that was the worst part of working on this movie. He thinks the film itself was the worst part. Imagine breaking your fingers and that not being the low point of your filmmaking experience. That's what this set was like. That's what this pit into the underworld was like.

9 Mario's Dad Thought It Was Too Faithful

Yeah. You read that right. Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario. And Link. And you, probably. At very least, your entire childhood. He actually dug the Super Mario Bros. movie, because he likes outsider art presumably, but he did have one complaint. A quick rundown again: this movie takes place in a dark alternate world where people are turned into mutated fungus, by a Max Headroom lookalike, playing a bad rip-off of Lex Luthor. At the end, the alternate world merges with our own, and everything starts to rip apart. Mario and Luigi use flying boots and guns. The setting is Manhattan (and the darker Dinohattan). What's Miyamoto's complaint? That it was too faithful to the games. You can spend the remainder of this entry (and your life) dealing with that thought -- the movie was too faithful.

8 Rushing The Script (And You Can Tell)

One of the biggest problems with this abysmal film is that the tone makes no sense. On the one hand, it's a Cronenbergian body horror film, but its plot is (really, really bad) Pirates of the Carribean-esque fantasy adventure. It was shot wherever Philip Marlowe lived and on rejected Blade Runner sets. The film is all over the place. What gives? Well, see, the movie went through a bunch of scripts. The final version, though? That one was written about a week and a half before shooting on the film began. The directors had crafted a weird, severe movie that was almost nothing like Super Mario but might've really rocked. The executives took onꦦe look ꩵand said, This won't sell toys! and decided to replace the script. Actors tried to bail. The directors fought against it. In the end, the producers went ahead with their foul ritual and this unholy abomination was born.

7 Where Did Their Last 𓂃Name Come From? Hint: Answer Is In The Article

Ever begin a sentence and not know where you're going with it? Mario was created like that. Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, made everything about him up as he went along. First he was a random man saving a Princess from a gorilla. Then he was a man who jumped and fought turtles. Then he had a brother. He became a doctor, then a sports legend, and eventually a sentient hat capable of possessing dinosaurs. But as he evolved, he did so according to the whims of whoever was making the next game. Miyamoto had no grand plan for him. He didn't even have a last name for him. But someone needed to name Mario and his brother Luigi. The creators of the film decided to do it for Nintendo, giving them the names Mario Mario and Luigi Mario (which makes sense given the name of their games are the Mario Bros). Miyamoto slapped his seal of approval on it and th🌼is movie changed the games, forever.

6 King Koopa's Actor Was A Real Monster

Actors sometimes are a bit hard to work with. Some of them will pretend they can't walk. Others will send used condoms to co-workers. It's a weird job, and pretty much everyone in the industry is hard to work with. So you know that when directors complain -- as the Super Mario Bros directors did about Dennis Hopper -- then you know some seriously bad stuff went down. Dennis Hopper, who previously had been in dark films such as David Lynch's Blue Velvet, appears in Super Mario Bros as an egomaniacal corporate head/over-the-top evil king -- which is a pretty big change, and as we mentioned, not the role he signed up for. Maybe that's the reason that he almost never listened to the directors, ignored their staging, and generally fought with them whenever he could, like a petulant teenager who doesn't want to do his homework. Or maybe he was just really getting into his role as a jerk.