Bob Hoskins called shooting ‘Super Mario Bros’ a “f**kin’ nightmare”
Movie adaptations of video games have a long history of failure, going way back to the first ever made in 1993. Starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper, the live-action adaptation of the frenetic platform game Super Mario Bros demonstrated very early on that video game adaptations were not easy, in fact, honouring the game whilst making a great movie was often seemingly impossible.
Directed by the husband and wife team, Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, the film loosely adapted the world of Super Mario, omitting all the vibrant fun to tell a stripped-back story of two Brooklyn plumbers, Mario (Hoskins) and Luigi (Leguizamo). Leaving the streets of Brooklyn, the pair travel to another dimension to rescue a princess from the evil dictator King Koopa (Hopper) and stop him from taking over the real world.
A truly bizarre Hollywood experiment, Super Mario Bros is often considered an utter failure by fans of the beloved Nintendo video game series, with the movie containing none of the heart and magic of the original property. Making a story about brain manipulation and governmental control, the film goes into bizarre territory, with many considering it to be ‘so bad that it’s good’.
Veteran actor Bob Hoskins wasn’t entirely sure what he was getting into either, telling The Guardian back in 2007: “The whole experience was a nightmare”.
Asked about the biggest flops of his impressive career, Hopkins replies, “The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin’ nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent”. Evidently fuming that he ever took part in the movie adaptation of the famous video game, he adds: “After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin’ nightmare. Fuckin’ idiots”.
The beloved late British actor was a star of the silver screen throughout the 1980s in particular, appearing in the crime drama The Long Good Friday with Helen Mirren, as well as the Disney live-action/animation hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit which would become an iconic stepping-stone for 20th-century technology.
As well as Hopkins, Dennis Hopper previously told Conan O’Brien why he took on the role in the 1993 movie, revealing that he wasn’t sure about what he had signed up for either.
Speaking about the role long after its release with his son, Hopper recalled, “I made a picture called Super Mario Bros, and my six-year-old son at the time…he said, ‘Dad, I think you’re probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros.?’”.
Stumped at his six-year-old’s response, Hopper replied by saying: “‘Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,’” before his son hilariously quipped back, “Dad, I don’t need shoes that badly”.
Illumination entertainment is set to release a brand new video game adaptation, with Super Mario Bros: The Movie due to be released in 2023. The film will star Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, Seth Rogen and Keegan-Michael Key.
